Sketches - 5 (August 11th, 2014)

5.

House hushes down quiet.

Almost ready to retire to the

bed even though there is so

much to do in one day and night

and lay down into soft blissful

tortures of pleasure sex and while

morning comes at 5:30 AM

seemed an eternity away at

11:55 PM - shower sound from the

bathroom across our tiny

ramshackle hallway.

You can feel the heaviness

of the garden out back

about to give it up and pass on

as all Nebraskans give

away their harvest tomatoes

and salt down juicy

savory slices of it.

The world whispers - whistles

a song and a few who will

listen will replicate that

song until radios die

and the voice comes alive

like the soul fleeing a drowned

               person sinking in the

               murk glurk

               swirl of the Missouri

               river, not time for the

                             Platte.

(August 11th, 2014)

- - - - - - - - -

Sketches - 4 (August 11th, 2014)

4.

Seemingly dead vine crawled up a

street lamp next to the school parking lot

                                 playground,

as this is the first day of school

after long kid-summer and now

all the joys worries and woes of

school work and books and on this particular

afternoon, high winds, bright-eyed

sun shining blinding through the

windshield waiting to pick up kids

in line with all other adult cars to

pick up kids and take them

home to supper away from the pencils

and erasers, the suspicious water

fountains with murk-glurk metallic

water and gymnasiums with a variety

of mingled smells of sweat and

past cafeteria food lunches.

All schools be them here on the plains

or struggling along any of either

coastal cities smell exactly the

same, bitter sweet

pledge of allegiance

to star and bars, bubbly strand

of kid-spit plastered against

a cold brick wall.

(August 11th, 2014)

- - - - - - - -

Sketch - 3 (August 11th 2014)

3.

Kerouac says ‘The moon will fool yah’

mayhaps hard to say when it casts

its dim shadowed light so definitely,

swirls about and around

dreams on this night as on all nights

when the moon is full.

(August 11th, 2014)

Sketches - 2 (August 10th, 2014)

Harmonica Eddie playing insect spack

of unplugged purple electric Gretsch in

the evening backyard, George River Rat Prescott

smokes a cigarette sitting

across a narrow weathered backyard

sidewalk from Eddie, dog Dahli on

                    his lap.

Eddy’ll play O’leavers open stage

tonight.  Leaves start to droop on

giant forever trees towering over the backyard.

The Missouri river is dry despite recent torrential

downpours and displays its water marks on the shore.

Bullet blender in kitchen, a little bit of everything

to mix it all together, mix it according

to eyeballing it, glance and figure,

spread out seasonings by experience

as the turn of actual seasons continues,

this year its a short stumble into

                    fall.

‘Gonna have me a soul / and a conscience

                      too’ sings Eddie.

A liberal amount of rain drenched

cigarette butts around the fire pit.

What were once tall stately sunflowers

now droop behind Eddie as he glances

at his cell phone and garden matters

discussed once again - -

‘I came here to be by this magical garden’ Eddie

had said earlier when I opened

the back door and found him sitting there.

(August 10th, 2014)

- - - - - - - -

Sketches - 1 (August 10th, 2014)

1.

Mint tobacco lip outstretched or

swollen up under out.

Food to the baby.  Red tomatoes, juice

all over mother’s hands under

chalk grey last Summer Sunday

                         gloom sky.

The box the pizza came in (prepackaged

                               grocery aisle pizza)

dipped in and smooched on the kitchen's

laminate mock-tile floor.  Stray cherry

sized tomato ploops onto the floor

on the way to the stink garbage.

Ashley sings and giggles, flattens

garlic with the knife’s edge-on-counter

with karate chop grunts and ‘hooowah!’

ready to melt into a giant slow cooker

vat of tomatoes.

                    ‘Oie!  That’s the flavor’

cutting fresh garden breath basil,

smells green in the room.  

A verbal assessment of garden

issues are made, an urgent need to

move things around for the

                    following spring.

(August 10th, 2014)