Intestate

Reaching fifty eight
And I know exactly
Where everything 
Goes

I also know exatly
Where everything doesn't
Go

It goes where to the

World

A brother's death

 They fought

They fought like 

They fought like cats and

Dogs

(As my mother said)

And now she is dead

And now he is dead

I really can imagine them 

Fighting

Forever

Some ginormous ur 

Fight

Kind of like 

Normal,

Right?

Lost Dog

I saw a lost dog this morning
Cantering uneasily, its head
Looking back and forward
Trying to scan where it had
Been towards where it was
Going, not recognizing either
Way

I was walking too but knew 
Where I was going: down the 
Block from my house for 
Exercise and back again;
Down to the far corner
Where three roads meet at
Odd angles. There were no
Cars on the roads,  and the
Dog stuck to the sidewalk
Still, I worried about him and
Turned to watch him jog
Down the block, and turned to
Follow

But the dog was faster than
me, and I wasn't about to break
Into a jog myself. I don't need
That kind of exercise hammering
My old knees and then he took
A corner turn at the big maple,
Gone from my view so I turned
Around and continued on to
Home.

Paul

I've told you about
Paul

My friend who died 
Running across the 
Street

He was in the right
By the way, the bus
Had clearly stopped
Flashing

Lights, a clear warning
The car sped through
Though, killing Paul,
Throwing him into the 
Bus

Masked, looking forward
To a day full of fun and 
Candy,  he crossed mask
Down

And then Paul
Was dead just like 
That

The bus driver was
Dean

My Friend

 When I was six
I couldn't tie my 
Shoes

No one had taught
Me 
See

But Paul showed me
How just loop this one
Over that one and then
Loop

Paul was killed on
Halloween

Struck by a
Neglectful 
Driver

Dead at six

Wearing a 

Mask

Bittersweet

Imagine being a boy
But not quite a boy
That transition stage
Of adolensence when
You are not man but not
Boy

Imagine being a man
But not quite a man
That transition stage
Of adolensence when
You are not boy but not
Man

My brother, my sweet
Sweet brother once said
I don't see a man, when
I was that moment
Between

It sticks with you, those
Words

My sternum has calcified

I've been thinking about this for a few
Hours
My sternum turned to bone

All of a sudden

I knew a cat
With a similar
Condition

Sternum protruding
From his furry 
Chest

The vet said 
It was noting to
Worry

About

But I worried
And I am
Worried

I hope you are well. Take care.

 This is let me take a minute let me take a break
This is how we or do we take a break or can we 
Are you sure we can or this is how we do or are 
Are are are are are you are you are you are you
Over

Take a break

Dirty River

Rivers wash away
Carrying our shit
To who knows where
But who knows, knows
Where

There must have been
Some first human, bedecked
In naked who realized this
As he watched his shit 
Float

This was supposed to be
Pretty. This was supposed
To make me think of green
And leafy things, so strong
Crisp

Snapping against our legs
As we break the grass before
Us working so hard to reach
The shore where we can 
Shit

Signifying nothing's Cabinet of Curiosities

I have an old lap top that I wasn't using, so I installed Linux on it, to revisit my fascination with computers, writing, and photography (among other things).  You can also find a live webcam, which calls back to the early days when I engaged in such foolishness.  All the devices on my home network at all named after birds, so here is in all its curious glory:  Signifying nothing's Cabinet of Curiosities (https://chickadee.signifyingnothing.us).

Never Realized Move Plots #3 (Written While Driving Too Fast on the Freeway): RUNAWAY ROBOT

Scene opens on ROBOT running
Away, across a grey, meteor-pitted
Landscape

It is Ganymede, so there are flashes
Of green and blue and red in the grey
Ash

But mostly it is grey which makes it
Difficult to perceive ROBOT who is
Running

Away cross the screen, over the jagged
Pitted surface of a desolate moon of
Jupiter

The planet looms high in the black inky
Sky--washed out and pale since this was the
Fifities

But actually probably more accurate than
Our oversaturated present, with its wandering
Robots

Who are, technically, also running away
Without legs, of course, but with outlandish
Speed

ROBOT is running away from something
He may not even remember, since his memory
 Banks

Are full of pain and suffering of some kind
Inflicted on him on Ganymede by those who
Love

But ultimately hate him.  So he runs; he runs
And he is most assuredly crafted in metal to be
Male

He runs, this ROBOT with pencil thin legs
Radio head with yellow blinking light and
Antennae

And the scene fades as he runs, now a tiny
Glistering speck of metal against a vast, vast
Grey

Never Realized Movie Plots #2 (Imagined to be written on a grocery story receipt)

