Tracers 5

Once you hear
you can't unsee.
For the thrill;
willing to peek
around a corner.

Missing Ingredient

Bass.
Each heartbeat a
universe.
Manifest preached-
Bass.

Polyhedron

As a child
Grading papers
You are bad
You are good
There are rules.

Why aren't doors larger?
Why aren't appliances smaller?
Why is the standard so?

Average human.
Average hands.
Average height.
Average weight.
Average machines?

///disconnect.

You are good.
You are not bad.
Grading papers.
As a child.
There are rules

Why are there doors?
Why aren't appliances a little smaller?
The standard is so.

I won't go back.
I can't go back.
I will not go back!
I cannot go back.

The Ancients 2

Cigarette butt circles chrome sink drain
and catches against the manhole cover
chrome plug.

Tinnitus shaped curl
aerator screamed
hush.

Glance backward
to see
the dune peak alive with beads.

Fuffs of sand scrolling backward
as the lake large as an ocean
sings to a freshwater jam band.

The gales
the chorus. Trees misshapen,
rooted as near as
the inland sea would allow.
Eyes to the medicine cab'

mirror for a sun.  Hairs held in place
by grains of sand.
 

           
          Do you not shower?
          Do you not wash?



       I've seen no ocean like that before.

Walk Like an Angel (junkyard mix)

I'm still getting used.
The hammers fall
and heels kllonk.

Onward to the sun.
The powder mixed wrong.
Stepped on again; Gods damned it.

Films slide by
the way skins peel off of lips.
My glasses.  My glasses!  My glasses!
Have you ever been stranded
two miles offshore
to swim for your life if you want to?

A horse and a slay
to carry the day.
Grandma was senile when she died.

Something so beautacious
so silly gorgeous and sporting
so fresh, you ragamuffin!
"Yeah" is not "Yes".

Or was that Marie.
Or was that Harvey.
Envy the extended families and
burn them to death that
you may collect their bones
if you deign to take the time to know.

Tea, with a dash of
concentrated pet milk from a can and
two cubes, decaf of course.
A walk to the salon and a
car ride that stinks
of the carpets tread plastic shoes.

Plants grow, windows shut, insects
stuck to the laundry tree.
G.I. Joes and laughter and matchbox cars
and tiny apples and fear
hanging in the corner of every room.
Grandfather clock chime.
Twitching blue nailed toes.
Why didn't the nerve sever.
56 books beneath the coffee table.
Mirror wall for space for what.
Dead dog statue.
What was its name.
Why are the plants not outside.
The garage is packed.
What is that smell
inside of my backpack?
I don't want to sleep on the floor again.
Is she going to die?
The clocks are unfit.
Where are the encyclopedias.
The chairs are many.
The jokes are thin.
Be a man.
Bury your secrets.


Tube Socks

Arrayed beside the new pack
you're nice.  Pink from the day I tossed you in
with the red hoodie I've been meaning to return
to that lovely fellow, Justin.
Thread bare, some of you, when I forgot to clip
my fingernails and pulled up to my heel
a tiny bit too hard and your ankle opened
with a "yowch!"  Floppy necked from
days behind the wheel, sweating, sweating, sweating,
never the same after I peeled you away
from my brown skin turned gray
from a sauna boot.
Black half sideways stripes from the time
my bicycle chain locked and my shoe
tangled in the toe cage and my foot
sprung free of the laces only to catch in
black greased chain links and slowly tip over
unable to get off the finicky road machine.
Timber!
A new pack.  Is there anything nicer?
The thick threads not yet beaten flat.
The odor of odorlessness.
Empty odometers, the lot of you.
Excitement ripping the package open hurling
them every which way.
First the left foot.  Then the right.

Well there is something nicer.

How about that first stroke of a new deoderant?

Ooooooooh, that is a good one.

To the general store!

Migrations By Day

Near the bend of the rosy afternoon rays
and the elbow of tail lights shuffling
through the tall grass of radio towers
and high tension lines rising through
the ebb of tree limbs
announces the trail master, with a huff
and spray, "this way!"

Along the line
each humped beast replies,
with a huff and spray above,
"yes, this way.  This way to home!"
Some mist, some sway, some
trundle along content
to snuffle the footprints before to know
which way.

The turn comes ours and
trunk reared up
the windshield clouds with
washer fluid misting from ahead.
We join in the display
for the ones behind
who may not know.
Thumb into the shower knob,
the wipers go
and purple deicer fluid, unchanged from
the seasons of snow,
fills the air and joins the dust all around
the orange cones of construction
yet to begin.

"Yes this way," hand out of the open window
to cool the day's heat , "yes, this way
to our weekends and home!"