Old Times

Dream with the

        tips of my fingers -

all logistics set aside, hurled now

off some kind of hot summer wind

incredulous, albeit the true

nature/stink of the city-town

blurs out, crazed - deep anxiety

but no matter, driving

driving driving - can’t go

anywhere without driving

and opening up the methane

fart car choking thick

humid air, me being strange

awkward taking my place

in a long crooked line

of all that is misplaced.

Funeral seat in NOW.

      Say farewell

      to the past.

Recently I was

back in Bloomfield town

United Methodist Church pew

to witness the burying of the

102 year old bones of

my grandmother motionless

          about to be

          buried.

Open casket and she looked

young again, hardly needed

a mortician.  I used to dream

under her roof as a child listening

to music on her

tiny no-nonsense turn

          table.

End of an era.

Now only ghosts reside in Bloomfield.

------------

(sometime in June 2012)

Friday Evening

Singing our song in the

kid-filled weekend.

Summer now owns the earth,

America

baked clean by the sun

and humidity,

            callused guitar

            finger tips - to talk

            of it is bullshit

            when there is

            is so much to

                     DO,

Barking dogs out back  

two year old Izzy stomps

over creak-wood

floor of our old ancient

neighborhood house cool to

the touch inside the guts

              of it.

Winking blinking day end

exhaustion after work

and time froths

at the mouth for NEW to

arrive, scribbles and songs

will herald in the NEW.

Blue-final sky above

fronted by puffy thumb clouds

majestical puff white

gray/silver around edges

and time is forward moving

in a circle so vast and

simple it’s impossible to

        see it all at once.

Ache in my guts after midnight

Amigos run (Omaha’s Tex-Mex

tacory and burritoville).

Billions of rotting animal bones

in various soils of the North

American continent.

Motionless fossils of after-life

and bubonic heaven, plague of

belief, black dot of supreme

death in deep stink of valleys.

Apocalypse came and went.

No one was tortured.

The lips of God have always been

silent and the only wrath

          is time.

No matter, whole family in house

and sinks with dishes ready

for washing, piles of laundry

in need of folding,

tasks for us in the

summer condition.

           I’m dreaming

           my own song.

           

           When I die

               the song

               will continue

               over my unthinking

               bones.

- - - - - - - - -

(June 8th, 2012)

Poetry is Dead

Pages and pages of pure-life

spelled out, fully described,

not sure what this instinct

is, this obsession to get it all

down,

       unfolding

       itself throughout days

       and years, pen scratch

       and humming guitar

       chords.

leaving what there is

for any historian or

well-loved or thoroughly hated

family member

to leaf

through and ponder

over once

I’m gone, for

               I’ve heard it said

               that poetry is dead.

How can beauty be in the eye

of the beholder when there are

no beholders?  If something is

beautiful it is beautiful by

benefit of its existence, therefore

poetry itself still has a pulse

          and it might be the beholders who

          are dead - I’ll keep

          my pens warm regardless.

- - - - - - - - - -

(March 10th, 2012)

Parking Lot

Parking Lot

In a warm car Ace Hardware parking lot

90th and Maple while above us pure

skyful wind torn clouds set off to

horizons and occasionally sweep over

the sun and form a play of giant

shadows across whole swaths

                of ground.

Rollling up-down hills of Maple street

also Blondo a few blocks north,

major arteries of unwholesome

semi-woesome Omaha with its

blinking radio towers and smoking

                  factories.

American National Bank, cell-phone

gas station outlets with hard liquor

behind the counter waiting placidly

in bottles to fire up the guts more than likely

eyeblink black out terrors, no

moderation for so many.

Aaron’s furniture, electronics, computers,

appliances, a thousand different ways

                     to nest,

                     to be completely

                     forgotten.

- - - - - - - - -

(March 3rd, 2012)

The Plains

https://soundcloud.com/urlp/the-plains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-FEWi4pZIt8