It is 1975
A solo dog runs across
Scene

Panning back 
The camera reveals
Wreckage

Two cars have
Collided, 70's
Cars

Big boxy beasts
With lots of plastic
Wood

And chrome, plastic
Chrome for miles and
Miles

Slumped over the
Wheel of one is Lucille
Ball

She was drunk, of course
Having just Tonight
Showed

In the day, because day
Filming and day
Drinking

And you would go to
A doctor and be offered
Scotch

The other driver is
Groucho escaping his
Abuser

70's TV comedy
Ensues with biopic
Pathos

Never Realized Movie Plots #1 (Written on grocery store receipts)

For some reason
Main Character
Has to make a
Sudden escape
In a self-propelled
Parade float

Papier-mâché
Bursting into 
Butterflies of 
Wafting paper
(Replete with 
Accent marks)
Careening this
Way and That

Tissue paper
Streaming like
Toilet paper
Caught on your
Heal

I, Robot

I hover over my new vacuum
Robot, not to monitor their duty
To the job, but out of sheer joy
And

Amazement. Yes, I am that kid
Still who sincerely believed that
A gift of walkie-talkies was the
Absolute best best best and I love
You forever, oh wow oh wow oh
I

The robot comes in a plain brown
Box, like porno mags used to be
Delivered. Uncle Ken had Playboy
Sent to his house and had a TransAm
Aunt Wanda loved him and loved that
TransAm

Now that's where it gets complicated
This salacious appeal to my boyish
Desires that were entirely sexual but
Had nothing to do with sex as anyone
Might define it. Desire. Desire? Is it 
Understandable?

No, so I hover over this robot, watching
How they negotiate this wild mountain
Of rug, this leg of lamp, this chair that
Keeps moving because I keep moving
It

And I am in sheer ecstasy. Such a
Simple and wonderful thing. The 
Code runs through my mind.
Decision trees play out in simple
Desire

Desire to clean, desire to map--desire
To know.  I hover over my little round
Friend because I have to.  That's me
Down there.  Seeking the map.  Seeking
The spots to suck up the detritus of a
Decade

I just realized

That's me in the back there
The baby in his mother's arms
Her wild hair but her recognizable
Face

She is foisting me into the row of
Her children, Larry in front, so much
Like me, or I guess I am so much like
Him, but so not like me and so
Himself

Like me.  He's objecting to something
And Michael the oldest brother so
Assured but so yeah, what do you say
And sweet Annette, there she is
In control, like she always needed to be
Sad

It is. Let's let that go, though let's be 
The hovering infant your mother
Wants to foist in line with the rest
But yeah, it makes me wonder as
I look at the line of my siblings
To see the lines of cousins, like us
Lined

It makes me feel the sad loss of 
Douglas, so big, so young, so him
Striped shirt and ready to become
Dead at 30 of a brain tumor with 
A child

I don't know even half of these
People and the half I do know
I've lost, lost somewhere in the 
Tensions of family. I'd like to
Though. 

Toast

Ive been thinking a lot about life these days

I'm intrigued by how the little things like eating toast

Seems to mean something

(Yeah I'm writing a poem)

But I am thinking a lot about

Life These days 

Losing weight

But I probably live in that Romantic world where things Matter.

I can understand Faust when you hear a song like That. But the best song ever, you know that I think, Isn't.

Bottle Collecting

 When I was a kid
My brothers and cousins
And other neighborhood
Children

Would wander along the
Roadside between our
Well-spaced farm
Houses

To collect bottles thrown
From passing cars to cover
For a night of sinful
Living

These were liquor bottles
You see, and in my small
Mormon town, drinking was
Forbidden

To most, but by the time
We were done collecting
(When being a teen was a
Thing

And collecting discarded
Booze bottles no longer
Held fascination and petulance
Ruled)

We had hundreds and hundreds
Of bottles lining the walls of
One of my cousin's old farm
Shacks

I don't recall ever once thinking
How strange it was that we had
So many, even in our small dry
Town

And we certainly never thought
Of drinking any of the few sips
Left sloshing against the thick
Glass

Occasionally, though, we unscrewed
The caps and sniffed the sweetness
Liquor wafted through the small
Shack

Last Temptation of Christ

 I've been reading Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ and was struck right from the start how well it could be adapted into a one season television series (unless, of course, the producers would want to carry on with the second coming in season two--which might be a hoot.)  Each chapter could be a complete episode, and would rely on the iconographic feel that the imagery in the book has.  I mean Greek iconography--the icons that the iconoclast worked so hard to destroy (but in the long run failed to.)  The visual design of the piece would be magnificently surreal, like those icons. I can see lots of flat lines of disciplines lined up in rows, warmed in golden light. Perhaps the irony would be that they would be dressed as "ragamuffins" as the translator so gleefully used the word, rather than all kitted up like Byzantine aristocracy.  Jesus's baptism strikes one as a perfect set piece from the book, with its Roshomonesque quality of no one quite certain what actually happened (nor hearing what the bird said).  I can see it playing out in several different versions on screen--one magnificent and trascendant--one gritty and realist--and one, perhaps, surreal.  No doubt it is a book that probably shouldn't be made into any thing else but the book it is, though.

