Happy New Year

I am looking
in your little snowy windows
at the last
of this year

dark out here
light in there

for an arbitrary line in the sand
I am surprised
at the sense
of ending
it provokes

goodbye
the year you were three
goodbye
the year you were five
goodbye
heady new friend
goodbye
old soul and home
goodbye
leap of faith
goodbye
oh civic, my civic

goodbye
to this

you, in there
little snowy windows
are we all tonight
doing what the grieving do
gathering
hunkering
reviewing
staying up late
going to bed early
drinking it all away
trying to catch
a little
universal

I don't know
I don't care
happy new year
my loves.

End of Year

Every night
as the sun sets
on me
and so much ends
I always pause
in the neither here
nor there
in the final pale orange
sky and the
deepening graduated
blue and that
one silver planet

to think of this

the day's review
all I spent
and what I got
the exchange and how everything
becomes shortened
and moves into
the space
just paused between
inhale
and exhale

all the sweetness
all the heartbreaking sweetness
of the inbetween.

What I Know

Last night
we floated
on our backs
limbs spread
like starfish
hands joined
it was night
there were stars
the water
not water
the water
full of stars
and warm
and thick
and slow
and heaving
we were
slowly spinning
we were
hands joined
we were
laughing together
we were
singing some song
we were
not in bed
under sheets
under blankets
anywhere
to be found.

Cooking Lessons

If it was up to
me to prepare
your heart
this is what I would do
pound and grind it between
two good granite rocks until
the fibers bend, stretch, loosen, relax
then roll it in the earth
many kinds of earth
black early spring field soil
dry summer dirt road
leading to
somewhere gorgeous soil
and sandy soil that tells you
the coast is near
then
I would stew it
in a rich hot broth
with baby onions, fennel,
maybe a curry
cardamon too and then
soak it in an old creamy
porcelain bowl
filled with
a huge red wine and then finally
rinse it
in a January seawater and then
after all of that

give it back to you

seasoned.

Craft Fairs

A further thought on the craft fair. I love craft fairs. Whether in the high school gym full of mostly very-hand-made stuff, or happening upon one on the town green in somplace's little fall fest, I love to browse them, be at them, find them, wander them. Cup of coffee. Sundays. Saturdays. Maybe buy a bar of soap. Call over to whoever you're walking with to come see the little tiny wrinkled apple thingys that the 80-year-old lady has knitted little hats for, and they're just awful but completely charming in a way too. Farmer's markets, large and tiny. They're a part of common experience - who hasn't been to a craft fair? They're the tamest of all tame creative happenings, but one day they're there, then, the next day - just a town green or high school gym again. A very ridiculous kind of Burning Man. But people are doing something, and getting out there. So, a toast to the craft fair, and its inhabitants.

Anchor

My experience of it
so far
is a little like this
there, then not there, then
so much there
I don't know
what's real
except for the
kinds of things
you can always hold onto:

what it feels like to stroke your
cat, or dog
a glass, a bottle, any kind of water
when you're so thirsty
the smell of the soap
you always shower with
that old song, forgotten, but seminal
played late at night at the Safeway
or out at breakfast, with friends

My experience of it
so far
are these things
and this:

Do not
give up
the ship.

Prescription

Sometimes I think you
need to find a magical way to
start to
forgive
yourself you are
so fundamentally really
bad at it and I
often
struggle
one to get you to understand
this is something you
must do
and two to even begin to get you started
you are like a cheap
roll of packing tape
in that way
pick, pick, pick
and even then
for all that work
just a long skinny strip good
for not too much
this is what I think
you ought
to try

stop here and
hear this

the gentle descending cascade
of someone
running their fingers
over a harp
played right into your ears
with eyes closed
on very soft headphones
then
maybe
the soft high held
note of a flute and then the
cool hand
of someone you love
cupped to your forehead
as if
checking for fever

that is the first step
the rest will follow
try that
this time.

12/26/08

After the meal
we took a walk
myself
and she
who had lived a maybe
less than sober and
less than always
for someone else
kind of life though
all that
was mostly
long ago
and still
we came
to the place
where the river
met with the ocean
just at sunset it was
so cold
and windy she looked
at the river thick
and viscous
with ice and salty slush and so
oddly calm
for such a
mighty confluence

I thought
this was where
its so dangerous
she said
I thought
this was where
so many people
drowned

I understood her puzzlement
and struggled to explain it
I said
you can't see it
its underneath
all the forces
and the currents
undertow
and riptides
and of course
its so cold
She paused
then said
softly
and not to me
Yes
that is something
I understand.

