Even Then

Before the night fell the grasses swayed. All life was somber and still. A cricket bleeted alone as crickets always do, this one, too early to sing, waiting for night as the orange sun disappeared behind the mountain.

 The water of the lake was smooth, not a ripple, grasses grew out of there too. Tall grasses sticking up like trees with thick stems and the brown, very brown, dark brown almost browner than the trunks of the trees on the shore stalks, as I said, stood perfectly still.

 What happens when the stopping begins. Eyes wide open we seek movement. The poets always sing of themselves in the whisps of winds and sways of leaves, but when selves disappear the remaining former proof lives on, soulless, unknowing, lost.


Too much silence can kill a man says huxley. But huxley doesn’t know anything. He cuts corn down when seasons of corn cutting come. He rushes out to strip the land and comes home a richer man for a season, the good season, in between the times of waiting and loneliness.

 The poets are always looking for friends in nature. Somehow they know how to relate. Sunshine becomes God and moon the almighty mother. Loneliness doesn’t grip them. They don’t need the flesh and blood of their soul sisters or their brothers. We all fall down.


And stories, expanding in underwater silence, our talents bubbles bursting upon the water’s skin. If we could tell our stories, let our stories come up and be as real to each other as they are to our all too often unknowing selves, then we could breathe.

But breath is but another dream, another wasted thought to the drowning man, his story and his being watching the round orb of the sun blur and decrease. Eyes on deck. Keep watching says you, but the poet knows that even the underworld is there for him to relate to. Even then.

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Published in: on August 23, 2022 at 10:24 pm  Leave a Comment  
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You’re Not Scorsese

There is no choice but to do what you want to do. They’re always saying to do what you love, but then people always wonder. They think maybe they should do what they love while they’re doing what they have to do. I can see their point.

It ain’t easy to become Scorsese if you ain’t Scorsese; if you’re a filmmaker. You’ve got to pay your dues. Why? Because you’ve got no choice. The world is as it is and to change it for your desire to have life work out for you and everybody else does not change the fact of what is. As they say: as so it is, so as so it is, as so it is so, so it is as it is so.

In effect, if you do what you want to do it will be better than doing what you don’t want to do because you will have to do what you want to do eventually anyway and it might as well be now.

That’s why you should become a big fish. The small fish will gobble you up one snip at a time. Till you fall to the bottom upside down staring at the room of Timmy.

You have better things to do than give your life over to nonsense when you could be giving your life over to sense if that sense includes your ability to have the wherewithal to take the most minimal of jobs within your industry.

The next Scorsese would never do that, yeah, well, you know, need I again say it? Christ. You’re not Scorsese!

And once again, plopped down into helplessness. I don’t even remember the subject matter at hand.

Published in: on August 17, 2022 at 10:58 pm  Leave a Comment  
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A Fellow Walked Into a Bar

A fellow walked into the bar.

Of course nothing would happen.

 Why would it? He paid the bartender who threw him a wink,

 a real looker, he thought, how droll.

So sweet American you look sorrowful to me,

with your pitiful ways and poverty stricken days,

 your best country in the world is all tired and worn

 because you’ve been shorn of your reason and vote

 for lullaby glumpers, con-men, who want to do you harm,

want to take all your money and you give it to him

 because he can get you to itchin’.

 Just scratching llke a greyhound.

So you do nothing.

You move up to the bar and you look around.

 You hear some music. A Sunday song, a soft one from the seventies

with women with white lace around their arms

and sunshine that fell honestly and sweetness,

 if there, found its way to you and yours in so many ways.

 Used to have the writers to document this utopia too,

people who lived it, who lived a life of ease and beauty,

 those lucky enough. But not you, you sit at the bar and ask for a whiskey

because you want to get a little drunk after Lucille and all.

How? How? How? How? Mara’s going to know about it

 and then she’s going to be gone too but you can’t keep it in.

you blew it with Lucille and now Mara’s gotta know

or you yourself won’t want to be in the relationship anymore.

A real bummer.

But that’s what you do, you, who write because you’re supposed to make money

and you write about the way that words sound through horns of echoing loveliness,

you remember that and you write about it, and it is something good that you remember,

 like those other writers of old and the only reason you remembered it

was because you wanted to, all good feelings are like that,

 they just need to be invited back in. Betternnostalgia.

Published in: on August 11, 2022 at 9:58 pm  Leave a Comment  
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For When

For when writers got smart. For when.

For when lovers got heart. We win.

For when sun glints not just shines. We win.

For when we finally believe but we don’t know what

We believe but it doesn’t matter

There is always consciousness and there always will be

And it will be a refreshing thing

For when nobody is going to take care of you and you don’t care

Because you know about life and death, thought about it, considered it

For when you were just sad and hoped that being sad would make you

Go all the way through to something deeper, something beyond, sadlessness

For when all the computers can’t compute you into the place you want to be

For when you are the very last loser and that’s okay

You still look up, poke up, your nose, like a deer

And see over the brush mountaintops thousands of feet away

And you feel the cold air on your sides and then the rush of the brush

The movement of your side, you a stag, a doe, runs, runs, runs,

For when mountains of evidence become clear

For when tomorrow rears its ugly head

For when today seeks solace knowing this about its future, as though

Tomorrow could be something better and you at least have to give it a chance

For when the chance happens and you slide down, happily, like a raft on a river

For when, those smart writers who found out but then remembered they forgot

They’re the ones we’re doing it for, the dreamers, the shleps, the two-percent men

For when those same smart writers knew something else, that they were secret members

Of something totally not understood, life, the simple dumbness of it. Never prepared for that.

For when we all remained hopeful and silent and still

Winking at the candlelight in the street next to ours

For when we wake up and realize that this all American Now that we feel

Is ours and ours alone. We should grasp it, hold it and seize it, like an eagle a dawn.

For when we all fall down and then all stand up again

For when we get a dollar or two for our wage and we smile not frown

 For when we finally grow up

For when you expect nothing from your practice but do but try not to but do

For when you realize that you shoulda just given up a long time ago. You’re that big of a loser

For when you figure you might as well go on.

For when you go on.

Published in: on August 10, 2022 at 10:10 pm  Leave a Comment