Word Count

What is the weight of a word?

If you add them all up

How much space do they take?

Will they fill up a heart?

If you say too much

Will they overflow the consciousness

And make an indelible mess?

If they are well thought out do they weigh more,

Are they harder to clean up,

Should you not even try,

Is it possible to contain them?

Put together in the right way,

Are they unbreakable.

How much do they cost?

Is it too much to pay

To use all the ones I'm afraid of?

Making Boxes

If something is going on

that I don't know about

up there in my head,

It would not be the first time

I didn't inform myself

What I'm up to.

My brain doesn't always fill me in

On the connections it's making,

Particularly during a shift in paradigm

When it has a tendency to reshuffle

The boxes it keeps things in

Caused by an overload of new information

It doesn't know where to file,

Requiring the construction of more boxes

With corresponding categories.

I suppose it just keeps reusing

The old miscellaneous box.

Nostalgia

The only thing left is to bottle the air,

put a patent on breathing and bottle caps.

The ground under our feet

Has already been optioned,

Law makers bought and sold,

Valleys filled with drums.

Bhopal is only ciphered in by CEO's

As a difficult public relations problem.

Magna Carta is the blueprint.

It granted the lords equal footing with the king.

It's getting to be the good old days.

Dickens is being put out of his grave

For being behind in the rent.

The Sheriff of Nottingham is coming

For a return engagement

But Robin Hood seem to be

Making himself scarce.

Between Words

I don't know what to say.

That there is no right thing

Doesn't seem to help much.

It is the nature of me

To fumble over words

If I don't have the time

Or the page/screen to sort them/

try them out for fit.

It is frustrating needing so much time to be heard,

To have so little time between words.

It is an impatient world,

So little time to say what your mean.

Winter's Howl

The is something in last night's howling wind,

something pricking my conscious,

Trying reach across the gap.

There is something in the banshee sound,

Some anguish of multiplied souls,

Voices in a wilderness disguised

By the flotsam of western civilization,

Hidden by-multimedia pizzazz,

covered over by manicured lawns and brick facades.

There is something hidden away in far-off lands,

high tech battlefields, remote control killers,

Banana republicanism broughtto the twenty-first century,

Deththocracy loosed as it is on earth

Makes no room for heaven.


Ignore the blue. Don't know what's up with that

Polor Vortex of the Digital Mind

The deep freeze again comes down,

A vortex they say,

swirling from polor reagions.

Last night I heard the wind howling,

like you usuially hear in a movie blizard

Screwing up things like this crappy, free

Word prosessing thing I got with my new computor,

Except, unlike a blizard covering things,

This threatens to reveal the true extent

of my difficulties with spelling

By not highliting the erors and

Behaving eraticly in general.

Technical Difficulties

I'm in the middle of technical difficulties,
A quandary of mixed expectations
And computer dysfunctions.
I was born a little to early
And the packed dirt onramps
For the  information supper highway
Still led to only a great muddy ditch
Like the one I played in
when they were digging the Kennedy expressway
In the fifties.
So my metaphors are showing their age.
Accept my apologies when I say
Please stand by.  

Here

It is only here I’ve figured a way

To circumvent my inarticulate flesh,

The dumbness of my confused tongue.

My confusion of this ability to speak

Has always left me at the back of things,

In that invisible place in society

Where the odd ducks are kept.

The periphery is an interesting place to inhabit.

It provides a wonderful vantage point

To see what I’m missing

And the long time required to come to terms

With who it makes me.

It is only here I’ve found a place to be.

From here my silence can speak volumes.

It can be heard around the world.

Sifting Through Shards

What is the price?

Where do I slip in the token

Of my esteem?

I am willing to put myself aside,

Write in blood and bone,

Make pictographs of scar tissue,

Rip them open for a little color.

I am a half alive man,

A tomb that needs to be broken into.

I am my own grave robber

Shattering the pottery and

Sifting through the shards

To get at the good stuff.

Glitch

I think my computer is getting Alzheimer’s.

It forgets what it’s doing and sits there

And spins and spins, or just stops

Locked in the moment.

Sometimes it wanders off.

I have no idea where it’s going.

I’ve tried all kinds of remedies,

But nothing seems to help.

It still does have moments of clarity,

But mostly it’s getting slower and slower,

Understanding less and less.

XP is all it’s capable of

and ways to treat it are being phased out.

To old, I guess.

At least I won’t feel bad

When I stick it in a drawer because

I won’t know what else to do with it.

Family Secrets

My grandfather spoke a language

I was unaware I understood.

He sent it to me cryptically,

From his grandfather to me,

Through my father’s unspoken longings.

I don’t know how far back it comes from,

Whose ancient lives first unknowingly

Encoded warning messages into

The brain stems of my ancestors

Producing the babel present in my ears.

I labor to be still so things

Have a chance to float to the surface.

