writing – Page 104 – Words and Feathers

Poem 20150818

August 18, 2015 crow2 Comments

the projector projects
a filmy image on the
chalkboard
colors washed out
by the green clay surface
and the light flooding in
through the broken blinds
and the cracked open door
to alleviate
the oppressive september
heat and humidity

science class
though the school is small
and all classes are taught
by the same teacher
and in the same room

filmstrip about insect
life cycles
and a horrible scratchy
soundtrack
like a melodrama
or illness of the week movie

ghost handwriting outlines
homework on the too dark board

–reading
–math

legible on the thorax
of the four foot wide
grasshopper

Poem 20150817

August 17, 2015August 17, 2015 crow2 Comments

anything when
with the little now
a time to pocket the wind
like a watch
the wind up blowing
a hole in the pocket
of the little now
a pitcher’s blackened pitch
and the smallest wrist
turning
white and perfect
anything when
when now not
like a watch
or being watched
—–

Been reading e e cummings. Seriously, there is no poem better than this one:
i carry your heart with me. I would post this one, but it is still under copyright. So go ahead and click over.

Poem 20150816

August 16, 2015 crow1 Comment

sun-sick and weary of the heat
collapsing in a heap
and freezing in the
air conditioning

i stink like a salad

waiting and willing the lawn
to die
to go brown

it’s the drought, you see
but really
i hate mowing the lawn
a conspiratorial whisper

or maybe i’m hallucinating
from the heat
since there’s no one there

Poem 20150815

August 15, 2015 crow

the face seems
not quite right
maybe the chin too soft
or the brow not strong enough

no
something insouciant
about the mouth

but the clay
–red on the hands
red on the fingers
red under the fingernails–
the clay forgives
and forgives
and forgives

while you can fix a
broken nose
with a thumb and your index
finger

and scrape away
the lips with
a wire loop
and start again

you can’t re-sculpt
any words that pass
those lips

Poem 20150814

August 14, 2015November 22, 2015 crow

refusing dinner
the post-surgery dog whines
demanding a treat

Poem 20150813

August 13, 2015 crow

a sinking feeling
comes when you
examine yourself

socrates said
the unexamined life
is not worth living

but he wound up
inhaling hemlock
because he was such
an ornery bastard
when he could have
just moved to
another city

it’s the principle
of the thing
you might say

i’m inclined to agree but
so is turning off
the light
every time you pass
a mirror

Poem 20150812

August 12, 2015 crow1 Comment

the tree falls
almost without a sound
or without enough sound
would be a better way
to say it

the slow leaning
the uprooting
the huge tractor
pushing it over
a bully on a school
playground

to make way for
boxlike houses

not a single bird flies
out of the branches
maybe they abandoned it
long before the heavy
machinery showed up

clever birds

Poem 20150811

August 11, 2015 crow2 Comments

spinning and twisting
like a middle school
science fair
project on DNA
made of multicolored
styrofoam balls

jammed together with
white toothpicks
or popsicle sticks
notes about bases
peeling where the glue
didn’t keep it
attached to the poster board

points off for that

we twist and spin
an expression of genes
phenotypes
and madness in the blood
and in the bones
and in the loins

we spin
we turn
driven down
into the earth
like screws
tightened down
by the immaculate
divine
hand

Poem 20150810

August 10, 2015 crow

step into the light
and everything about
you is

illuminated

the glow starts
in the blood
like a 50s sci-fi movie
about a man

with radioactive bones
who becomes incandescent when
angry
or
in love

everything is hard to look
at when you’re the sun
when you burn
in the pit of your stomach
the palms of your hands
and the sockets of your eyes
are fire

Poem 20150809

August 9, 2015August 9, 2015 crow

it isn’t as if
the future
–any of the potential futures–
depended on where
i placed the comma
or broke

the line

no wormhole opened up
when i changed a word
no future me or alternate reality me
stepped out
buffed up beyond belief
wearing an eyepatch
with a thin scar running
under it
from forehead to chin

to warn me
–not that metaphor
or
–why not a traditional meter

like i would have listened

i don’t owe them shit

let the future worlds
and alternate worlds
take their chances with my words

i take my chances with them
every time i type