Engine trouble

The man was not just skinny but scraggly.

His mother kept telling him to get a job. He still listened to his mother.

He worked. He worked in an auto-shop learning lubes and fine-tuning-

Until they stopped making them

like they used to.

His father used to 

drink alcohol like a liquor store sprinter. Naturally, he got thirsty too, and drank

and stank the same as his father, his mother would say every day.

Grease or oil, bitter battery acid or brake fluid and gin, 

and all over again, the evolved monkey man

with the sooty stained hands that exclude him from white paper work, shows silver

linings along his brow.

Every now and then he picks up a brush, a ladder, a little girl and moves just a stroke away

from happiness in his days. His mother said she prays for him.

He should have picked up a shovel or an ice pick, manners or a real lady,

but is too weak to make them work

for him.

He falls into a five year hole. 

He comes out in smooth pieces, 

none fit tight and his well-being wont hold water, slipping on surfaces,

He is sees light

And knows he is being saved for another life, another 

day to die, his mother said ladies first when he listened.

The old lady in a broken down car, pulled over on the roadside waves for help, 

it is all white and frozen, steam surrounds her.

The mechanic stops

himself for a moment 

before moving on, 

simply too skinny to spare anything-

a white canvas, waiting for him to return 

the favor.



Painting by Jacob Jordaens, The Satyr and the peasants (1620) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

How the paper crumbles

Tiny tufts of binder paper speckle the ground like bread

crumbs leading to the bulging trash bin.

A blotched tattoo on the outside of the right pinkie,

signal lines filled in and out, a writers stamp.

That far away look is not a place others may go.

Declawed and domesticated, the body observes

and stalks the other.

Taking it all in scraps left over much too much,

nauseated, not needing much more

than nibbles found inside spiral ring cages, 

scratches to self, all

half-fulfilled by my stunted scepter.

Thinking there was more than enough time

to put the ending first, to do the editing in trim tufts,

to say this is my home, this is lace, this belongs

and this is sewn to hold more

meaning, 

to say here is a poem

and poof, it is flown away.


Image By Anonymous [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Buteo regionalis

Buteo regionalis:

Skeeter, he said.

Skeeter eaters, 

                         we were noting the explosion.

No doubt you know the kind,

                          And he’s telling me these 

                          hordes of skeeters

do not eat or attack, they do not even snack.

Now the water skeeters, are blood suckers,

                          Those bite back-

Jesus

Bugs,

he says of the miraculous vampires

that walk or stride on water, yes I confess

                           this is super natural.

Despite my slight Entomophobia

                           I think it might be nice to be plated

                           like the armadillo or rolly-polly bug

or hover just so, like a dragonfly.

The cockroach will survive the apocalypse,

by digging down deeper when the air changes.

We laugh about this, the order of the species.

He is the same guy that made people paste with honey.

An Africanized bee wags its bottom, pointedly, 

                            next to us,

Its head tucked deep into the dripping honeysuckle,

And I cheer-

Bottoms Up,

Honey, I say, I think we are looking at it wrong-

perhaps we are reading the final order upside

                             Down.

Irritated with me, 

                              He finally conceded.

Artwork By Smith, Jessie Willcox, 1863-1935 (artist); L. Prang & Co. (publisher) (Flickr: In the Garden) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Recycling poetry

When we are children,
all we take in
is Poetry.
In adolescence
we lean on Prose
without punctuation,
growing longer to gauge the resistance
of rooftops attached to support beams.
It seems maturity makes less time
for more meaning,
the old begin shrinking time
too little to learn anything less
than Poetry.




Painting by Eero Järnefelt, 1895 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Conversion: Haiku(s) 3

To start to learn a

Poem, beginning in love

Ends inside physics.

To try to poem

Muse in music but listen

Particulate-ly.

Make something better

Hang words, draw self, a stick man

The fire needs you.

Image: Edward Steichen, 1921 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Description from wiki: "Steichen was on holiday in Venice in 1921 at the same time as the dancer Isadora Duncan who was on her way to Greece with her dance troupe. With the promise that Steichen would be able to make motion pictures of her dancing on the Acropolis, Isadora persuaded him to accompany her. While she managed to pose for a few photographs at the Parthenon, it was with her pupil and adopted daughter Thérèse that Steichen produced this startling and remarkable image: She was a living reincarnation of a Greek nymph. Once, while photographing the Parthenon, I lost sight of her, but I could hear her. When I asked where she was, she raised her arms in answer. I swung the camera around and photographed her arms against the background of the Erechtheum. And then we went out to a part of the Acropolis behind the Parthenon, and she posed on a rock, against the sky with her Greek garments. The wind pressed the garments tight to her body, and the ends were left flapping and fluttering. They actually crackled. This gave the effect of fire -- 'Wind Fire' (Steichen, A Life in Photography, np)"

Simile like a lady

They say she was like

No metaphor-thus appears

Everywhere. Here. See. 


Art By Daderot (Own work) [Public domain or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Skipping sounds

Thrown stones at glass ponds

Reflecting cracks or ripples,

though heard, no echo…

Painting By Józef Chełmoński, Pond in Radziejowice, (1898) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.