Three Poems
Morning Ritual
The last bows of morning sunlight depart at nine
No longer airy and made of many new shards like straw
like a friend up before you
Then after nine, it becomes a much more solid thing.
I caught just one minute of it today
The day before I missed it
And the day before and before
And so forth.
It crawls out the door,
hands and knees.
Sighing, I missed more
In the chalky tunnel of the escape:
The vapid sky
And the view of the gentle river.
So let’s go, let’s gaze on the gentle river!
Let’s yell at the vapid sky!
I jump up, but what would I miss here at home?
The sunlight may return
And there are many tricks I haven’t pulled.
Sunlight: you will never breathe me in
River: *gurgle*
So I sat and thought and thought
Until eventually my roommate came home
and we talked for a while about the weekend.
The Politics of Today
Amanda said: Grab!
Joe said: You’ve grabbed enough for a thousand generations!
Barnaby said: I’ll wring you in words, spin you in erudition, you are nothing but a point of data to me.
Garién said: I will actually kill you
Then the table they all sat around turned pitch black.
The walls of the room turned pitch black.
The four of them sat at nothing, within nothing, were nothing.
And they all felt rather embarrassed at the situation.
Then, an eight foot, even darker figure rose up from the nothing ground
emitting a low hum
Amanda heard: You know, they’re not just a conversation partner
Joe heard: Enjoy your bilious victory
Barnaby heard: I’m leaving you forever, now I really will be an abstraction to you
Garién heard: I will actually kill you.
Then the figure sank back into the nothing ground.
Amanda said: I’d rather die.
And then her wish was granted
And her last thought was that that too was deeply, deeply saddening.
Got a minute?
How many guitar solos do you think you’ve heard in your life so far?
Have you ever contemplated train travel,
And how it lends itself quite naturally to songwriting?
Speaking of songwriting, have you ever tried to combine words and music?
Do you puzzle those two, words and music, together awkwardly?
Or do they rock up around the same time?
Have you ever tried to take it slow?
How’d that go for you?
Do you have an in-joke, a solo ongoing gag, a phrase or a sound
That only you know about, that you can say to yourself
Once in a while to make yourself chuckle?
Have you read the bible?
Is it on your list?
What was the last thing, in all honesty, you tried really, really hard at?
Do you ever think about what your vows might be?
If you’ve already said your vows, what was the kicker?
Have you ever kissed the ground?
As in, have you ever left an apartment, a town, or an important patch of earth,
Knowing that it is the last time you’ll be there, and literally kissed it goodbye?
Have you ever scribbled your name, or scratched it with some crude implement
on the underside of a desk, or into a banister
To prove, if just to yourself,
That you really were there?