Fourteen Lines for Rick Morrow

Indiana, don’t futz with my algorithm—
front porch whiskey covenants:

a scamper then a chorus of blasts, &
oh the things we save.

Date leaps, cliff wasted: ACME still
in business: product activation failed.

*

Sweet long trails: meteor show, august,
(as if to say “sober”) Perseids & all

the rest: a midwestern cull speaks
on irony & a big northwest heart

transported makes another document
& is: harried, black loam, topsoil,

formidable observer, last sturdy
post on the fence.

I was trying to explain to you some things
& then I realized you didn't need explaining

It keeps falling around & there is no light.

POSTCARD

Driving nails through giant hovercrafts of snow
& ice: I see you there beyond

the rushes, past a semi-circle
of varied thrush and Spanish lessons.

*

Circumference makes us fools: shiver on
midwest not making anyone safer:

firm ground is ground yet untilled—
“until the end of time.”

*

Is only a time or another tradition: other
times alight then fly up at smoke

& mothers in houses on edges of lakes
are stirring & glad to be awake.

CASE MARKER / BOUNDARY

I like the orange pylon icon I was caddying
for my brother begone a sameness to each
point apart: equidistant hearts blown up
to better see the insides, the gall, appall of
a thing that should know better

*

Been a long fire & now two-dozen mowed
what else? so long night at one time
a sonnet lived here but a sonnet doesn’t live
here anymore because we have lost our
capacity to be astonished

*

When this began a wicker broom was enough
or enough to matter to somebody
tinsel & crusting over like a snow bank or eye
reddened to a maddening gone mercury
long road blurred to diminishing saviors

*


Sever fine lengthenings forward to holiday
sanctioned by an animal holding postcards
at arm’s length at American expense no
account here or waiting for you flowers disturb
you flower found in a vacant space

*

It’s a fiction this new world you speak of an ex-
hilirating bluster of laughter mingled with bigger
roomier corners of shame & this is what I love
about you, brother, sister, ex-wife, this my daughter
my unmaking you my making

WITHER

Sifted winter across blank fields, found
wheat stalks in piles against the floor, the small Ruths
& the small Boazes
& a draught

of something nourishing.

*

Not far from here’s a town.

Antler.

Population: unforgiven.

*

Multiplication tables cornered
in a Pee-Chee folder holding over
middle-aged debris—

transcript in Sanskrit of a tiny hand,
a spring day, a broken wheel.

DESTINATION

Some fog in all this dense is part of parts
of a believable world—

human coloring flaking off
under lamps: green lamps: two comets
collide us up super.


*


Kept falling up on the page of mud, my lips
combed felt & children smiling
all over the walls

were your perfection, your forgetting.



*


Build a lean-to
for instance for gravitational heft,
a place with a tree & a home a stupid word

inside all real lives beginning
with the letter.


*


A sad place held up.


*


Turning a fairway into a causeway
where a freeway runs through it—

Mayan Face

Some years ago, I don't know, a half-dozen or so, on the eve of the eve of my leave-taking of my apartment of six or so years, a man and a woman I'd never met knocked on my door and when I bid them enter, entered bearing beers.

I don't remember their names but the woman lived directly below me and told me she was teaching a geography class that my friend was taking. She was drunk and began to tell me that she knew the schedule I kept, my comings and goings. She knew when I woke in the morning, when I left the building, when I came home, and she knew when I had sex: the building was turn of the last century and the walls were thin. But she told me this. You don't tell strangers this unless you are sure you'll never see them again. Not knowing what to say, I said, strangely, "I guess I've had a good year."

Her man friend handed me a beer and studied my bookcases. He stared at me for longer than is appropriate to stare at anyone you're not planning on beating up or making love to or scolding. He took a swig of his beer and said, reaching out, almost but not touching me--"You have a Mayan face."

They left as suddenly as they had arrived. Outside it was snowing.

Doxology

There is no God & so
god settles down around like so

some more goes.

*

Foraging for rocks & food
has dried up.

Late season, late fire.

*

God is “no”& the small
part splaying out sophistries:

four more months’ cant.

A RULE OF THREES

A mean wolf wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do so in public.
He suggests she pick some flowers.

*

The theme also appears in the story of the life of St. Margaret,
in which the saint emerges unharmed from the belly of a dragon.

*

A grandmother, a huntsman, a red Gap hoodie.

*

Very common in the European folk tale is the rule of threes.

*

"I think the wolf that wants to eat the girl and the wolf that wants to eat the three pigs is the same mean wolf."

*

You're right but you'll forget that by the time you're seven.

Once upon a time, I lived on a diet of baked goods, ice cream, strong coffee, and popsicles. I was thin then, too. And happy in the way a man living with someone who no longer loved him could be. The small human taking up our space helped us forget that until trying to forget was more difficult than simply severing ties. When I moved the couch as I was evacuating that old house on Orchard St.--a December day much like this one except that it was 20 degrees F. and wild turkeys pranced about the front lawn--I found a pile of popsicle sticks, dozens of them.

Details matter. The smallest the most.

Rule of Threes

A mean wolf wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do so in public.
He suggests she pick some flowers.

*

The theme also appears in the story of the life of St. Margaret,
in which the saint emerges unharmed from the belly of a dragon.

*

A grandmother, a huntsman.

*

Very common in the European folk tale is the rule of threes.

*

"Daddy, I think the wolf that wants to eat the girl and the wolf that wants to eat the three pigs is the same mean wolf."

LAKE EFFECT

It is a calm lake & lake

falls ... the ... field

*

A paper hay mewing a heard

against that which is milled

*

//


A deed we flounder toward--

this bus unassembled into the lungs

of twice-fired, last week's arrows

*

To be a noun in this Wide American West.

I am, she says, the 51st state.

Some comeuppance chemical: some fog.

//


Look @ the horse who

writes a fucking horse

*

Stop.

Signs muddle perceptions: quick

-brain tactics

askanced into mortal combat.

*

From this point fwd, I'll simply

scan the pages of this mess

directly into the .doc

as imgs. I'm reading a lot lately

from a station not supposedly

to understate: this causes frictional.

*

Notation on self. Christmas trees.

Lines on St. Lucy's Day

The bicycle has ridden itself away

into a storm cloud

just off the horizon line

*

The new ways adopt the old style

to appear stylish

crushed felt. daisy. black modest skirt. white blouse.

*

Camphor dulls the effects of the ether.

*

Chalk dust & a surplus

of unused digits; in my country

we say "friend" but mean "accountant."

*

She asked about white balance

but what could I tell her.

*

So much coffee in these veins

the vessels

crack, fatigue.

*

She has a whiff of 2004 about her.

*

Summer's incandescent glow was something

less than expected. Insouciant gloss, reverie.

*

"Do you miss me & want me to come to Oregon & hug you."