Easter groceries

Mystic

Under daylight, a mystic learns science,
with music, history learns manners,
and for a second, the choir takes a breath.

the weather comes to us!

a thunderstorm grew above the interstate,
so we followed the funnel clouds east of Ardmore
in the now hail-littered countryside
and we drove over the fresh green leaves
laid at our feet like palm leaves leading to Jerusalem.

a family stood out on their porch
to capture the purple and gray growing mountains
and the radio reminded us every two minutes
take cover, find a bathtub!

we had box seats for the devastation, where
our adrenaline grew the lifting storm. where
the people who lived so long
in window boxes stretching out for sunlight
now had the weather come to them.

to the children of automobiles

to the children of automobiles, 
to the servants of technology:
live reality as it erupts in front of you.  
come to tears with me in the morning
when the frost forms and we hold out our arms
to soak solar radiation.

I have tried so long to find closeness
in the hot swarm of cheap communication,
in a blue glow, but I want to start anew. 
this will be my confession.

oh, women, I haven't seen you look as rich 
as the Americas, you didn't swim after me
when the hills opened up to swallow me alive,
when I went to take apart the university brick by brick. 
but I tore it down nevertheless!

at the Yellow Brick Road, it was two beers, 
two games of pool, "I hear it's a lesbian bar!" 
and "what can I getcha darling?"
my soul longed for this
dark world of comfort and darts.

my soul and I have earned this richness.  
I paid it forward with cheap PBRs,
black coffee, and water-water-water. 
my parents paid it forward in a old suburb
built by a dirty river, 
where the interstates come, cross, and carry
air-conditioned families on through to the west.

when Tulsa was the oil capital of the world,
it built a Gold Driller, but sure enough,
Moses came down the mountain and dried it up.  
so in desperation we moved further south, 
we made the streets wider and the driveways taller.
forgive us, downtown.

let me admit, I spent my savings 
on french fries and tacos,
I gave away my good fortune 
to fly airplanes, and I turned in my
Badge for Good Ole Boys
Who Can Still Make Their Mommas Proud.
careful who you deputize, mom.

an early morning airport
keeps my conscience at bay,
faltering for a passport in his saggy pockets.  
every night that I shot full of lead,
every girl that I dipped in copper, 
and every piece of silver moonlight
that I tarnished green 
won't make it though the metal detector.
I'm almost to the gate. 

what the world is coming to today

"what is the world coming to? are we being too loud?"
I like the idea our planet is finding a destination out in space
and our voices won't be holed up in a mute apartment
or folded in the trunk of a lincoln towncar
while we try to kick the taillights out.

"everyone else is whispering here, should we keep talking?"
yes, and we'll be in an opera's balcony for our inheritance:
a planet speed-delivered to almostthisplaceagaininayear,
but hopeful, because the earth has one life too.
Don't convince yourself that you are an unclaimed suitcase
on the baggage carousel, you'll be found
when a businessman is done buying a pretzel.

"if I walk too far in the wind, will it carry me off?"
yes, and good morning you entrepreneur of emotion,
all of you is orbiting right next to me!  something like
a merry-go-round and the flaking horses are worth the wait--
look there's my mom...blurrrrrrrrrr...and there she is again!
go bowling with your gold globe, because you know
these neighborhoods, these roads by heart.

same kingdom, new species

"las aves delgades del aire, / las dirreciones de la dicha."
"they are the slim birds of the air, / the directions of joy."
From "El desnudo" by Pablo Neruda.

they are the destroyers of airplanes, the builders of forests,
aptitude of the atmosphere and flyweights of feathers
patted down and tucked under the shoulder.
nothing so contaminating, eventful, scavenging,
or random in joy or space. same kingdom, new species.

in the wettest part of the jungle, in the oldest ruins
of mankind, are the warm wing flashes for a berry.
nothing so fresh! like an oriole in the crumbling downtown,
fishing for red brick crumbs. a bath of french fries
on the patio and the world's a gum wrapper.

and the nine percent chance I'll make my mind into
a bird is enough to drive the flock away. in the dust
a cartoon puff of plumes before the beaks settle down.
joy is cohesion and the explosion of tiny, hollow bones
that are perfectly random.

welcome, valentine, to the personal ads

welcome, valentine, to the personal ads. I think you'll sleep
in those human flea market columns tonight,
but I envy you still.

the men in the bar drink while they sing, I think that's fine.
and quiet girls sit home writing love letters
to boys they haven't met.

that's a table of empty coronas and a shelf of journals
if you're keeping score. here I do my best
to hedge my bets.

Don't fold up faster than the tide

Don't fold up faster than the tide when it snows. You are brown!
All silk scarf and the sofa's warm end. I have a plan for your life
just like the woman who walked past
and you laughed.

Is that your sister across the green door from us?
Well, why not? She hasn't taken her weather gear off yet, but
her coffee is open on the top.  Oh, hey barista!
Yes I'd like another.

