I think about all the things I said today
I wonder if it was alright
All the things I said
Were my words enough to sooth my girl
she needed a good cry
Did I sooth my girl
Were they truth, the feelings, did I hold back enough
Did I boast too much or linger too long
All the things I say I need them good enough for two
All the things I say make them good enough for two
Did I wake with alarm
the birdong
sirens through the window
Did the black squirell make you smile
the little child make you cry
Did I run the water too long
Did we drink all the wine
I can't remember what was said
or if it was true
as long as I said it to you and no one else
All the things I say I need them good enough for two
make them good enough for two.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Dogs---research based revision
Chris caught me staring at his dick. We were peeing into empty apple juice jars in the shade behind our houses and his urine poured out yellow from a hairy dark dick. I pointed at the ground, where his pee drissled about the bottle. “Its mellow yellow.” His younger brother Jimmy laughed. The most JImmy and I could muster was a pathetic clear offering from bare testicles. I was going to freeze our urine in ice cube trays and put them in my sister’s coke.
“I got a dick as hard as Superman’s elbow.” Chris said, shaking off the rest and letting it pass.
Jimmy was cute poor kid--t-shirts too long and dirty. He had the brown eyes and cropped black hair of his kin. The two brothers were half-Mexican suburban rats who smoked cigarettes and got wet and knew how throw a punch. The day before we we’re knocking knotty crabapples into the creek behind our houses and I got pushy with Jimmy. He hit a baseball down the hill into a thick thatch growing around a thorny locust and Chris came at me when I pushed Jimmy down.
Chris was in Jr. High and I was in grade school. I stepped back and yelled at him, holding the bat out in my arm, “Get off my property.” I called them poor and Chris jumped onto my chest and pinned my arms down. He let one go to jab me in the ribs and I scratched at his face. He had beautiful eyes. “You’re a little asshole, Scott.” I screamed at my sister to run inside and call the cops as he laughed a dusty joke from his lungs.
We were more alike than I wanted to admit. We were like dogs. Young pups left too often alone and without training no outlet for their creative energy. Our energy was lower-class ferality like long plaqued teeth sinking into the necks of each other. Dogs like us needed a leader and in its absence our childhood turned into a play for dominance of the weaker ones.
Chris’s mother was the weakest pup of us all.
She came over to use the phone once when I was playing sick. She had curly black hair and manicured eyebrows. Quiet, pretty, young, younger than I am now, I was attracted to her weakness. She looked down. If ever I was going to have sex with an older woman. My own mother told me this story years after her family had vanished one day.
Several nights my mother was awoken by the screams of Chris’s mother. Her drunken boyfriend pounded and kicked at the front door and she cried “No, no, no.” Chris would get involved occasionally, “Leave her alone you fucker.” My mother laid there, her red cherry, like an antennae glowing in the dark. “If she ever screamed for help, I would’ve called the police, she never did.”
After I poured our piss into ice cube trays I went out and saw the greyhound that followed me home the previous day. She had a squirrel up a tree. She jogged up to me with the face of a half-wit—eyes wet, panting and sniffing with her bulbous black snout. Greyhounds, like me, have a terrible sense of direction so it was fantastic that we found each other. Crossing paths on any given day was like two blind men running into each other in a park at night.
Greyhounds have the biggest heart of all dogs. It enables them to fly after prey at 45 miles per hour. Maybe it was also that heart that came on me lost and crying on a dry sidewalk. Maybe she was sitting in her front yard and saw me and felt I was the most helpless of them all.
Greyhounds are pack oriented dogs. They need leaders too. In a brief day she had accepted me for that role, although I knew it couldn’t last for long. I tossed a tennis ball and she flew after it.
It was yellow day. The monarchs flittered in the milkweed around the air conditioner. Kansas sun, mostly unimpeded by shade trees, ricochets off concrete streets and sidewalks into the atmosphere, and eviscerates the blue from the sky until it turns milky and hurts the eye to even look up at it. The sky was the same color as Chris and Jimmy’s rental property.
Around noon, a friend came over and we went over to Chris’s house with our baseball bat and gloves. A leprous sycamore tree shaded their front yard and gravel drive way killing any chance for grass. Their mom sat on the front porch drinking tea with her neck arched and arms out behind her. I suggested we play in their front yard and took off my shirt.
The grey hound chased down the neon tennis ball and delivered them to me, sticking her long paws ahead, bowing; smiling.
Chris hit a ball high into the street and the grey hound followed it. She sprinted off like Eadweard Muybridge's Horse in Motion—all four feet off the ground at once. They came back down not quite at the same time. Her tongue hung out like she was daydreaming.
A Volvo doing about forty-five miles an hour in a thirty-five slammed into her long side. Its tires screeched, creating a surrogate for the empty space upon my tongue. The greyhound exploded on impact. Chris yelled, “And she’s out of here.” I recognized his laugh.
My white shirt lay wadded in the dirt in the front yard. Chris’s mother covered her eyes. Jimmy and my friend Joel stood like open canyons towards the accident and Chris rested his chin on the end of the bat laughing not so loudly, not so enjoyably.
“I got a dick as hard as Superman’s elbow.” Chris said, shaking off the rest and letting it pass.
