Kidding myself morning after
morning, recycling and already older
Aging done and the dust comes
pouring out my mouth, nostrils, eyeballs and hair
Every sunrise I stare in the
mirror
The resignation maps in as all of
this has danced too long in my rhythm
To where there is only standing,
shifting inches and promises holding
Misty sand dehydrated plans of
withered roots
Reaching figures across evacuated
bedrooms and the sentiment of preferable loneliness
The sight of possibility is a
twister in the heartland, barometric chaos in Nebraska
Helicopters are the only escape
and whirlybirds get flipped like mustangs
Running for their lives as the
suburban sprawl creeps West
Knowing the Olive Garden and the
Lowes will leave nothing left
For the colts to eat that’s
green, just gritty nubs of yellowing gray to clean
The surface until the whole Earth
rubs raw against teeth and seeps into the jaw
Wanders through the mandible into
the brain, neurons start adapting, the serotonin stops
And the insane becomes sane; the
concrete starts looking good to eat
The rocks, the grit and the
pasture is a memory of Freudian slips
Beneath the masquerade that
younglings ever attended the valley parades
Migrating stallions and broke-back
hills, the fishing holes are calling and nothing will
Replace the taste of the
snow-melted water or the springs from the depression
Rising out of winter into hearts
of common-drink
Bought and sold and the fare to
pass is too much for a common-man
The grit blankets the rest; ask a
question and the sounds exhaust in the very air consuming them
To traverse from one’s larynx to
another’s cochlea; the hammer never rings the anvil
The riders have booted ever
stirrup raping the bare skin until normalized
Like parents yelling at drivers
ahead for moving too slow so that their engine sits idle
At a traffic light, late for work
and child at home for the summer with no one to play with
In another city, days shrinking
like raisins bagged up and never eaten
The sit-down cereal milk is
rarely poured upon the grain that is grown
The seed has its own commercial
genetics and nature has been told to go home
To another planet as if she was a
spouse who was told she is no longer welcome in this marriage
Humanity has moved in with our
mistress and the kids have come along
Mother is wailing out there in
the badlands looking for the heart right now
Slap the water from the sink upon
my face; spread this resin texture in my hair
Get through another walking-mummy
sequence and pay the price I’ve already paid
The engine starting in the garage
questioning pulling out
Earn a living to give it away;
see the glow in the others that still have a chance to run
The recognition eludes in the
novel of what has not become
The dust-dance with the devils of
crackling-romance, the zombie-children of vagabond graves
The highways of Sisyphus-stone
Sundays pushing the rock seeing it roll back upon toes
Knowing what comes next as the
story goes written before and written again
Sunk in the gut of the difference
between real and to pretend
That phone call is going to come;
that girl is going to show up
The bicycle won’t have that
accident each time the play is rerun
Bent up back from the smashed-in
truck, busted teeth and no shrine to build
The blood drains across the
sidewalk as the grass covers up the salvageable in a mother’s milk
The front yards of the neighbors
arouse with the noise, hear the screaming
To bring their own children
inside; to avoid the commotion of another body about to die
The St. Augustine lawn withers in
the sun as the whole community turtle-heads-in
Only to see the real estate
agents run to some city further and further out
The chasm is quaking as the urban
blight eats the stomach out
Of a city like a Somali refuge’s
bulging abdomen on a dusty highway
Walking and National Geographic
takes a picture for the world to stare
And say, “Ain’t that sad. Here’s
a quarter,” as we take a sip of a Bud or a Coke or toke another Marlboro
Man on his horse, lasso and
looking the part, rugged and tall, bandana and called
To reign in the grazing lands
with fence posts, owned by the bank with God notes
Navaho, Sioux, Cherokee all set
to gamble on the science of yellow fever blankets
And bullets against bison and
saddled up horse meat
One is one’s purpose fishing the
stream, but when the water is gone
Even the fish can be heard
screaming stacked like pauper-flapping audience members
To the heated global parade, the
paper mill’s poisons dumped rather than caged
The animal’s urine made by a
machine, the animal’s breath from a smokestack
The animal’s sight from a camera
catching the red-light runners
The animal’s fur falling out
foaming on drugs to grow it back
Another to get the blood flowing
and the penis on track
Dust-man glaring retinas
reflecting the inverse and it could always be worse
Round about mantra echoing in the
head, when does the answer comes back
Better off, better off ….
Never
