Be

Being good

            Being strong

                        Being true and truthful

a smattering scattering of belief.

Being is habit-forming

            a treadmill of tendency

                        and accuracy and passivity

                                    despite the creativity of everything.

Being being being

            each decision a consideration of history,

                        cursory theory, and composition

                                    or simply a carrying on of feeling, being.

Doubt

          Will get trained on you

like a follow-dog.

It will chase you

until you are ragged

and thinned out

like wick wire.

beginning of a longer poem

What are you a veteran

            of which war resides in

the faint rise of your mind

            and which preposition

positions the gunshot the wakes you

            up in the midnights?

kiddie rhyme

I can use language
any way I please:

grind down sidewalks
and string angels from trees

I can putty placenames
into ravines and avenues:

every place is my place
that I walk myself through

For every movement in a song
I write my own to pair:

what better way to spend my time
than grow and praise and share?

project house

each room

           is a closet

storage for human heat;

Places where shade

            collects like mixing paint.

The materials of house structure-

            Wood, glass, brick, and metal pieces-

make for scattered, new sculptures.

            The body re-works every space it enters,

re-modeling, re-doing, re-working, realizing each room

for the first and hundredth time.

Vital records

Birth certificates

Death certificates

Marriage license

            Each of these cost $18 on the first floor of the Bayside Expo Center

            red, white, and blue paper bit-gripped by a toothed eagle stamp.

            My vital record is one Maia Nicole McPherson, birthed in winter.

            one paper and I realize that the vitality of records is false

            A living record is more complete What did I have for breakfast today?

            than certified words.

I keep thinking about the sun in the winter time

A grassy shindig,

laying haphazard

and bleeding youth

the day is both wasted

and won.  The spring sun

is still winding itself

like a clock and the long

winter sleeps beneath

new life.  How many

more days can I ask

questions of the

kid and kidding

monuments?