Old man zigzag with two white ice cream
cone beards says peace to us. And peace is my car battery
and the engine's grr purr.  Warm pavement
means slush and sunshine.

I'm setting the stage for a one act novella opera haiku
and you're the star, woman.  And you're the Star Woman!
Build me a magazine and I'll fly it for you, columns on bourbon
pics of colours.

Two cups of joe and I've got a harebrained avalanche of Yes!
Thank you, calendar girl, I'll bet you have a sister or two
in the ink past of January.  Can I take a gray blob eraser
over last week too?

Understand this, mon amie, I don't speak French and the
red light is more than I can bear.  Every person I know is
dangling from a mobile next to the chandelier.  All my kingdom
for February 5th.

midnight mass

midnight mass christmas eve and already, the 27th,
there's butchers blood on my shoes and I can't keep my palms clean.
it's nearly time for my conscience to come calling from tulsa.

later, the sky is gold and blue and pink, and I'm in the back seat
following a smudge of black birds with my eyes
then our station wagon intersects underneath.

later, the bike ride from your apartment tasted like snow
and I was hyper-aware of my hands on the grip
and I thought of all my molecules separately when I was home.

it was cold as sin and I was hungry as sin and the low
warm fog gave me energy for an hour.  the sunlight that eased
inside all afternoon escaped orange through the blinds.

good friends, I have a dream of wholeness:
for this year, I'm a mass of tissue stronger than a paper trail,
brighter than projection, and as warm as blood

a rant, fully out of context

I think Wilde is wrong, wrong in that flowers are useless
or that art is a mood
I think it's more like a mind that is displayed
on a pedestal
and so we have a conversation with it.

discussion brings reform and we want to be reformed!

not polite or civil, but constantly reshaped and resharpened
by the world in a painter's creation.

and today, the trending photography in blurs and browns?
oh, it's fashionable
for a reason
and thus for only a use. then let's not overuse!
let's not follow the shy colors and mixed shapes of Fall
with Fall with Fall with Fall.

it's old because it's in style.

and on Miro, is art more than the aesthetic
we give to it?
can we revel in the ugly because we appreciate
how it hasn't been done before?
I hope so, in that case we can relax our critique.

no! no! ugly is easy. too easy, almost accidentally easy
and art is in the challenges
that make it profound.
it challenges me and I want to admire someone
who can overcome better than I.

there isn't a disconnect
between what we make and what influences us.
you'll never separate our habits
from the atomic structure of our hands.
meaning this: as detached as we make ourselves
there is always a cause
which is often unseen and unnoticed by the viewer.

but art is an effect! effects have causes
and causes are us.

and who is a sculptor
besides the person who visits the quarry, the tool store
and prepares the garage space?

or a painter
besides the student who learns the right techniques
and has a set of brushes.

there's no distinction between who is real
and who is an immature creator. And we wish there was
a divide
but we aren't sure what side we'd be on.
and there's beauty in the comparable
when the man and woman behind them
are so dissimilar.

I for one am done comparing myself
to my peers
to find any worth. I want to match up against my heroes
and find a similarity
and say 'yes, this is valuable in me as well'
and move on
and keep creating.

yes, I'll never be known as the artist
or writer. OK.

I can agree with Oscar on one point:
art isn't about selling or the money.
apartments are and their rent is
food is
gasoline is
galleries are
but not the works themselves!
when we make a new friend we like to show them
our home, as with a painting.
and then the price is born.

the artist has to get by.
but aren't artists motivated by the money?
yes. yes. yes.
but money is made more easily elsewhere.

modern woman, cold salad

modern woman, cold salad of disbelief,
I want to break you all apart
and take your breakfast, steam
your bloodlines—Hades or some Trinidad.

knock all week, brass on oak
like a turquoise scattering back
and forth in a bathtub until you
find the drain, then a lead ess pipe.

hello conquistador! go expand your
neighborhood, allow the plague for boredom.
find 'outside' as your father left it since
he never expected you to follow.

a swarm of pores, weak
but your skin's still living. "ah, Andrew
you're very kind."  keep listening then—
a new priority, girl!

crush the alphabet, at least.  your elbow is an ell
lead pipe on the keyboard. you're a lovely dialtone,
there are no vocals, no pulse on the line.
you are all lead pipes, it seems.

go to hell, you

go to hell, you transcendentalist, I'm still here in the thick of it on the 23rd st exit by a man with the crumpled sign, "every little bit helps."

and come swim with me in reality, in an explanation of winter, all bitterness but bold self-miracle of survival.

I stalled, while you planned your escape through the turnstiles of the fairgrounds, your parents' kingdom, and your love books.

soon is "we're so glad to have you back," but I've run out of canned soup and ice has me wrapped up here, buried in a sunday paper.

it's monday, so forgive me tuesday and I'll be welcome again.  I'm no threat to your sleep, I won't stir much. can I give him my gloves and hat, and you what's left over?

I need no gravity to fall into my old order, but give me a week to control my mouth.