They come, clear as hieroglyphics,

Sealed behind stone and buried beneath sand.

Even with everything I know about myself

Sometimes I still feel at the edge of the desert

Removing one grain of sand at a time.

I can’t help thinking I’ll never understand

Things my body cannot forget.

Crawling Ashore

Snow comes again,

Painting from the top down.

Winter is an illusionist,

Hiding the dark things in white,

Pushing it indoors

Where it can be forgotten for a while.

It is cold and uncaring

Like most of the universe

With its vast airless space.

It is only a body that creates its own warmth.

Only another can offer solace

From the empty reaches of existence.

Alone, there is no one to offer anything to,

No one to receive anything from.

Alone is an empty ocean, devoid of life.

Together is the beginning of things,

The emergence of life in the new world.

Me and My Thumb

What to say about a thumb

That Hawkeye did not eloquently expound on

In that episode he had to stay awake

After getting a concussion,

From his jeep hitting a mine, I think.

For me, it’s just a pain in the butt

Trying to do things without one.

At least I don’t have to fill up a half hour show,

And I don’t have a script to follow,

Not even retakes if I forget my lines,

But that would be easy to fake since

I’ve no cameras on me

To record the drama of me and my thumb.

Slipping Into the Danger Zone

The unfortunate circumstance

Of a thumb print slipped along side

A table saw raised an inch above the surface

When the machine is running

And no contact with the bone is made

Removes a good chunk of meat

From the pad of the thumb.

This is called an avulsion,

Which one website calls more than a laceration,

But less than an amputation.

Pain, caused by damage to nerve endings,

Is minimized by the absence of said endings.

I’m not aware of the reason for the minimal bleeding,

Though I’m told it is normal.

What Remains

When it is time

What remains need be let go.

Openness is a surrender of self-protection.

We are never ready to fly free;

Even eagles must be pushed from their nest.

It is reasonable to feel fear in free-fall.

There is no easy way to spread your wings,

To trust in what you do not know to save you.

Freedom is a dangerous proposition

Subject to catastrophic failure,

But the potential is the sun and the moon,

It is mystery unleashed,

It is the unfolding of a flower never seen.

Future Tense

They say some things never change,

But entropy disagrees.

The body breaks down, clocks tick,

Winter turns to spring.

Even if we really screw up

And usher in a nuclear winter,

Eventually particulates will wash out

And a whole new world will rise

From our frozen ashes.

Creatures we never dreamed of,

A riot of new vegetation will live on the land.

I don’t know how stupid we actually are.

We so excel at murder and death.

I hope it does not push past our lust for life

And we miss all the change to come.  

Wild Grass

Dreams come harder in winter days.

Frozen ground resists germination,

Snow covered like a shroud.

It’s a month and a half yet

Before the corner where the turn comes

And dream making begins to thaw.

It is good to know what this poem brings,

That I have not forgotten there is a corner to turn

Where life yet springs up

And dreams grow like wild grass.

Low Moan Yowl

Mortality lurks behind like some skittery cat

Looking for scraps, shying away with a look,

Hiding in the shadows.

Slinking back in dogged pursuit

With its threadbare hide,

Greedy, low moan yowl

Always willing to take another bite,

Another swipe, wearing down its prey.

Stubborn bastard,

Always willing to take another step

Down the incline. 

US of A

As a resident of the city of Chicago,

In the great state of Illinois,

I am shocked and appalled

By the political shenanigans

In the state governed by the fat man in the east.

I am sure Miss Roseannadanna

Is turning in her grave at the scandal.

In a land that gave us horse-trading

Spin-doctors, and Fox News,

Surely we should all hang our heads

At the slight tumble from our lowly reputation.

Other nations must be yawning at their breakfast table

Over business as usual in the US of A.  

United States of Amnesia

Wounds lay unhealed in the land,

Old aquifers of spilled blood soaked in,

Seeds of nightmares and shame,

Dirt under the fingernails of generations?

The past ignored festers,

Sins of the fathers passed to the sons.

We are all walking wounded.

The napalm girl lives in all of us,

Tattered skin held together by shear will,

Movement by muscle memory.

I pray forgiveness for our sin of willful ignorance,

Blinding ourselves

For what we do not want to see in the mirror.

We are the generation at hand.

We are the other side of the same coin.

I do not have any answers.

The past is a muddy mess

Whitewashed by our fathers.

Air, Earth, and Water

Long ago in a distant land under your feet

You were not there.

A different people trod the ground

Not yet scrapped away

Or littered with poisonous by-products

Washed out of the air by the rain.

The chemicals put there on purpose were not inserted

To kill what progress didn’t want.

The big hills covering garbage had not yet piled up

And the mountains, dismantled to gouge out useful items,

Were still there with trees and streams

And trails made by animals

Going about their daily habits.