Polyester

 When I was a kid the only clothes I
 Recall my mother wearing were made of
 Polyester

(Polyester fabric is concocted
From the tears of dinosaurs, oil rich
And strong with fibrous fear learned hard in the
swamps)

"These pants would survive a nuclear war,"
She declared as she pulled them fast and
Taught over her hips, pulling the elastic wide
And letting go of the band with a pleasing
Snap

And nuclear war was a possible thing back then,
You see.  While we may not have dived under 
Desks at the first sound of a siren, we all knew
That the possibility was there that we could wake
Up dead, or worse, and that there would be no more
Saturdays

We watched it on the jittery rolling lines of TV
Saw the flash saw the bones saw the flesh melt
Away because of a disagreement about how the
Economy was supposed to run and how poor people
Were supposed to be poor in each, which rules 
They were to obey and which leaders they should
Adhere

(Karl Marx, by the way, dreamed of living in a
Hut, where, when approached, he would dole
Out life advice to the poor sots who were just
Looking for directions to the nearest Chevron
But he'd go on, and on, and the visitors kept
Inching further back from his threshold in
Silence

Only to run--finally escape and end up at Charles
Darwin's hut, replete with desiccated samples of 
This and that bug, and this and that plant and this
And that life. Darwin had nothing to say, other 
Than "Live with it." And inching back inching
Away, Darwin takes and interest and thrust a bug
In her face

"That's it!" the visitor declares, shoving her hands
Deep into non-existent polyester pockets to find
Nothing but fibrous rage. Turning sharp, she next
Finds the hut of Adam Smith, who is too busy counting
Gold to even answer the rasping knock of flesh on
Palm fronds

"Get to work," is the only thing he says)

But I digress

Raking

 When my grandfather visited
    (a rare occasion since he lived
     so far away across mountains
     of crumbling red sandstone and
     vast valleys of sea green sage)
He would be up at dawn
Every morning to rake the yard
Of sticks and leaves and paper
Blown in by the wind
He grasped the rake firmly with
His one good hand, using his
Frozen arm to counterbalance

Later, not long after he passed
While looking at books on
Japanese dry gardens,  I made
The connection.  Who am I to 
Know whether or not he had
Made it too while the rake
Scratched pattern and form,
Order and purpose on the clay
Back and forth. Back and forth
Taking away that which doesn't
Belong

Listening to all your iTunes Library Reverse Alphabetical Order

I have no idea how many 
                                    Songs
Are on this old iMac 
    (a fine machine that runs

Fine)

But in reverse
            Alpha
                        beti
                                cal

Order

They start with numbers

Starting with 9999 (Ways to Hate Us)
    by
        the

Clutters

Your are soon rolling through the decades

        2002  (a lost love letter to a lost) 

                                Love

And suddenly you are walking 2000 miles,

            Pretending,

Remembering the snow falling down

    And maybe missing

                But not missing and no children

Singing

And then you are in the heart of 1999 and all the regrets

                                                Riff you

                            Though when you first hear that song

            It was long before anything burst

       Anything popped

Anything slumped

    Long before                    

                        Any hint of that loss

(of all all time)

And then 1979 and you feel young and it is summer and it is

        1995 and you are in 

                                        Love

Wisdom

When you are seven
It is to be expected
But at fifty-six it is
Concerning

But these days most
Have wisdom removed
While young

I always had a big
Mouth and even the
Dentist was amazed
That they had come in
Early

So strong, at the back
Waiting to have a full
Life 

When your are young
You expect it but now
Now? Tooth loosening
And then it is in your
Hand

Fingertips edging the
Points, wondering how
The curved legs fit
In the sudden, hole
Unbleeding

And you remember
When you were seven
And your brothers
Had the brilliant idea
To yank your bicuspid
Out with a string
As a sudden surprise

You are surprised

Heart of the Continent

 So many centers
So many lights

                                        Where do you think you are?

Where do you think you should be?

