words sound like this - snow

drowning green needles, wood drifts

spelling broad kindness

Held and Belonging

river of wind, wide throttle in the big
big night embrace.  dreamt of feet slapping
slapping the pan earth, of belonging
belonging anywhere in that way of helpless
wounded healer.  cultivate such
such an approach, injured by dint
dint of walking a time, a peace
on this great earth, this pan earth
clods broken by my plow-effort-living
living separate for a while, such a 
fuss of dreaming it right from wrong

maestro trying to vanish in plain sight
sight of the blind thread of my journey,
tell me is the atom's song 
song really love?

stuttering on these thin ideas
ideas are big two-hand stones
smooth for making a ring of held fire
fire where I'm always belonging
warm belly and cold back to the
big night embrace.  fireflies or winter stars
stars respond to the plain, the
apparently usual small things
where we belong.

the perfect vanilla bean of nights

dark crusted yard
on a lumbering heart
with a broad hug of wind
and icicle dart

windchimes from nowhere,
a cast iron stove,
warm air is sweeter
in the orange empty glow.

both sides of my skin
are a savory mystery,
the tides of my grin
are shifting with certainty

multitude dreams
and empty word wells
leave a bit too much space
for those who would tell

a descendent of visions
a reader of leaves
i can't find my ground
nor want to bereave

profoundly okay
and dancing with friends
we cut to the core
as the beginning, it ends

on good days
I'm a carpenter by smell...
pine sawdust through and through
in my socks and mostly empty pockets

i sniff out a table top
in a delightfully split slab of black birch
rippled and laughing its way into another incarnation

light icy snow
smells like nothing,
like the sound of the creek below
as I smooth planks
alone in the low hemlock woods

I can't say if I'm a craftsman or not
this is what I do because I enjoy it
because I'm afraid to leap elsewhere
because of ends that sometimes meet
because of the smell of winter
on the sunset drive home
John Denver riding a dusty shotgun
in my old
truck

back on the case

thought it was the cold
but really i couldn't breathe
for the kindness of all things
the light sun on the even cold snow
all the chances of starting over
every breath of the in n' out life
this chance   this sweet privilege
of animating 170 lbs of Big Bang dust
on its way to spreading out
in the eternal cold of space

say, let me hold your hands
or even better
take this warm warm warm
mug of fighting the good fight
coffee-tracing words
of freedom

bursting from my ribs come
connections galore

Most Poems Should End with the Word 'Galore'

socks on the covetous feet
hungry for sleep
sleepy for hunger
stitched into soup

I'm just putting words together
a simple attempt to combust
this end of day.
Slide across the frozen world,
make me ask
is the grass that sweet?

Bring it all in
bunny ears galore.

                - Val and Chris

Inverted Reason

Everything's falling on snow

my head wrapped snugly around the wool hat...

these feelings have me

as they gaze on the frozen river dark.

The cinder hearth is a fresh take

on cold toes -

chopping kitchen leans a whisper

in these lonely ears.

Negation sentiment scratches it all to basics.

Begin I again...

Everything's falling on snow.

The gist gets you, right?

He's streetlamp swirl gone,

like every creation that falls into shadow.  

I Did Not Know This Would Come to Blood

given this stopped watch,
I closely examine the hundred broken clouds
passing across its crystal.

the citrus afternoon light
comes to me off the gold tarnished trim
and tiny tapered hands.

it's all I have,
this wanting
to be sufficient.

no one is turned away-
we gather around the hollow dancing wound
and consider the old-time revival dreams
that led us to this black, white, and gray prayer.

now medicine is bitter
and spilled
and relentless in its sharp surgery -
I can't withhold my mind
from the fray, from the unexpected
blues trauma.

steeping the tea, popping the m and m reds and yellows,
this cliche pain
drenches our undaunted band of explorers,
wholesome in tearing off the bandages
altogether now.

no capture

perhaps a poem here, spread across several days and episodes.

othello

standstill perspective

accuracy

showy

tidy satisfactions

oh, let's call this one... Something Special.  that's safe.