The people there thanked the animals,

The air, earth, and water for all the things they provided

Because they knew that the circle of life does not stop,

The things that we lost and no longer remember,

The things we are losing and forgetting

Are pieces of us.

They knew some things lost cannot be recovered

And they knew we only have so much time.

New World Disorder

The secret concentration camps

Await us in the Northwest woods

Guarded by Gurka shock troops

Standing at the ready in area 51

Alongside their black helicopters

Hidden by secret alien technology

In collusion with United Nations

Guided by the Protocols of the Order of Sion

Written by the Trilateral Commission

Under strict supervision of the Jewish cabal

Of Hollywood producers well before the JFK fiasco

Or the phony moon landing or Dan Brown

Supposedly let the cat out of the bag,

But in reality took the heat off Monsanto

Trying to turn us all into pod people

In which case I suppose we won’t need the camps anymore

And has the Illuminati crying in their beer because

Nobody gives them a second thought now-a-days.

Family Dynamics

I look through the house

At the snow in the crook of a tree

Like a white shadow

Come down from above

Just like it did a thousand years ago

When the ground was unspoiled by concrete

And the houses and garages and wires behind it

Hadn’t even been thought of yet,

Nor the walls that surround me

And my ancestors were dispersed back

To their old countries

Where the distance alone made meeting each other

Problematic.

They would have to walk a thousand miles,

Cross dangerous waters,

Suffer months or years of cruel deprivation

Even before they got the chance

To try and kill each other,

Which, when you think about it,

Explains a lot.

City-boy With a Chainsaw

In a finger of snow patched woods

I found a monster dead oak,

With no punk,

The trunk forty inches across,

My winter salvation,

If I could bring it down

Without killing myself in the process.

I studied it from all angles,

Its thick perfect branches

Reaching symmetrically out, perfectly balanced,

Grown from wild times.

A tooth at a time, I sharpened my blade.

From an extension ladder

I dropped two branches from one side

To weight it in the direction I wanted it to fall.

My sixteen inch Stihl was too small to cut it through,

But I whittled away and brought it down as planned.

I stood on the back of the old felled giant,

Half a winter’s heat from one tree.

Graduation of a city-boy with a chainsaw.

Political Expediency

I feel like I should write something

To commemorate the cold

But I suppose the number of poverty's dead

Will have to do?

Hands will be rung

And politicians will have their say

Before mostly nothing changes

Given the new yardstick Of Sandy Hook

Of what cannot be done

In response to.

Grief provides little political headway these days.

However, if spun the right way, blaming the victim

Is very profitable.

A room full of immature blood

Is a powerful tool

In the hands of somebody willing to use it.  

The idea poverty is the just reward of the shiftless,

Of the unprepared and ill bred is nothing new,

And the link between death and poverty

Is as old as the hills.

The depth a politician is willing to sink

Gets deeper all the time.

They say the definition of insanity

Is doing the same thing over and over

And expecting a different result.

Maybe it’s our fault?

We do keep putting them in office?

Old Hat

I suppose all the snow

Is old hat to somebody?

The piling up, shoveling against futility,

Fogged up glasses?

When I was little,

Being the original snot-nosed-kid,

I almost got used to it freezing on my lip.

I guess we can get used to anything,

All the shit piling up,

Being shoveled into are living rooms

By the talking heads

Blaming or excusing one party or another,

Or the numerable foreign devils at their disposal,

All the pocketed politicians

Spewing targeted sound bites across the land.

I suppose we’re used to it,

The powers that be playing chess

With us as the pawns,

But you’d think,

With all that endless supply of hot air,

It would at least have some effect

On the snow?

Deja Vu

I cut up a small dead oak I saved for emergencies

Not far from the run down farm house

I rented for next to nothing

On the pig farm my brother-in-law, Erwin, managed.

The high that day was ten below.

It was during the time I refer to as

My Jack Daniel’s Winter

Some time in the eighties’

After trickle-down decimated the local farmers

So the big corporations could

Buy Wisconsin land on the cheap

And right wing wackos could set up in Tigerton

And recruit among the disenfranchised.

I cut the tree down with a chain saw

I was able to buy

By cashing in a thousand dollar life insurance policy

For seven hundred dollars,

I lived off food stamps,

Care packages of venison from my sister,

And a few dollars I made holding up

Squealing little pigs by their hind legs

So Erwin could castrate them

With an exzacto knife every other week or so.

By the time he sprayed the wound,

Set them down and handed me another pig,

They were already at the feed trough.

The pig money paid for the Jack

I drank mostly at the cold-house

Preparing for the eventual collapse

Of western civilization

With a friend I was going off the deep end with.

He kept going and eventually I moved,

And decades later it sounds like

They’re preaching trickle-down once more,

The right wing wackos are stirring again,

And it’s supposed to be really cold next week.