Thus Far Pt. I

"Doesn't it bother you?" I mumbled and pulled covers higher
Like skyscrapers and monuments that I am
Terrified of large gestures in general
What a response to have to generate
I feel so ashamed to stay silent and fearful
But I need a signed human contract
To make me certain of my safety
That a negative someone won't steal my chances
Because I don't want to hang in a student R.I.P. gallery
Dust gathering near my golden retriever retrospective
Creeping, crawling, like we're all aging
All in this hopeless raft climbing escalators
To nowhere but more freedom
More bright, white danger to fill in
Like a baking sheet or a time clock
I don't want to hold any time laden symbols
But instead I'm left holding all of my baskets
Full of blame, dyed on Easter afternoon
After the service, I am post quiet time revival
Crawling like a survivor hoping someone tells
Everyone and they open up their arms
Throne me and name dances, cereals, etc.
So that someone can tell me how much I cost
How many years dreams plus natural time adds to
Some unnamed, ritualized man to inflate me each morning
Pen my memoirs and set unjumpable stones
For future generations to puzzle on jumping for
Because Wordsworth never saw my post-recognizable times
He had no knowledge of what contracts we'd sign
How everything peters out and how we well
The past for self said prophet assholes like Blake
I want Coleridge's eloquent complications but
Not perhaps with all of the opium
If people want to string up my corpse to tell
That it could have achieved then what of it
Trick me to the death and use me as I go
As whatever I will mean then, if substantial
Like Milton, like Shakespeare, in round amphitheaters
Crumbling marble that pigeons fear to shit on
Hold our bonny Sunday hats out to block the shots
As if we just believe that it's always universal
Long ago a savior came to save us all from invention
After 1979, everything was finally said
Like I'm digging in the king's golden trash can pages
To return to my children and vomit on their tin plates
I'm so starving, hardly digging where I can
Picking up my rattle and noting down the noises
A zoo for inane animals, no one attends me
Where is my kinship, my author's circle to brew with
Gone away to Washington, to St. Louis, biding time
What have I cracked open and spilled out here
That I am made to operate that my blood has never
Flowed in any other veins but my own
Somehow though, my words have all tramped down
The same main drag through London's weary streets
Past the Thames and wherever else there is to commonly wander
I would drink the river if it gave me some chances
One handful of seeds to scatter bravely
As it is I must scatter ill conceived pebbles only short distances
Where crows peck and examine, pretending to find bits of wafer
The blood they desire sits in a river in the sky
Where chariots blaze by and crash majestically into progress
Miraculously, everything is achieved if you look at this sky scene
While you upward gaze, clutching at decorative tombstones
I have been toiling and wrangling, in what seems a cellar
The trees do not call to me but voices that I hear
From what loves you and what connects anything
But there is nothing to sense clearly or suddenly
I have trampled this point and won nothing
Simply because there is nothing to be won at all
I need no prize to start from but a cover for flame

Drum Machine Boy

I'm so hungry
To write a song
Pull the chords
From bare earth

Sing on
Until my lungs
Like a river dry
Breathe in dust

Raw and red
Lips, lungs lunge
For a simple finish
A bright triumph

Hallelujah!

When kids call your name in marker
Or bright white chalk on thin dust
I would take twenty people in a room
Abandoned schools with dusty pinball
Machines and fans that are half-dead
To set the audience on fire, the brothers
And friends that came even on Sunday
To scream something at them to catch
From a notebook, from a goddamn basement
If I have to make a point, generally
I'm going to yell it like I'm dying
Like I can see that white light riding
And I can see it stopping and staring at me
As the last notes vibrate out of us
But there are no last notes until I'm done
How many times do you get to say "maybe me"
You are only ever really done once
The only thing I have learned so far
Is that I cannot stop yelling
It is the only thing keeping me along

Something Abides

I AM NORMAN ROCKWELL AND I WANT TO GO TO BED NOW MOMMY PLEASE

I AM NORMAN ROCKWELL AND I WANT TO HELP EVERYONE ACHIEVE THEIR DREAMS. READY……

1
2
3

GO!!!!!

I AM NORMAN ROCKWELL AND I LOVE TO WATCH YOU FAIL, DESPITE WHAT I SAID EARLIER.

I AM TOTALLY HUMAN, DESPITE MY NAME.

I AM NORMAN ROCKWELL AND I AM SO SCARED OF BEING INSINCERE I CAN’T REMEMBER WHAT I THINK ABOUT ANYTHING OR WHY I THINK IT.

I AM NORMAN ROCKWELL. CLOSE THE DOOR. I AM CREATING.

BEFORE ABRAHAM: I AM NORMAN ROCKWELL.

How I Grew Sideways Into the Forest

"Dance to the sickle." My father expelled
Always at the harvest times
Broke open my back toiling in his fickle fields
Warm hugs of meals followed at a solid,
Well-rendered family oak, lined with benches
Mother and sisters, clustered smiling weary,
Cloying smiles back at the same confused faces

"Dance to the music!" My brother called
In between chugs of awful town beer
Old tastes of dad's were better but this
Night of forest lights, music from the turning
Static machine called the girls to wildly sit
On my knee and toss their laughs,
Their hair in my not oft trumpeted direction

We all danced in the beginning
When we got each other watching,
Playing, reading down unrighteous paths
We bricked it up and we went on daily
But the hellfire peeked itself through
To the accusations and drowned, soaking arguments
That bounced off of the early rebellion-filled walls

I danced wild the night of the purge
To the one record we would not stop spinning
Over and over that night - "Born to Run"
We refused to go home, took courageous trips
Through the woods for a brave new way
But, my brother was alone when my father raged through
Tore limbs and shot out with too much strength

We danced in the kitchen that night, unable
To mark or gouge the bitter wood floor
As my father humbly sang, "It was a terrible accident."
In front of so many white and blue officials
After he told me to, "Shut my damned mouth."
My knees gave out and I watched pieces
Of the Boss grab light in my brother's hair

"We'll dance to a new beat." My father decided
After the accident and the unemployment
Became an uncrossable, two ton void
There was such a sick warmth in early March
When he sold the car on an uneven, gravel road
So far away from a muted, comforting feeling
I had propositions to grow with

Remorseles Widows or Before the Halfway Point

This I saw upon throwing
church doors wide in winter
Capes whistling and congre-
gation singing, howling
One note they held lit
up a movie screen flare
Old man projector grumbles
absent like the doves
I saw their red eyes
there in the movie color

Blasphemous clouds
Bleed clots
Cancerous clods
Ruby-ed anger

Destruction down
Hoary winds
In alleyways
Barely half bricked

Held arms
Shorn hairs
Fire engine pools
Remorseless widows

Remorseless widows are we
Keepers of the Natural Divine
Divide, held apart from
Bench sleeping addiction
Daily handkerchief kneel
To hock blackened messes
On to naught but the Pine
Oh the Pine in glory I beheld
I find it in darkness
Hold with weeping fingernails