Synthetic

is a rosebud 
long stemmed and vanity thorned
in a blue or glass vase posing
 
rose moan, trembles loafing,
its brown lipped petals forage
nostalgically, regrets for forgetting
 
the scars of artifice
defiant with a bruised swagger

there, right there, is a rose waiting
for you to compose it beautiful

here, on the front porch or balcony,
is a plastic rose placed careful,
pretending roseness is a perspective
about and abounds your willingness

when does a rose exact clarity
when are its ideas accidental

self-pitying is self imposed
for a self doubting rose in repose
 
it is an embarrassing occupation
this correcting of your memories

Cicada thrum and the drooped frame of the cowboy's mustache

To pass time, the cowboy’d climb
down from his reedy steed
To pick up empty soda cans and bottles
that verily litter the verdant plains, 
collecting them patiently
and postured purposeful
in a feed sack he’d pinched 
from a grocery loading dock
in one of the nameless and dying 
small towns he’d proved through
on his westward prowl.
 
Each day alone
(when the sun quits
it's quitting time/
noon is a boon
to napping under cool)
Necessarily lonelier
(rise and shine
for the promise of progress/
the time of your life
is now or never for the better)
Sculptural solitude settles in.
 
Chain smoking romantically
the cowboy eyes yonder nearby...
confides in his diary ...
stirs beans with a wooden spoon ...
darns holes in his undergarments ...
whittles n whistles to bore his insomnia ...
boot scrapes with a cedar branch
and whispers into a meaty breeze,
“damn, I am nature – too messsy for words”

He squints, he sits. 

The cowboy posed on a ridge between two great mesas: supposing the nearby distances with caustic ambivalence; inhales deep the prairie's dusky flatulent bloom; caroms between memories of loves that bound him fast and loves that led him to embrace lonesome.  He reckons himself attuned to his fears, sincerely, reflective and accepting of all he's done and the roles he's played in outcomes prior to his current circumstance. 
 
Inching towards, inching away ... baby stepping is a baby sometimes falling down ... mapping any ol next-frontier or out-of-box hankering. Certain like a man of steel weighed down by a coat with pockets full of broken magnets. 

Recalls a saloon floor's peanut-shelled clutter and the echo of floozie slurs. Card players, tall hatted even inside, and a cane barrel appropriated for branding iron on haunch anticipations. Prideful sniffs to catch her scent leaving through the buck and sway of flapping doors.
 
Cowboy pause to bed alongside the razzle dazzle of cacti thumbs  and respite from his dust tour of the great wide open. Giddy for the next day's roam and blanket skinned against the cold lonesome of occupancy under a billion stars, his eyes close meditating on the vast variety of choices that might birth his tomorrow. 
 

A Song of Progress for You

you, you are a million years old today,
you sapiens:
bi-pedal and frontal lobed;
​big idea'd;
​maker and remaker of things.
 
but dates don’t matter
for a tool putterer like you.

your relatives are real,
really busy with their own lives:
wearing history;
machining sincerity;
connecting improvements:
​meticulous evaluators of the particular.
 
"happy birthday human"
the plains whisper,
"we admire your entrepreneurial spirit."

the seas and boneless sky sing,
"gosh, everything ours is yours,
we applaud your industriousness."

​the trees nag, “I remember when
​you leapt out my limbs,
that was no joke,
tree faller-outer."
 
the animals chorus,
"you began too thin spined to speak,
you knuckle dragged grunting, 
just wrecks of hair knot and gnat picking in small groups,
​loping and hoping to bend bronze
​or shake an acre."
 
the continents moan shifty,
"you are a big skull now,
all pulp filled up in the brain case.
you talker and detail preener:
efficient at key and lost sock finding;
weary of loneliness;
nervous at parties."

the wind chimes in,
"you know the story:
you read a lot of books;
act clever and practice emoting;
like to categorize understanding
and reflect on self-doubt.

happy birthday,
good luck."


*

Deja Vu Like

 
Weather is amazing and amassing. This heat and this moisture are teaching about feelings, about feeling more. Most people I know are too self-conscious to talk about their feelings, when you think about it. Even when you think too much. Every year I am surprised by the change in light that Fall brings. I am: first, surprised; secondly, I feel small and vulnerable and chaotic in comparison to the systemic rhythms of the universe; then, I still feel surprised, but I also feel hungry.  That butter clarity of Fall light is always nearly cliché. Who isn't experiencing embarrassment at rememorying our past is sleeping. In the afternoon a nap is a good place for dreams. For over two decades I’ve been susceptible to nostalgia about the seasons. This happens out of the blue. When those clouds smear across a sunset vista, afternoon’s blue is torn again and again. Marks the away-slipping of day. Ordinarily wonderful, again and again.



