essay digressing

The sense we make of the world is produced by series' of personal allusions, to past ideas, people, and experience and also our ideas on the future, our expectations.  Little pictures, fragments, make the movement of our minds-the engine is scraps and pieces.  Everything contributes and filters, one literally cannot ignore experience.  It always stays and stains, and this is not frightening, it is our body collecting.

public voices

stereo living

the electronic equivalent of breath

of breathing systematically

using synapses and time capsules

I fill the forum of the real reluctantly;

My words generally resist the general word order

but the bigger picture forever guides them

patient prayers that walk blindly on the right path.

Word choice is the primary skill of public voice

the language of specific theatres

cinemas-cafes-circular spaces

where we look into the faces of listeners

who have heard everything already.

The public voice is static over dinner din

it whispers over billions

of fellow humans.

The myth of the public voice is that

the voice is singular, but

the vocabulary of revolutionaries

is weighted is worded is waiting

in the shuffling of the crowd.  

Don't we always know the answers to questions?

Forming the interrogative

is turning a corner

slowly, and with a mirror extended.

I know, I already know!

The response is there.

how to love your family

sometimes the slow burn of constancy

cools and chars.  It chaffs facades and peels

like old paint. The neglected room grows

cavernous without bodies moving through.

APPRECIATION is a political word, a show,

while gratitude waits smiling by the roadside

for a ride.  information is currency

and monetary movement between people

corrupts the quiet willing patterns of peace.

I’d rather walk one more time around the pond

with company, than sit one more phone call

bouncing conversation from crowded satellite

to satellite.  

always the slow burn of constancy

is basic.  It is not meant to be a beacon

or travelers mark.  It is the center ember

from which sparks are lifted to dull the

absent cool of new places.   GRATITUDE

of time, every day a timed exercise.

Appreciation is left for the scripted holiday

cards that break so many hearts.  I’d rather

walk one more time around the pond

with company, than spend one more

afternoon imagining a magazine-d future.  

Geronimo

oysters with lemon juice slide down
a liquored throat, pulsing and pushing.
Valentines Day is a noisy crowd-
legs and arms and the holding mass of middle chest.
Everything moves a heavy red.
Talking about words
I understand every language
and you translate like freedom,
a sudden subway.

(untitled)

I would like the smallest stone house on the reservoir-my watery neighborhood a mirror of yellowing leaves. Leaving, left.  Inside, a floor, a cupboard to put things in.  Wooden figurines that I can place and that remain reminders of people to pray to. I'd have blankets and pillows and I'd be sheltered in the winter shifting night.  A worn out boat to lay in and see the sky, drifting on the silver zipper that divides the horizon line. Thin eternity, wet and translucent, turning.

Group home

The quickest chemical
     to a sick heart is
to listen to children breathe
     while they sleep
on the third floor
     of a finally quiet house.