12/25/08

Observation. I took an intentional break from this little endeavor. I had not stopped since starting and I wanted to take a step back and get some perspective. What it is I'm doing. Why, sort of. What it is to me and if I want to keep going.

I want to keep going. It costs me in a few different ways, which I am not allowed to whine or complain about, but the benefit is more than the cost.

I started really running again in the fall. Now, this. I am intentionally going to avoid picking up any new hobbies. If someone asks me if I want them to help me learn to knit, or if I want to take out their new kayak, or if I want to take some photos with their new camera, I will say, Fuck, no.

12/24/08

A thought about the intersection of commerce and art. "Art". In my case. I have no identifiable audience. If, say, at the end of a year, I took my top 40 and put them into a little book, poetry readers would not be interested, because of my aforementioned total disregard for writing technically good poetry. Also, short-story readers would not be interested, because these are time-efficient sparse bare-bones stories, and they would be like, where's the rest? This thought doesn't diminish my enjoyment of writing them, or having them to keep, and sometimes share, when they're done. It does give me a title for the little book though.

Poems for the Lazy: A Collection of Very Short Stories.

Hobby

Why aren't you sitting
at a little card
table at the craft fair
having sunk a
lot of your money
and a
lot of your time
into making
those things and now
where's your audience
how big does it get
if no one
saw it
heard it
tasted it
fingered it lightly
before passing on
did you make it
did it happen
was it real
where is your fine line
between hobby, crafting, and
serious art
how big did you want
your audience to be
open, headline
second prize
in a kind of big city
with an important art scene
that no one
150 miles away
even knows exists
how many clippings
did you save and how many
times in print
did it thrill you
to see
your own name
liar
is it really about
the thing that you made
or is it just an excuse
to connect
with your own
hand-selected jury
the people you'd
like to please
and have love you
anyway
group love
how best to get it
is this your attempt? I
once made
a vase for
my mommy too is this
your identity to elevate past
the neither good
nor bad
empirical truth
of the grocery store and the grass and
the bulbs for spring is it
torture sometimes or just
really fun is it about
you
or is it about
it
I was just wondering because
it turns out there's
a bit of free time
manning my table
at the
craft fair today.

Untitled

Listen.
What would happen
if right now
I told you the truth if I for one second
stopped lying to you in all that I
say in all that I do in
every place and everywhere and this time
and that time and pulled up a chair and took
your hand in my hand and split open
the whole world the inside the
outside the cars on the roads and the
people in airports and the people sleeping and the
people awake and the big billboard signs and the little
yellow flowers that grow on the side of the road in
New Mexico and gave up my safe place and annihilated yours I mean
bombed it destroyed it burned it fucking took it down
earthquake flood mudslide millions and millions screaming
screaming buried in there no aid coming hostile government politically
opposed trapped alive in there starving thrist can you hear them
all
screaming what if I did that and took all this what it is what
is it do you feel it too all this
unbearable
tenderness
how could we how could anyone possibly
survive it?

12/21/08

Standing
in her kitchen
a moment
the culmination of
a lie
an awful truth
humility
and being humbled
again
I painfully
admitted to her
the truth
I don't think
I can do this
alone

Surprised
at my
rare tears
she set down
the lasagna
and said

sweetheart

there's a reason
I call you
everyday.

Untitled

Just three
average miracles
today
first
discovering one last
ziploc of
summer's raspberries
I picked them myself
in the woods
frozen
then thawed
in my oatmeal
oh heaven
later
sinking my hand
deep in lentils
at the bulk food section
eyes closed
no one watching
I was lentils
and then
the little junco
that got trapped
on the back porch
I caught
and cupped him
black eyes shining
we regarded each other
he was
so grey
so quiet
so quickly gone.

Comment

This is what happens, so far. At some point, almost everyday, an image, and sometimes language, like a key phrase or two, comes to me. Its cerebral but it also is a physical feeling, a little excitement, like seeing something shiny underwater. And I tell you if I don't write it down right then, enough to remind me later when I can write it all out, its gone. All gone. I have a red notebook I carry around for this purpose and also a lot of receipts and subaru manuals and the like. And when I start writing it, usually post-bedtime, it just kind of unearths itself. Sometimes I feel like I got all of it, sometimes I feel like I got most of it but not the whole thing, pieces too deep to dig out, stuck, not enough time to keep at it. If I had nothing to do but follow them and write them out when they show up I think I'd have 4 or 5 a day. I'm making enough space for one and some I let go because of that and they're gone forever. I don't go back to notes from the day on a different day and pursue them. And I don't start or keep any drafts. There are no works in progress. Its very all or nothing that way so far. And I am not getting my usual sleep because of BSD365 but I am enjoying it and now miss it if I don't do it.

