Postcard 212

The tin pitcher rusts by
the lone hose-bib, belly full
of cast off rain. The lip,
a thin and dripping threshold,
marks time twice

Within, within the humming fridge
distracted, loose-lidded, shared,
the quart of milk, date yet unmet
resides upon the high shelf,
sours and consumed

Everywhere the straight screws
brass and driverless, lose some thread --
embedded in old wood, shrunk and
warped -- stripped purposeless,
held-fast and loose

This is the home we have
an inheritance in halves,
twice marked time

Postcard 211

 

 Armistice Day, 2023

For quite a while now, I have asked,
To what purpose are my paid labors taxed?

The roads are bad, the schools are worse,
The healthcare seems some kind of curse.

I’ve propped up CEO’s and banks,
And those “too big” without much thanks.

But I’ve always know what it is for:
Tanks, guns, bombs; the armaments of war.

These toys in which my money’s been invested
Have so far this century been well tested,

But printed columns reporting on lives lost
Are such a cool accounting of the costs.

One gets the feeling one’s being billed
By gross for certain numbers maimed or killed.

So, I praise these new geniuses of tech
Who have enabled what’s so far been bereft.

With bombs, drones, phones and all things smart,
They have humanized our wars and brought about the art.

Forget minds and hearts and theoretical ideals,
Here: bones, blood and screams — body parts, the real!

Is there anything so patriotic, anything so sweet,
Than to see my dollars, in real time, obliterate a city street?

I now see my investments so wetly proved.
I tell you, I’ve never been so profoundly moved

With owners pride in each fresh bomb,
To see and hear who its been dropped upon.

The people there? Well it is a shame,
But there must be losers in every game.

So to the lobbyists, the state department, its diplomats,
My congressman, my senator, my president -- I doff my hat.

I have here, carried in my pocket, streaming through my phone,
Held within the unmolested safety of my home,

A bit of war securitized, a piece to own:
A stake, a share, an NFT, a real war-zone!

Thank God and country we can finally see
Our consequence so viscerally.

Postcard 210

What is brother, oh?
I cannot alone cut off
my own other arm,
I am not able

The Lord makes & separates
brothing my bones
dirtmouthed and wrong
to snare the living word

Wrath shreeves the sweetcain
Strong hands reap from rough,
difference the inquisitor of truth,
scrintan the bold head of man

Plumbwire bounding
fights distill an owned smell
Brother is the wet rope tight,
bite caught in link of chain

Postcard 209

 
My friend invited me to ego death
Invoking all the loss she'd known --
Lives accompanied past all boundary
She is trying to kill me bloodlessly.
Breath, let go. Breath, let go.

I am flying toward this death,
An arid high place I do not know.
The air compresses beneath this wing,
The naked thrill of lift, aloft and powerless.
Breath, let go. Breath, let go.

I notice first clouds resplendent commonplace,
And all the weightless layers fall away. Mud
Comes down for brick. Light for flick of leaves. Eyes
For blinking desperately. Self for want for need for
Breath, let go. Breath, let go.

Terror of intention tight unwound
Stars burn and blaze to insects coppery,
Bird pickings, tides, weather, wars,
Terror. Then another terror. Then
Breath, let go. Breath, let go.

I am sitting on an earthen porch,
Rocking through my fear. Chirps
of host of bugs, Rejoices of birds. Creaks
of sun-shrunk veins in old wood chair. We
Are riding rhythms each our own to be
Released. Let go Let go

Post 208

 

 

 LAUNDRY DAY

Its hard to get the laundry done.
Daunted by the piles of clothes,
Cascades of baskets demanding fold,
What we complete is quick undone.
We cant seem to get this laundry done

 

We can’t get the laundry done.
We’re low on gumption, low on hope.
We’re out of bleach; we’re out of soap.
Must kick the machine to make it run.
You see the issue with getting all the laundry done

Its hard to get this laundry done
The water bill’s months overdue
The whites are pink, the blacks are blue.
The load won’t drain. It sits unspun.
And so we cannot get the laundry done.

 

Still, we try to get the laundry done.
It takes heat to get the grass and mud out,
It takes cold to get the blood out.
But the tap won't give us either one.
We have yet to get the laundry done.

 

Its so hard to get the laundry done.
I start to hate the thought of clothes,
And fashions primp and fashions pose.
Going nude would be more fun.
Then there'd be no laundry to get done.

Yet, I must find a time to get the laundry done.
I’m beset with appetite, desire and urge,
Where all fine points of want converge.
Weaknesses I try to shun
Just keep on interfering with getting any laundry done.

 

 

And I hardly want to get the laundry done
The loads too heavy we’re born with,
And we are too delicate for all this filth.
Holes wear in places I just cant mention. 

Seems this laundry can’t get done.

 

Its damned hard to get this laundry done.
The basement’s really gone to smell.
The neighbors say we’re going to hell,
Or jail. Oh well, the smell of mildew’d bother anyone.
I suppose its time to get this laundry done.