how can it be

that nothing special saved my life,

that a tailpipe exhales

dervish breath in the whirling cold,

that a bit of coconut in my teeth

is the sum of my consciousness...

what are the implications

of my aspirations

if not the same death as

all sweet moments,

every non-discrete 

conjugal visit of arriving and passing away?

the real tragedy is

being unkind,

robbing the world

like an ATM in the late 80s,

so easy and thoughtless

to take the vitality right out of a situation

a face, sparkling eyes of your child,

a broad white gull just off the coast

hovering above the juicy surf

just for you

knowing this thread,

the real source of joy

easily fits on the head of a pin

with space left for a tastefully modern Ikea chair

and maybe a cappuccino machine

from Italy

my days are thin in number.

let me sing all the bawdy gospel flap

I can, and lay it out

without shame.

these are sacred meetings by the river,

you and your breath.  don't try to

share that truth with anyone -

it's just a heavy box of 

letters and a familiar breeze.

last minute scrap deal

laying out the numbers figures stories in my

whump!

log falls in the fireplace.
keeping it together so as to understand the complex

ding... dong...ding...

windchimes tickle their way through the glass.
feeling all the subtle shades of

faint stab

stitch in my upper ribs, ate the granola too wolfishly.

getting it all wrong is the beginning and end
of my master peace, finding my home
in the constellations that have a space
waiting... laughter remembers me,
I am clothed in celestial
love

i'm mad for the piles of wadded up dreams
that give way to mundane chances

being kind creatively fires everyone 
like clay.  what is the taste of that
offering?

spark

He loved debating the fingerprints
of grammar in a non-existent language

she tenaciously calculated the cream content
of the milky way

living their lives in such a constellation,
precision had become the thing,
the lighthouse on a forgotten trade route
still tended for the sake
of the warm yellow beacon.

old labrador trots the sandy spits
of time's peninsula, placing her
deft paws swiftly without vanity.

passing later, we chart the routes
of next season's birds in the
feathery sky.
it's the proposition
of hypothetical dreams
that we lost in the fire,
saving instead an old cast iron pan
a twist of replaceable driftwood
a few books of obscure poetry.

a line of leggy oaks
holds it together in the partisan gusts
of felicitous January.
they make a torn edge of the sky samples
in their aging arms - slate, gunmetal,
the other aching pieces of bright gray.
a burnt out house, stiff beach grass,
salty contentment deposited by each shallow wave -
I can't even note all the miracles anymore.

bearing fruit

loving kindness begins with the burning
I don't know
in my thick porcelain oven-safe
heart.

on a secure pothole-rich road
winding through field mist,
sparks blow like dandelion seeds from the plow blade
as it flies the last thin ice
off of the once-aspiring shoulder.
they are beautiful, entrancing, mild...

This kind of dawn is a tepid patient,
a singer-songwriter already limited by
the sensitive Twentysomethings who love him.
It's rushing nowhere real fast but with no danger,
only imitation vanilla meanderings.

Stuck in this morning, I review:

I did it all, and even thought some
recommended thoughts, but my 
teacher is quitting this trembling town...

am I holding a pamphlet from a
Sandwich Board Crazy back when
Times Square was honest and tasted like street cred?

I'm no more or less a fool
than the smile in my second grade photo,
than a new-eyed mother,
than cashed-in chips,
than laying a slobbered tennis ball dream
at your free-wheelin' boots
one
more
time

Kenosis

The mountains are smoldering

don't ask me how.

A small box contains a lifetime of sunshine

don't ask me about the shadow in the marrow of things.

Sometimes the salve is molten ore

don't pick at your sweet wounds.

Only desert flowers know how fragile the blooming time is

don't worry about your accidental awakening.

A paper boat drifts across the wide mud puddle

don't dishonor your dance with trying to explain grace.

The swollen river pushes log jam dreams

don't let the idle side of truth speak for you.

