Fold up a lipstick letter
Take it to the sea
Let it melt into the ocean
Softly sinking down
Spend a lifetime
Combing beaches
Walking in the rising tide
And stumbling through the sound
The lipstick letter
my pop the prop
My pop the prop
When I was a little boy
We would walk to church sometimes
He would break a forked stick
And hold it up in front to keep the cobwebs off
I imagined he was some type of priest
And the cobwebs some kind of sacred smoke
How fortunate to follow
When I was in high school
There was stuff goin’ on
He knew all about it
Not the details
But he knew
And he wrote my paper for me
About Lord Byron
He was happy to do it
he got an A
When I was in college
There was stuff goin’ on
He knew all about it
Not the details
But he knew
And he said today we are goin’ fishin’
I heard you sneeze earlier
Call in sick
That day was a great gift
From my daddy
Because he knew
How fortunate to follow
*
from the old blog
i miss my prop
1 bell for a penny 2 bells for a dime 3 bells for free
From the fields
They rang a bell for lunch
They rang a bell for supper
They rang a bell when there was trouble
Once Aunt Inez rang the bell so grandaddy could come see her new dress
Badly done
Badly done Inez
But granddaddy was no Mr Knightly
+
Morning of the bell
In a dream of gray
I fall out of a cloud
As a rough sketch
Balling myself up
falling
side to side
Ringing out through the watery air of some morning where I belong
+
Public work
I drove away
In a big yellow truck
Was I driving the sun?
This bright afternoon
That followed me
Like a reptile
sitting in the sun
Smoking cigarettes
Listening to church bells
Drafts
Startle through the moonlight
Howl hollow in the rain
Drown in lotus blooms
Twist into the sun
Search yourself in comic strips
One frame at a time
Test the wind and mark your course
Leave shadows far behind
.
.
Original version
(Stream of consciousness type of thing)
Startle through the moonlight river
Twist into the sun
Yellow battered baby bunkers
Fortunes on the run
Oyster clusters to the sky
Fragrant lotus blooms
Catacombs and fresh milkbones
Silk and cheese straws too
Howl away the sorrow
Break the back of pain
Wholly hollow megaphone
Rusting into the rain
Whistle to the whistle wind
Pour a glass of brine
March a mile on malt
Stop at the turnstile
A token for nothing
A token for nothing
Falls forever
Unseen
It pulls at heart strings
Like a tiny fish
unable to hook itself
Stealing the bait away
Darting off into darkness
who needs a heartbeat
james woke up on page 3
some strange comic
he took a shine to losing a dimension and
there were hints of a love interest somewhere maybe another episode or 2
yellow
he looked good in yellow
who needs a heartbeat?
Reading the skull sky
Around 5:30am a plane takes off inside my head
It is just up there in my skull sky.
I view it as if it is just hanging there but I know that it is making its way across the day.
At 9am a man calls.
He calls me by my first name even though he doesn’t know me
.
The plane dives down
.
He says things that sound like I should know him.
.
The plane makes an arc and returns to its previous elevation
U
.
He begins to sound as if I owe him something.
.
The plane drops down into a curvy
S
.
After these “pleasantries” he begins to fish around the something for nothing pond.
.
The plane does a series of quick maneuvers.
E
Before the R is complete I have given him a price that would make Solomon wince.
The phone makes that sweet dial tone sound and the plane continues on straight ahead across the skull sky.
after september
after september
the dogs begin bringing up deer parts
legs first
assorted bones and heads later
some of the heads have sawed off horns
some of the heads go home with the hunters
they fill them with glass eyes and hang them up on the wall
while I rake up the bones
and stare down into empty sockets
shimmer cycle
the day comes down to a blink
in the mind’s eye
and the heavy dross makes its way downstream
leaving just enough to glimmer to shimmer
all the way into tomorrow