Soak

Outside
gusting snow
shakes the shutters
darkness
comes early
scraping plows
search for bottom
everything
restless

Inside
deep iron tub
hot
as I can stand
book
untouched
voices
not my concern

just the sound
and look
of me.

Daydream

It was
a bit of a
minutia trainwreck today I was
doing so many things where are
the keys what the christ is
that in the drain that looks
worse than even an old scummy plug of
human hair and bazoar
bezoar is that the word a thing the
technical term is that a
I don't know wiki that later and yes since you asked yes
I am in need of something
rather quickly like right now for
yankee swap and is the host
the one who gave me berry
blast bodywash
last year who in the world thought this shit up honest
to god berry blast with blast capsules and then
the daydream part
was somewhere in all of that when the
lone survivor staggers out of the
derailment and up the bank and looking
up that singular moment what I
see is what I see is
I see me
next to you
sometime in the past or
not the past with my hand just
brushing back your hair behind your left ear it is
sunny and
warm inside and
outside too and we're alone on the couch some
great old couch and
and
I think you might be
trying to read and then
I kiss you there that spot behind your
ear you can't see me
doing it you pretend but me so
lightly but with every
bit of me the all of me
can you feel it
my lips to that tiny spot
of the all of you but not
pulling back just
lingering about one tiny bit away and breathing in and
breathing out I do
that long enough
so you know that my
breath is not just movement but
also warmth
and that it is oh go back to
your book just this and of course
all the things and did the cat really just
take a shit before all these
people are about to
come over and am I for the love of god
going to have to bury it since she just
will not fastidious my ass but look
over there look what
she sees
over there by the train
you, couch, that barely kiss
and
always the promise.

After the Intervention (Epilogue)

From across the room
I blew her a kiss
I don't know why
it just seemed like the
only thing
left to do
and to my surprise
she caught it
closed her fingers around it
I said
for you
she said
I don't know why
but it always
surprises me
and smiled
a worn
and tired smile
I didn't say
it shouldn't
the obvious thing
I just felt for it
then found it
smiled back
and said
well it always surprises me too
we shared
a chicken sandwich
then
went on our ways
so then
for all of it
and all the agony
traveling here
out in the dark
coming
on its way
here tonight
this here
this one time
was
not so dark
and not so bad.

Lapse

Where was I
where was any of it
I just wish
I didn't have to
see it so many times
it makes me
so tired
it makes me
so broken
I want to put my head down
on anyone's shoulder
if only they
would put their arm
back around me
hold tight
oh please
let it be warm and dark
I am so tired
mercy please
a warm and dark place
where there is not
so much sound
and there is not
so much to see
someplace someone
or a cold and light place
I wish I was somewhere
with chickadees on the
branches in a soft falling snow
that loud quiet
of snow
I wish I was somewhere
they say it will snow
later tonight I just
so wish it would
come please I wish I could see it right now
right now to be in it and
be in something
other than this I
am closing my eyes I am
warm and dark and
cold and light I
am breaking for it I am
saying please I am here and
not here
I am all here again please
just the snow just the snow
or a stranger or anyone just
the snow soft hiss soft
in the lamplight come
snow come snow
to me now I cannot
I just can't where
was it
any of it so
much of it I can't I
don't I will I am
just saying for snow one
small time one rest one
warm dark cold light.

The Party

The one thing
I remember most
from this evening's
holiday neighborhood open house
at our house
crockpot wine beer and
mulled cider
sugar cookies

not all our dear friends
or the bunch of kids upstairs
last I looked
all undressed
except for mismatched socks
and up to something
I don't want to know
their skin glowing
cheeks flushed
just close the door
I never saw it

it was
the quiet husband
of my friend
look at your wife
I said
her, sitting there, having
decorated herself
with things from the tree
and a santa hat
conversing
as if nothing had happened

I expected his smile
but he hesitated
away somewhere
then said
in his gentle way
that's when I knew
back in college
friends for a year
I knocked at the door
to the party
she answered
wearing a Santa hat
with a giant
flashing pom pom
on the end
I could not speak
she waited
finally punched me
in the arm
and I knew
she was it

later helping
them to leave
tired kids' clothes
still missing
take the half-bottle left
of the red
I saw him
see her
again

not the good food
or dessert
or even pacing
companionable mix
well-behaved kids
good music
Pats winning
neighborliness
holiday cheer
easy conversation
or amazingly quick cleanup
no
it was just
that one thing
that made this

a great party.