*

Ancient for waiting

 
crocodile evidence 
is a gnashing party 
of teeth 
against bone
 
croc purposes a tearing machine
rents creek and flesh beautifully
 
elegant for stability 
crocodile ballet is slow motioned
     against evolutionary change
     agnostic regarding clocks
     tantric about concentration
 
a crown of serrated white scalpel
grins ragged and rapid
over delicate gums
 
runs like a toddler or toy duck
all parts raging
empathy for fellow flailers
 
croc patience buries in mud
parents skeptically for duty

croc school is lonelier
croc learning remedies
from missed opportunity
 
that furnace is a cold blooded killer
wears permanent stealth casually 
 
premonitions young boy fascinations 
for gun slinging and politics

Cartography for Moseying Cowboys

Some things about my awareness of time never change. It takes longer to get someplace than it does to get back. Waiting slows a clock down. Time flies when you're having fun. A watched pot never boils. Friends
always wait to arrive until after you've started looking for them out the window.

This chair is so comfortable. It seems the Platonic ideal of chairness. Everything about my body is consumed by it's conturs, it's leathery texture a second skin, it's seat cushions my worry. The chair devours time and place completely.

It is not a difficult decision, but rather, a choice to decide or not to. Sit or get up. Stay or go. Be or become. These are all actions, all arguments for motion in one direction or another. In the interm, deferment becomes a viable option.

Clouds thump wind visible

Parked cars boulder wait

Adjectival conversation elucidates

That fog is mysterious should come as no surprise

An alligator becomes tangled in a cotton patch

A brainstorm thunders, distantly authentic

Thanks to words
I can assert and salve
My fears (ours are real --
       consequential frequently).

A dandelion's blast
Makes all directions
Possible.





*

Hello

& we are big-grinning summer in Texas
& we are sentimental & loud for your happiness
& wishing you nearby, we hope your health is well
& we implore the universe to shower you
with kindness
& laughter & landscapes & love

season's greetings
in every season

especialy for you
right away

sincerely

IMG_3564.JPG

Llama Regarding Locale

long lashed neck craners gambol, 
fret petulant about pen ambiance.
   
those llamas lip wriggle a scheme
dreamy, view silky thru cartoon lenses.

llama days drift dystopically:
giggle at wannabe gentlemen farmers; wear curls naturally and more softer;
raise a fuss over dashed expectations;
cling nostalgic to barometric memories;
pose quizical to shifts in hemisphere. 

    Llamas work better together -
    Llama reunions are all drama -
    Llamas prefer slope -
    Llamas take stands on Terra firma -
    Llama posture is apolitical -

that llama is a tourist for snack time;
this llama pines for more florals;
here is a llama waiting impatiently;
there is a llama impervious to weather.

anytime llamas lean is a resting.

your llama quiet is creepier,
suspiciously more silent than soundless:
eager like leaves for wind.  

marketing llama is instructional,
invites paradigm transformation
for novices and other carnivors:
    chew eagerly with mouth wide open,
    sauté in heavy butter,
    sleeve lightly with salt to taste.



 
 

Location, Location, Location

 
A soul is awkwardly placed. Lovingly recollects and hoping about the unknown. Assumes use for amusing concerns about forever.
 
He built a house for his soul to visit. Left a key under a rock in case he needed to get in. For long periods he’d forget which rock the key was placed under in the garden. Sometimes he’d grow furious at his forgetting and spend hours lifting rocks and sieving through the yard for the key. Then, seemingly out-of-the-blue, he’d recall that the key was not under a rock, but rather, at the bottom of an empty planter in the corner of the front porch.
 
Henry Ford kept the wax-sealed jar he’d used to collect Edison’s last breath. The jar is carefully labeled and rests on a podium in the middle of a museum that also collects the progressive histories of washing machines, automobiles and office furniture.
 
For forty days and forty nights, the rain was falling. Each drop like mercury crashing, beautiful for destroying or a purification. 

For forty years wandering the desert, disappointed and hoping for gifts or clarifying explanations on how the past might make a sense of the future, presently, hoping each mirage might know a more fulfilling place. 