Don't melt in early March

empty your pockets with steady precision.

the flu rattles my lungs and

tightens my head.  outside the glass door,

the world is a thousand miles away,

perfect and trembling in the winter wind.

my ill-fitting skin does not diminish

glowing afternoon clouds.  we're all in this

together, I know... I just

feel separate.

a eulogy for living

unclench your sweet mind
let the Milky Way back in
from the evening sky.

achey body by the fire,
mine and then those after me.

half a bottle of honey,
scattered books, teacup on the pine floor.
nowhere to drop anchor
as we chart Jules Verne dreams
always for the first
time, always.

my teacher is sailing broad seas,
a pirate, a captain, a so ordinary man.
cutlass in your teeth,
I reach for mine with a few tears
as you hoist the mainsail
in the wind of
Needing Something Else.

Squeeze Me, Universe

sun cajoles spare rainbows

from icicle tips

in the still afternoon.

were they inevitable, these

meetings of solar display

and refracting pieces

of frozen sky?

it's when everything else

also sings your liberation

that the creaky thaw of Righteousness

really opens the floes -

a humming old fridge,

beige cotton paper under a casual thumb.

freed by the terminal illness of life,

now appreciation

comes in hemlock fronds, a neat firewood stack,

ice mounds dressing the whole scene

with the appropriateness of love.

all medicine is a little poisonous -

a truism resting on my shoulder

with tiny claws and bright eyes,

hungry to soar in the cold sun.

a slip of light smiles

on the glass door - fire bounces

off the deep evening.

Moments of Bright Cold This Morning

1) Wheels spin rear of truck, back down humbly and take another exit
2) Remembering that I did some reliable figuring in meditation, can't find it now
3) Curry, chicken, eating and thinking about
4) If I'm afraid of losing something, does that mean I love it?
5) So much depends on the tacky carved dog, oblivious of the cherry air compressor beside
6) I am happy for friends with babies - the smell, the heft, the joy
7) All the world is colored with our minds in this moment
8) So little that I actually need to control... flames flicker just where they need to kiss the wood stove
9) Chimney smoke drifting to town, carbon just like me
10) Bunny ears sit on the chair with a rakish tilt, sunlight butters the backyard tenderly
11) Remembering that we are mortal, and will not pass this way again, is liberating
12) I get up from the keyboard informed by the sun's slender trace already slipping towards the western mountains.

Chinatown Didactic

It's like... it's like...

a Chinese wilderness poem,

on a dusty scroll

in the knick-knack shop

off of Canal St.

It's that smell, and the jangle of a tarnished bell

on the crackled paint door.

A startled cat jumps off the book pile,

overturning a rosewood Buddha and green plastic beads.

Follow the nose, junk and treasure are tumbling clowns

waiting for the seamless enthusiasm

of collecting fingers or children seeking delights.

I look out on fat lazy flakes, and

can't do anything with this but

cry, 

it's all so simple,

the mental flavor of burnt sugar

caramelizing my lock tumbler

of Figuring and Scheming,

enhanced through the sweet pane.

Standing apart from the pulling and hauling,

all this cake icing lays its down comforter

on the scene.

My teachers pile up on the sill,

silent and bright and crystalline.

I am taken.

Footfalls in the Crunchy Snow Dark

Check engine light

bobs on home with us

along the intrepid cold creek

of January early dark,

orange beacon of warning

that I ignore a full 97% of the time.

The Buddha said, "Do not try

to figure out karma.  It will make you

crazy."  Here I am,

believing all the things I do

like it's not determined,

like it's not free.  

To get to this seat

in this night with these stars

and this lined face beside me,

was my birth sufficient?

There's the question,

too sharp and beautiful and glassy

to hold or to look directly at,

that photograph was lost in the fire,

now suddenly returned by a stranger.

Now the rhythm of forgetting, of laughter

and lip-biting and absent humming, slowly

takes the wheel, a friend and enemy or neither,

and turns across the perfect icy river.