Refugees

The ice storm cometh
and knocked out more power
than anyone believed
our ocean-warmed town
flooded with refugees
seeking coffee
wi fi
and warmth

An old college friend
and his wife
camping at Starbucks
laptops, unshowered,
trying to make deadline
but Dave willing to spare
a half-hour
to catch up with me
I had it to give
and so went
expecting friendliness
his good nature
and lunch

Instead in one look
and just past hello
we snapped to
time travel
doubled over by the sidewalk
completely clicked by menus
and the poor waiter
who did not know
what to make of us

We were always
expatriates together
that thing about the boy
and the peaches
in a Bill Cosby accent
so much undone
we drove off the road
our poor passengers
not amused

the time we took
my incredibly serious
Czech exchange roommate
candlepin bowling
the Easter feast
so bad
we bonfired it
when we dyed our hair magenta
at his suggestion
it mattered
and lasted
a little more
on very blond me

Its these rare refugees
that we meet
that take up residence in
our lives
and with their ways
language
and vision
coopt and
transform
the familiar everyday motherland
of we natives
into suddenly
just a host country

Going home
through the long lines
unusual degree of traffic and
disoriented, tired
and dangerous
drivers
I loved them all
rolled down the window
waved to them, and called out -
god bless you refugees
god bless you refugees.

Untitled

There is the way we have
of always
wringing out the sponge
before setting it back
on the side of the sink
one hard squeeze
to give it a fair chance
to dry out
by morning

that is tonight
when I cannot sleep
too soaked still
with ordinary sorrows
a little bad news from the doctor
it will not kill you
but won't get better
no more headstands in yoga
I did love to fly
my friend
in her bright red sweater
our kids playing so nicely upstairs
telling me about her husband's
third cancer
over tea
and I gave away the little
silver acorn
that was in my change purse
for years
somewhere tonight out shopping
with friends
godspeed
old friend
I will miss you

Out of bed and
down the stairs
to the back kitchen door
all late, dark, quiet
I finish the task
Wring it out
one hard squeeze
the cat perplexed

a chance for morning.

Icestorm

Remember the time
the way I
was and
you were
the icestorm and the way
we went to sleep with
the ice trying to find
its way into us
tap click tap
on the storms now
down for the season
don't stay up too late
you always said I
just was
lost a minute
dreaming about
being light and
alive the breeze
making tiny shifts
we saw them
your heart
my heart
there weren't words
just the memory
of a time in the grasses
and the joy
you remember
us and that time
tonight the icestorm is come
and coats us thick
here I come
up the stairs
not too late.

My Experience

Cream of the crop

I was told

graduating from my Ivy

school which is

not why

I found myself
four months later
driving a bakery truck
the night delivery route to every

Seattle-area QFC

including Renton
where one particular
windstorm night I found out

from a bagboy that

Jimi Hendrix

is buried
there.

So I
took a break
drove the truck and
found him
an ugly grey dome
guitar the wrong way
the whole thing unfinished.

I only knew
some of his songs
and once read
his biography in
the stacks
back at school when I was
supposed to be writing about
I don't know
something.

Wind whistling
the pines
one in the morning
white Ford van
full of bad cookies
I thought
Jimi
you were so good
but so kind of lonely
I felt sad
and then
I got angry
thinking of his ordinary
skeleton
under there
They were supposed to take
care of you
I said
They should have been there
for you
when you were little
and they should have
told you to take better care
of yourself
made you soup
told you the truth
tried to help even
if you didn't want to hear it even
if it was all for your art
you were still
just a person
and I wish
you'd had better friends.

Then I said
out loud
and loudly
I would have made you soup
when you were sick
and so sad I
would have
pissed you off
and nagged you
and made you get some sleep
and eat
and always shown back
up for you
even if you hated
me a little.

Nothing, from the dome.

We're both done
I guess
I said
and left
and drove the truck
back to Seattle
all the traffic lights
blown black
all the intersections
dicey
just the radio
for company.

Tree

We got the Christmas tree this evening and put it up and wreaths and whatnot too. Three- and five-year-olds are unbelievably great at Christmas. And I am suddenly so full of Christmas love and joy and spirit and whatever that I can hardly stand it. I want to run outside and kiss people and sprinkle them with glitter and let them know I love them, not in an abstract way but look deep in their eyes and love them up one side and down the other. And then I want to run leaping through Market Square singing carols and flagging down cars and kissing the people driving and sprinkling them with glitter too. Matt Davis doesn't probably think I'll do it, but I say, watch me. I'm feeling it.

Comment

Don't die with a backlog.

Now that resonates.

Also, stop lamenting.

Equally succinct, and true.

I ask you though, Benji can do all that, but can he dance?


Thank you both, and thank you kindly, for the time thought & input.