For all magician's stories end the same, the audience pleased at their own faith in the promise of mystery:  for ten years, missing between key events;  for rocks leapt up off of into heavens; for fat bellied smiles and celestial sized phallus pleased;  for pews and bended knee;  for davening under the weight of of memory and ritual, or water dipping away congenitally seized sins;  for soured grapes, special cups and sacred shawls; for colored sand mandalas, breath blown meticulously out of creation;  for sacrifice, admissions of self-doubt and point of view;  for prayer and the need or want that supposes the necessity of prayer;  and for the work of trying to figure it all out.

For we, together gathered disparate, are here and now. 

Anticipate Cage Wreck Aesthetics

 
a bird is a bird with wings
eating mangoes or seed pods
peck peck peck
eating bark eating wind
indiscriminate birds
 
bird circumstance spreads 
fancy winged and beak specific
is puffing a chesty brag
intricately plumaged for distracting
preens to be remarked upon

aloof bird
all bird business 
about bird nous
about birdness
resolute on bird ability

the birds are running late
again seemingly
peckish for dinner parties
real like a talon pillow
or a squawking procedure
 
a bird is skeptical for sounds
boneless sky hoarder
considering and unafraid
to peck my eyes out
while hidden among the flock
​
the bird is a wreck of graceful
nervousy beak stabber
furious flaunter of apparent physics
homicide for a worm or field mouse
often falling nearby with swoop
 
 

Pose Elephantine Frequently

after dinner, reclining 
is never an option for elephants trooping

gravity-yanked forever heavy 
and heaving

that snout is always collecting
that noodle appendage whisks earnest
calculates frequent for availabilities
 
when elephants talk about their problems
cumbersome
sheathes every conversation
​
worries abound about stopping
on a dime or estimating shade proximity
 
elephant rides are about metal prodding hide,
narrowly avoiding ramps,
fingernails and boot heels
 
some elephants in children's books
wear smoking jackets
take drives through the country
stand dapper gazing in mirrors
self-reflecting sincerely

that chest puffer admires massively
stoops to pucker the full range of it’s droop
 
an elephant is a baby elephant
at the beginning
water squirting playful and animated
trunk gestures and glee seeming
 
the elephants conspire occasionally
in the forest below night and broad leaves
​back scratching to tree topple
​argue about methods for poacher abolition
eager for parades
crossing vacant grassy savannah
 
proboscus centered even in repose
 
 

Independence

My children strike out
Against me daily

We are collaborators
In their volition

Though it is a secret
I hold tight

Their increasing independence
Is dependent on my giving them
A frame to celebrate
Freedom from.

Squirrel Lessons

meet friends precariously
neck bob and finger twitch
precisely and anxious for hoarding

that sock puppet on a tree limb eyeing
anthropomorphic concerns sincerely fidgets a shudder balance

squirrel meat is too tough
even for squirrels
those tails poof and arc
fluff banter conspiring

ribald chase scenes
seem dance defying

mock expectations about gravity
flaunt prescient food attitudes

take daily vacations
nap with a swagger

eat more nuts or rest eagerly
avoid large groups

God Loves a Winner Most

Tragedy befell everybody
Ahead of me
In line

This was catastrophic
For everyone else

But I was left unscathed
My progress forward
Miserably got and mournfully praised
 
Nothing remained
But the ghost scuffs of shoe hide
Memorized on linoleum

Homing on the range of recalling

a horse is a hair and gallop machine
 
muscle wave shudder
proof of snout
 
that nag is an actor
mane tosser
preening stable mater & nibbler
 
broad backed
equivocal mane sheen
 
indifferent beast
you hoof stomper and
transportation metaphor
 
portraits noble
for chew modeling
a mastication station

cart puller
 
necessary for blacksmiths in history
 
enables
a caricature
of horse
 

Coyote About Power

quieter than you'd anticipate

that paw scampering breath holder

​​cleaves a vacuum out of afternoon

consider the numerous advantages of serrated teeth

that killer logisticates an approach to neck perspectives

is innocent about mourning

rents deer fear swiftly

nervous about crows

rabbit appetizers for coyote brunch

after burr-in-paw rambling through brambles

saunters squint-eyed

embarrassed by cartoons

writes mythologies of the southwest during leisure time

or hews cactus flower for his sweetheart

this example of musculature under fur

sinewy stealth creeping under moon slivers

​​bone of contention for farmers or field mice

hungry like alarm clock sleep

more hungrier invites quieter bounding

​quieter than you'd anticipate

•••••