Someone waits for you somewhere,

in this world, a previous or later one, 

chopping a few things in the warm yellow kitchen

and dancing a bit back and forth to herself,

real gentle like it's nothing at all.  

water freshly boiled
stiff neck all crunchy in the morning
long pour of black tea.

my eyes are level with the man
sitting on the shelf.

why do
these circles originate and radiate
in all the colors of my existence?

nowhere to rest, only a sweet sweet illusion
of ground to stand on... if
I stretch the little flying carpet of my life
just right, I can pause
and start with loving myself.

reconciled hunger

bagels bacon family dynamics
snow out the window
12th floor in upper east side
watch it all get tight let it all get loose

we regard this whole life as a
                                                       beautiful dream
sirens down below
gazing out the broad clean windows
an absent-minded mug
wakes me up in my own left hand

jaw line tenses with the sound
the round of old small arguments (not me? not mine?)
relaxes with the touch...
all the electri city runs down
into the sound ground
going home upriver to the source of the streams

out there, newborn babies across
the frosted park.
joy is not in these phenomena
it is ethically-sourced in the waltz
of changing everything

thumbing a book of old Thailand's someone else
infuses this swarthy light
defuses the questions of wrong/right/wrong
oscillation unclothed is a dance...
can't wait on sidelines,
dive in with cutting teeth both feet
letting go, when you're fretting so,
thrive

Suppose

Why fill a perfectly decent space
with words?

The mug holds
milk and coffee river delta
just as it is.

Talking makes me blind,
all the colors and shapes
send me telegrams
to abandon the search
and come home...
didn't you hear?
War is over if you want it.

Was Worth Thinking About

Supremely important, this moment,
the opportunity to advance
the capture of consciousness
the appetitive nature of
the mind bouncing all photon/neuron-rich
off bright-flakes-pink-door-coffee-steam

with swift lack of uncertainty,
show the permanence
find it pig-uprooting-truffle style,
bring it all back home
(no obstacle that it can't be found)

distracted in a dog-smells-bacon ludicrous delight,
toasted bread advances past the red metallic sentry mug
and comes all up in this nose
(borrowed for this lifetime)
and the alchemy (wham!) points lusciously to:

a late morning bakery sojourn,
penning idle words for
whom... ?

Sure, I'll Make Dinner

howling wind to please me,

Thai soup to please my woman...

I wonder (believe it?) if the world has reached

Peak Authenticity

and perhaps we're now in a decline,

leading indicators of public servants

at odds with the served public,

tension everywhere and triggers on unexamined fingers...

Look at my hands...

I stir the rice with the casual bamboo spoon,

the windchimes stir the cold dark,

a little pot of domesticity here in the cabin

under a blanket of dark as cold as space,

starry sugar crystals scattered

in the black rich vault,

tattered pines taking this cold affront

and tossing down dead gauntlets all over the yard.

When I cook with these hands, 

thoughts of society's fabric

take warp and weft in the steam.

A car door closes, the red car in the dark

delivers an opportune rest in the thinking...

glasses clinking on the table

now able to radiate our simple Yes

into the hungry night and full companionship.

Old Ford Gets You There

Parking brake stories -

reach under in rusty salt

sludge, release it all.

winter in the truck points to

my stuck spots... so she pushes.

Inspired by my friend, a poem a day

One of my many poet friends is turning out a poem each day in January.  Jealous of that container of practice, and inspired to keep creating things myself, I'm jumping on that wagon.  We'll see how it goes.  Today's poem (unpolished and off-the-cuff, which is part of the challenge I think):

Formulating Winter

Cinnamon streetlight

and quiet function of the first

intrepid flakes,

an ice of gray sky

coming with soft-built dreams.

Uniquely precious - an exhale

upon closing the newspaper

of our national inequity racket,

and a glance down to the half-frozen 

banks of owned water.

Words on a melting winter tongue,

snow catching itself on silver

explanations of my controlled

tripped-over verbosity.

Harmonious advance of white through

the heartfelt pines -

a pocket of Right Now

spatters this tight room

into freer space.

Clutch of afternoon firelight...

only tumbling clowns of old notions

are left to clean

the rubbish of a tent revival rendition 

of my former lives...

vaudeville, burlesque, old whiskey,

a woman leans out the window into the night

(exhaling slowly)

 down to the half-melted river

with bracing, free water.