Standing By

We are waiting

Standing by

The sound of static fills your
Headphones.

There is a shuffle of papers.

The faint ring of a cigarette being tapped on a glass ashtray.

Do you copy? Over.

The static continues.

Whistle! frequency spike!

The microphone is lifted:

We are standing by. Do you copy?

A pop. Static.

The drone of the hissing carries up and down in your ears.

Nothing but static.

You rub your forehead with a quick glance at your colleagues.

They are worried.

The static continues.

You take off your headphones.

The static is on the overhead speakers.

Someone exhales smoke loudly.

You pick up the microphone.

We are standing by. Do you copy?

A pop. Static.

Someone leaves the room.

Cats

Lazing and lying

comfortable and all

feathers

A colder wind clambers

on the screen door with

the resident Cat.

The door flies open and

all that lazing

starts again.

New warmth and the blankets readjust

but god I can hear them now

the food bowl is empty.

Coon Craving

"Well I lit them bridges
an' I watched 'em burn
an' oh my God, you'd think I'd learn
still the same
'til my dyin' day
and I'm still in love with you."

This is about attachment.

So there's always analogies
like
"balls and chains"
or the creepy "clinging" verbs
or the even less appropriate
"bondage" references.

I mean,
we're in polite company.
let's be real.

Attachment is more like goin coon
trapping with no gun.

Ya got the flash lights, the bait, the traps. And you want these damn coons so bad! You get to keep the skins and the bacula and everything!

So you go to work, singularly and focused. The next day, upon checking the traps,
you find more racoons than you could have ever hoped for!

you admire their pelts

your prowess as a trapper

you fantasize about hats, rugs, gloves.

And then you realize, after all this craving and attachment,
that you have no way of
slaughtering the beasts
you so desperately sought.

Your gun is at home.

and you say:

"What the hell am I gon do with all 'ese pissed awff coons?"

This has been y'all's Sunday school. Now run along grown ups got business in the parking lot.

The Beach

The waves came rolling over him,
heaving and weaving sand;
it was white, saccharine,
all full of light and
little glimmers of
life.

He let it first cover his toes,
tiny mollusks burrowing
back into the sediment
between his feet.

And the hairs on his
legs caught the fine grains
shining on his shins,
then knees,
then hips.

He allowed his navel
to fill like an ancient
caldera, boiling over its
rim with
time.

His breast Bones gathered
its collective push; its
breathing, diamond grit
filling the swells
and recession of his chest,

and he reveled in its

weight and movement.


His Adam's apple
lurched and tremored
as the sand carrying
itself
above and beyond
to his chin,
quivering but assisting
a smile, which then
fell to the waves.

His eyes burned and the
tears that mingle
with the ocean
mingled with his as well.

So the sand enveloped him
and the tide rose
and the moon rode
its course across
the evening
and the last
thing he
ever enjoyed was seawater
in his lungs and sand
in his
hair.

Frost Bite

Allister knew
that the cloud cover
couldn't show up
in time.

He placed his hands on the horizon
arm's length,
and discovered
he only had two,
maybe three
hours of daylight.

It was already
cold.

His fingers ached
as breath spumed
in nebulae that
crystallized, fell:
Frost on the ground.

The fire was high,
but not high
enough.

It crackled, reported
and screamed; a billowing
and waving semaphore
of light and
heat.

Ahead the moon,
already eager, late
in the month,
was high in the dome;
Artemis taking aim,
seeming to close in on
Apollo.

"At least there will
be plenty of light tonight."

He thought of a cold, stiff-legged
walk through
the moaning pines
and in that frigid
glare, gunmetal light
of the waxing moon.

Lifting, chopping, toting,

Feeding that insatiable
beast that
keeps him alive, here,
that cracks and
spews and sparks and
demands.

Hacking and splitting,
Allister's hands made
mitts of callous
ice full of
pressure and

He fed the blaze.

Late Season

Late season there are
yaller leaves
that fall like rain
in night breeze and
cricket moonlight
wherein our hair curls in
silent humidity,
humble in late
seasons and the twilights.

To have dog slobber
in measurements
I'd rather not think
about
and to have short
fish-nibble
adrenaline
course through the reel and
cork bark handle
carrying us
to the few
streets we walk
downtown
and I, I sing
 song of dysfunction and fear
     because I wonder
     if they are watching us, and am I standing straight enough?

Are we up to their standards?

these burgher, bourgeoisie,

these people who voted for Bush then Obama,

and I flee to sand and dirt and great
blue
heron
shit
because I just want to prove my love for
all of us, and don't kid yourself,
I remember the recession
those days of
people not leaving
the house
and
of kids
drinking
drinking
drinking
cheap whiskey underage
behind the post office, so don't
think I don't remember
when
love was all we had.

And you fall asleep on the sand
and itch from poison ivy
and I try to thank you for your night breath in the tent
and spirit in love
without
making
it
seem
weird.
 

Summer Squash

There is hardly a day when the rains
Of the past
Fall upon the gardens of hope.
And soak the roots of tomorrow.

Summer squash and cucumbers
And the beer that cleans parched soil
All march together down rows
Of ego and id
To inexorable returns to
The fundament.

Summer showers and estival smoke
Make light of the sauna sun humidity
And we laugh in the face of west Nile virus.
Therein is our love of change and
even if we think we'd like to live forever,
we know that it's all temporal, and the chanterelles of our youth
Will fruit again in the moistened copses of oak and hickory.

So let us all never fear time or its passage,
and be only concerned with
how we swim in its current.

Resurgam

And there is always a fall
a cadence into fishponds
splashing the mistress and the statue
breaking upon impact.

But there, too
is the glue, and the
craftsman.

There is resurrection,the
bring-back, the reborn
and once again.

Now I am sure
they once hated elvis,
but who is he now?

Surely, the King