Untitled

Love had her way with me, though I
colluded and
allowed it all to be

Love was new
the time we floated laying down in the
canoe all night side
by side looking always
up and counting the
falling stars and
kissing twenty six, seven, eight and
dear god
second base

Love was beginning
the time I out loud tried to say I
loved you to get used to it to know
how to say it me and the dog practicing in the
cemetery having got it just right I
said it to you
for the first time
in the middle of the movie
seriously, Batman I think
What, you replied

Love was let down
The time I came by your place at
2am just in the neighborhood your
light was on we had tea and you
sent me home with a hug and handful of
sesame candies not at all
what I'd come for

Love was sweet
the time I didn't get the chance to lay
you down in the September loosestrife and
goldenrod after sandwiches tracing you
in flowers and balancing them on your cheek your
temple your closed eyes all in your
hair oh I never did
but would have

Love was once
the time we met at the Belly show and
talked all night your friends my friends
left behind your
old red Toyota you remember
the song that was playing
just then
then you
left the next day say hello and
wave good bye its just that
Denmark is so far

Love was
the time I let you go
and the time I called you back to me

Love was then
Love was now
Love was mine and I tell you its
not always all that
poetic
sometimes its just me in
love sometimes a little stumbling and
sometimes

honestly

a little
fucked

but this time
a little lovely
this time
a little kind this time
this time

all this time

love was mine.

Where does one find the time

to write, record, or whatever. I can write everyday as long as I either stay up late or let the kids watch a lot of TV. Neither option sustainable or desirable long-term.

Poem about lucky in love will have to wait.

The poems are not really poems. I have blatant disregard for form and technical anything. They're just stories in the shortest, most time-efficient way I can manage.

I'd rather write the whole story. How long would each then be? And would they be better in their most bare-bones, sparse, edited forms? Or better allowed to get fat and curvy? Maybe in the end only a matter of personal preference and taste.

Your Dream

Rich & Ty. Last night I had a dream that you both were in. I was at the cabin and you were there too. I had a ladder set up against the lakefront side of the cabin and was giving you both a hard time about not helping me to scrape and paint, though I didn't really expect you to. And you both laughingly refused, and so I went and got the two chaise lounge chairs we keep there, and set them up for you near the ladder, and you got in the chairs and I got back to work.

I looked over at you to say something and you were both covered in hundreds for blue jays. Everything went mute - I was still scraping, and I was talking to you, but I couldn't hear any sound at all, even my own words. And you were both laughing as hard as a person can laugh, tears streaming down your faces, and it seemed like that went on forever - me smiling and talking to you without sound, and you two just laughing and laughing, covered in blue jays.

It was such a vivid dream that it took me a little while upon awakening this morning to realize it hadn't happened.

I'm telling you both about it because I think its your dream. I dreamed it, and was in it, but it wasn't to do with me. It was something about the two of you.

Carolyn gave me a dream book and this is the most I could find:

bluejays: spritual joy and contentedness

lakefront: a need to be close to one's spiritual beliefs, taking daily comfort in them

laughter: happiness

chaise lounge: an attitude of nonchalance

cabin: an inner connection or inherent bond with nature, a life aligned with nature

ladder: an opportunity for upward progression to be made

silence: a need to listen to one's conscience

I turn it over to you two now.

Question

When you write/record/create things that initially you're pleased with, then later look back on and think

oh my god
so awful, so high school

do you keep it all, regardless, or do you liberate yourself from time to time and delete?

Lyrics for DG by request - Momentary Song

You do not get
to not get to go through it
your lazy life
and all of your bullshit

I don't really know what not to say
You made your choice to end up this way

I'm going home now
to be with the seasons
cool compress your brow
sleep on the reasons

I looked at the sun all day today
You made your choice to end up this way

You lost your edge
And dialed down the cause
I'm not walking a ledge
Its the way it always was

I went to the ocean out past the bay
You made your choice to end up this way

I'll crack open the door and give you a ray
You make your choice to end up this way

PM

Tonight I left my patient on the
third floor and it took three tries to
make it outside
once
to say goodbye to him
twice
when his elderly parents, bereft and
searching
found me at the nursing station how
could I say no cups of tea, first names only and
many tissues later the
third time when
his sister called
do you think he'll go to heaven still if we
burn the body that one
took more than a minute so
two hours off my pace I had bag
keys in hand cell phone on and
dialing pushed out the
double doors into a thick evening fog and
there
waiting for me
like a surprise visit from a long-distance lover
the crescent moon and
her two planets
I stopped and all stopped and
out loud I spoke to
whom I cannot say
Thank you.