We used to unfold maps
                                            Crease by crease
And there we were
At the heart
                        Of the Continent

Folding them back 
                                Was impossible

Never right

                    Always crumpled and scrunched

The Heart of the Continent

                            Never back where it should be

Where you should be

Where you think you should be

So many centers so many lights

So many dots

So so many lines

Heart of the Continent

What if I Prefer to Sell My Property

 There are a lot of different options being considered

No, that doesn't have 

I will stand my ground no matter what

I am more hopeful than worried

There are solutions that we don't even know they exist

Maxine Kumin died

She of the plane with her mother holding a package

Died

Dies

Died

Simple letter

She dies and it is still this year

It is still this shit

It is still this same

A package, you hold as the plane dives

And suddenly 

            Suddenly

Survies

Cremate this

For over forty years
We have been simply
Updating our
Files

Why aren't you dead
Yet?  Why can't we
Simply burn you
Yet

We don't use wood
Oh no no oH
That's not ergonomically
Environmental

Simply simply simply
As we go on some light
Fantastic

Toe

But burn, we do.  Burn
And you'll just be scritchy
Puff bone and a lot of
Blow

We're just updating our
Files

Year 55

I was born in the eleventh hour
Fifty minutes and some odd seconds
My mother took the gas
Why wouldn't you, she would say
Later

I was born in the eleventh hour
Umbilical cord wrapped around my
Neck, jaundiced, kept in the hospital
Birthmarked

I was supposed to be dead
Choked by that which was
Supposed to sustain me

Well I'm alive.

I was born in the eleventh hour
Of some Aquarian dream

I used to like to keep fish
Until my twin Angel fish
Barbara

Died

That's what I got
Born in the eleventh hour
One January

My birthmark is hardly
Visible

(These Days)

I got other marks more visible
More diseases that puss up
On a regular basis

I was born in the eleventh hour

Day 30: I write stuff

I write seeds into germination
I write blowhards into consternation
I write the crush of modern flight
I write the drink that does bite
I write the music that swells
I write the glove that compels

I write the city I love
I write memory dreamed of
I write words into trees
I write snow up to your knees
I write the life of a man
I write wandering with a plan

I write my sister's strife
I write a slow cumbria of life
I write dawn's mandate
I write violence and hate
I write watching confusion
I write gooselike delusion

I write drowning in fright
I write darkness into light
I write how sense transcends
I write how much depends
I write familial reality
I write she who made me

I write five and twenty
I write love lost aplenty
I write the universe outright
I write a small boy's blight
I write phrases and fluff
I write stuff

Day 29: phrases heard from three television announcers while watching the final three minutes of a basketball game

Costly turnover there

Don't tell me you want to win, show me

Willing to get his jersey dirty

Straight and true at the free throw line

I see what you did there

That rattles home

Fought tooth and nail all series long

If they are fortunate enough to succeed

If you want to move on, you're going to have to be better

Rejected!

This is how you say 'put me in coach'

Its a difference-maker

There was a lot of contact all over the place

They're coming alive here in the second half

Strong side cover, weak side cover: it doesn't matter

There goes that man

We have to have discussion

I just don't think they are that good

Matching up against an iconic player

Forget about it coach, I was healthy and read and you didn't play me

But he steped up

And its on to the second round

The kind of respect you expect from this hard fought

Series

Day 28: Reverence

When my mother made me go to church
They called sitting still "being reverent."
"Be reverent!" snapped the lady with big
Hair big glasses and big pattern on her shiny
Dress

"Be reverent, children!" she said again,
Adding children to the command as if
We didn't know we were children and
She was the adult who was allowed to
Glare

"Be reverent!" and the children around
Me folded their arms across their chest
Wiggling their hips in their all too tiny
Seats. But I didn't, since I didn't know
Reverence

"What do we do when we show reverence,
Children?" big lady asked glaring at me
"We fold our arms and sit still!" children
Yelled their response, all turning to look at
Me

Now that the eyes of God or Jesus or
Just the entire Primary class were glaring
at me, I folded my arms and bowed my
Head, not realizing that is what you do to
Pray

Day 27: April 27

On this day in four thousand, nine hundred and seventy seven
The universe was, according to astronomer Johannes Kepler,
Created. Kepler, considered one of the founders of modern
Science, is well-known for his theories of planetary motion
Which he built intricate models for: nesting planet after planet
In wood-framed paper orbital shells, only to have the whole
Thing collapse in front of him when the observational data
Did not correlate with the math. It was then that he willingly
Abandoned the model of perfect spherical orbits, nested one
Within another, and realized the imperfect orbital ellipse
Where celestial bodies no longer moved in perfection, but
Wobbled their imperfect courses through the black ether
It is, perhaps, to the consternation of modern scientists
That he never gave up his theory of when the universe was
Created, but does whether it is five thousand or thirteen
Billion really make that much of a difference on sunny April
Morning?