horse flood

(dayton, oh : april, 17 1978)

here there is a standing gravestone with nothing more than my name inlayed upon it : this past saturday i sat with a doctor who recorded my blood pressure & then inquired, are you certain that you are alive...right now? : holy holy holy is a home blessed with the arrival of a new life : & handsome handsome are the eager spring dogwoods now flowering : the others, the cherry blossoms, are quicker to turn to shit before summer : several months ago, while driving through a north seattle neighborhood with _____, we both confessed our immaculate dream of a domestic mysticism : we pictured our separate lives within the walls of each house passed : but i knew the face of the woman with me, just behind the doors, both of us sitting at the inherited dining room tables & the ones in the kitchens, crafted from antique woods that i reclaimed from rotting farmland barns over the course of several consecutive sundays : she would walk during these days : take the $1,200 baby stroller for a walk : wheels taller than any baby : at 6 i will still suck my thumb : at 14 i will break it : 4 years later i'll write a bad check to fill my nose : i'll lick the collected dust from the backside of a toilet bowl and not feel my face for hours : each of the world's flowers is made with more purpose than i (st.) : the heart knows no warning signal (m. de chazal) : every so often my brain begins bouncing off the inside walls of my cranium before finally settling again :

a capacious oak tree began to fill my belly at a most fragile age : & now a capricious horse bellies up to its trunk seeking shade : those first days had long since squeezed my mind's eye dry : i'm now left with only these two-- snow-blind & listing far across a black prairie :

a sea, bordered by blue windows

(seattle, april 2011)

a true story: 2 priests walked into the bar last night : the tall one was from miles city, montana, & he told me his fantastical story-- the story of how his family arrived there & continued, steinbeck-style, as migrant farmers, to the pacific northwest : i told him a tired 33 year long tale, van winkle-style, of my arrival in seattle & he proclaimed my path unbelievable-- untenable at best : i asked him, worried-like, how one might go about making up a life & the conversation ended :

outside, down the street, a red fox squirreled around a collection of greening trees & leafed eastward : home, perhaps :

(seattle, april 2011)

she dreams of, & paints, fruits & vegetables from different parts of the country : a georgia squash resting on a california lettuce of acrylic : maybe a north dakota carrot nearby : & all of washington's onions rolling toward the ocean across a pale dirt :

when without paints she cuts up & pastes collages of the same sort : i once witnessed her place a pear floating in the sky among some painted clouds : it was raining seeds : & that was the last of the collages :

(seattle, march 2011)

in the morning she wakes up thinking of all the empty busses rounding the city at night, when no one is looking : when she breathes in, the street lights flicker and cut out : when she opens her eyes the quiet busses fill with wanton babies caught in conversations of paramount concern : will living always seem a rhetorical act of incompletion? asks one, while looking out the window : must we teethe? says another : & finally, in chorus, why not flowers all year round? :

(seattle, march 2011)

dear whoever is listening : i'm not too frightened of now or where my mind might take me tomorrow, but i'm terrified of you not noticing : oh, & whenever i see a pit-bull my body does exactly what it's not supposed to do : i tense up & my heart starts doing kart-wheels, which makes pit-bulls a bit wary of me : but as for us, next time you see me looking out toward the boats, or up to the trees, or alone, looking to the floor on a bus-- let's take special notice of each other : & make this our secret :