Anyhow, I must get the laundry done.
The children can't go to school undressed.
We can't host guests with all this mess.
My partner would have packed her bags and gone,
Except her laundry’s not been done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seems impossible to get the laundry done.
The fabric of society’s begun to tear.
Ma says don’t die in dirty underwear.
We need bug-out bags for everyone.
Its finally time to get that laundry done.

We just cannot get that laundry done.
With acid sky and sun-bleached bones,
Fire and water lapping at our homes,
The very fiber of the world’s unspun.
How important is it, really, to that laundry done?

 

Its so hard, we’ve left the laundry all undone.
Ive got my fill of trials and plenty tribulation
They’re sayin' Armageddon has begun
The trumpet’s bleat, the sinner’s wail
Fire and brimstone, sturm and drang
They say you can only rapture if you’re clean
(But the sayers are all filthy corrupt and mean)

This is end of Anthropocene
Is it the 6th or 7th Great Extinction?
Mankind's makin its own end
Its end of times: the warming earth,
 the acid seas, the cooling sun

The Aquarian age, I’ve heard, is comin’ on
We’ll soon see what dreams may come
The clang of gates, the klaxons blast
The collapse of future into past
Its chaos as things come to pass

Cacophony and pandemonium
May finally get this laundry done

Postcard 207

Morning me, all hip

sinew and sciatic. Who pulls

these limbs over from sleep?

 

What draws me

through the narrow eye

of mind's fine dawn?

In dream's estate

the weight of limbs is ache

of rain on burdened branch.

In the cracks

distributes Father myth,

paint upon his hands

We have been every day

feathered by grief, the full embrace

of its wet wing, heavy on the joints

One foot and another

out of bed, sheer line stretch.

The children call

Postcard 206

Can I Borrow a Nickel? 

The one who summons is
calling in or reaching out -- a focus
on a thing, a need to fill

One must sing or
at least incant -- a single soul
tonguing the ineffable

If you do not make
sacrifices, they will be taken
from you. One cannot cheat

Time, that great succor of
pain -- shucking life to the kernel
diminished of inessential 

Then redemption of
five cents -- pennies stacked uneven
on two quiet eyes liberated

Of light. Speak cost of
seed -- a penny each. The sudden
spell of summoning is

That last bit of 
blood-born copper -- receiving
every spoke of mystery

The one who does the summoning is
confounded of any single thing -- predicting
is it to bring into being

The fullness of
what must be done, becoming
no need to change

A thing

Postcard 205

And so we sought
the beast oblique
of muddied myth,
of physics neat

Who's sinewed arc
across death's path
is stricken down
with blood-red math

But midnight's sky
casts subtle shrouds
the feeble eye's
obscured by clouds

Denied the veil
by descent and degree
We must seek Selene
of our own perigee

Postcard 204

To contest a ticket, or  citizen contest:

Before citation's early time declared
Before sunstream glow of street
Before the granite chip of civic slab I'd come to meet
to dispute a deserved parking fee,

A flagrant queue of refuse -- unmet yet
by street sweeper or any other
civic function,  purpose shed -- abuts
courthouse corners and the curb.

Men -- mostly men, and black -- mostly black
condense into a sort of line. Black coffee steams
from white styrol mugs, disposable creamer cups
on the ground, commingle with the native trash.

These men have jobs (or don't). Here, both unique absurdities --
those shifts all tenuously covered by small favors,
lies, quid pro quos, to plead -- "Yes I did it,
what else could I do" -- what cannot be paid.

Justice is, so far, secured of them.
Four deputies -- belted, warm & white, haw
& hem behind gun & glass -- uphold the line
from getting in. And then at some appointed time --

One kicks the door ajar & sweeps off the supplicants
"The line ends here. All you come back next week."


 

Postcard 203

 
Put your mask back on 
There's not much underneath
Brittle skull too thin to hold
your  chattering white teeth

Put your mask back on
Shoot steel BB's touch steel mind
Mimetics, mnemonics. Mankind
its lead or lead

un baises de la main droite
un e Claque den gauche
c'ets comme ca qu'on fait
Dan's mon pays. Oi?

five point five six, man
lay meat by the pound
drink gas  down by the gallon
but bill up front by the blood hour
spin gold by the ounce
Kodachrome 35 mill is still louche

But in my country, we take the sea
with both hands until its is fallow

Postcard 202

 

(from prompt)
A Light Switch:

My friend, the bonded electrician, is
ACDC competent in all the
tricks of the trade & handly knows the
difference between breaker and a switch

My friend was -- top to bottom -- gently taught
all about resistance as a light tug
and how to wield the measured spark of hand
insulated softly within leather glove

My friend possesses journeyman's wisdom
well portioning force in the queering volt
Frequency: when to open, when to hold
and always, the right tool for the right job

My friend says -- power flows like water. Don't
get caught downstream without a good paddle

Postcard 201

  

    I am that fine point where all things converge
    The perch of every bird             -- those messengers
    buzzing humming thumping                                     zip
    What are these poets singing? flashing out so cavalier

    its a riff on time, they say
    its a riff on time

    I am the moving empty thing
    invisible and gathered all in bundles        --wire lined
    fletched light and light winged                            chittering
    all I see unspooled and telegraphed

    its a riff on time see
    its a riff on time