Jimmy was cute poor kid--t-shirts too long and dirty. He had the brown eyes and cropped black hair of his kin. The two brothers were half-Mexican suburban rats who smoked cigarettes and got wet and knew how throw a punch. The day before we we’re knocking knotty crabapples into the creek behind our houses and I got pushy with Jimmy. He hit a baseball down the hill into a thick thatch growing around a thorny locust and Chris came at me when I pushed Jimmy down.
Chris was in Jr. High and I was in grade school. I stepped back and yelled at him, holding the bat out in my arm, “Get off my property.” I called them poor and Chris jumped onto my chest and pinned my arms down. He let one go to jab me in the ribs and I scratched at his face. He had beautiful eyes. “You’re a little asshole, Scott.” I screamed at my sister to run inside and call the cops as he laughed a dusty joke from his lungs.
We were more alike than I wanted to admit. We were like dogs. Young pups left too often alone and without training no outlet for their creative energy. Our energy was lower-class ferality like long plaqued teeth sinking into the necks of each other. Dogs like us needed a leader and in its absence our childhood turned into a play for dominance of the weaker ones.
Chris’s mother was the weakest pup of us all.
She came over to use the phone once when I was playing sick. She had curly black hair and manicured eyebrows. Quiet, pretty, young, younger than I am now, I was attracted to her weakness. She looked down. If ever I was going to have sex with an older woman. My own mother told me this story years after her family had vanished one day.
Several nights my mother was awoken by the screams of Chris’s mother. Her drunken boyfriend pounded and kicked at the front door and she cried “No, no, no.” Chris would get involved occasionally, “Leave her alone you fucker.” My mother laid there, her red cherry, like an antennae glowing in the dark. “If she ever screamed for help, I would’ve called the police, she never did.”
After I poured our piss into ice cube trays I went out and saw the greyhound that followed me home the previous day. She had a squirrel up a tree. She jogged up to me with the face of a half-wit—eyes wet, panting and sniffing with her bulbous black snout. Greyhounds, like me, have a terrible sense of direction so it was fantastic that we found each other. Crossing paths on any given day was like two blind men running into each other in a park at night.
Greyhounds have the biggest heart of all dogs. It enables them to fly after prey at 45 miles per hour. Maybe it was also that heart that came on me lost and crying on a dry sidewalk. Maybe she was sitting in her front yard and saw me and felt I was the most helpless of them all.
Greyhounds are pack oriented dogs. They need leaders too. In a brief day she had accepted me for that role, although I knew it couldn’t last for long. I tossed a tennis ball and she flew after it.
It was yellow day. The monarchs flittered in the milkweed around the air conditioner. Kansas sun, mostly unimpeded by shade trees, ricochets off concrete streets and sidewalks into the atmosphere, and eviscerates the blue from the sky until it turns milky and hurts the eye to even look up at it. The sky was the same color as Chris and Jimmy’s rental property.
Around noon, a friend came over and we went over to Chris’s house with our baseball bat and gloves. A leprous sycamore tree shaded their front yard and gravel drive way killing any chance for grass. Their mom sat on the front porch drinking tea with her neck arched and arms out behind her. I suggested we play in their front yard and took off my shirt.
The grey hound chased down the neon tennis ball and delivered them to me, sticking her long paws ahead, bowing; smiling.
Chris hit a ball high into the street and the grey hound followed it. She sprinted off like Eadweard Muybridge's Horse in Motion—all four feet off the ground at once. They came back down not quite at the same time. Her tongue hung out like she was daydreaming.
A Volvo doing about forty-five miles an hour in a thirty-five slammed into her long side. Its tires screeched, creating a surrogate for the empty space upon my tongue. The greyhound exploded on impact. Chris yelled, “And she’s out of here.” I recognized his laugh.
My white shirt lay wadded in the dirt in the front yard. Chris’s mother covered her eyes. Jimmy and my friend Joel stood like open canyons towards the accident and Chris rested his chin on the end of the bat laughing not so loudly, not so enjoyably.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
A Lil Sunday Morning Something sum.
One Robin will not let the other fly away
they trot, quick, tiny short,
slow
towards the cat
that should not be mistaken
for a crow
...
Bicycle pedals, whipering dogs on
in the leaves in the trees
tee-tee-tee-he-he
the red bishops cheep
thrushes chatter like smiling innocencents
who want to pet the dogs, Is he friendly...
odd gull or gooses on high
whistle babble brook
creatures so hollow they replace
one another
awaken before the dawn
the early wormers
miss us when us are gone
....
Magnolia
do not lose, pink and white graduation
fulough, an Easter sympathy card
do not lose
as long as you catch sugar and wine
in your folded hands
we will love
they trot, quick, tiny short,
slow
towards the cat
that should not be mistaken
for a crow
...
Bicycle pedals, whipering dogs on
in the leaves in the trees
tee-tee-tee-he-he
the red bishops cheep
thrushes chatter like smiling innocencents
who want to pet the dogs, Is he friendly...
odd gull or gooses on high
whistle babble brook
creatures so hollow they replace
one another
awaken before the dawn
the early wormers
miss us when us are gone
....
Magnolia
do not lose, pink and white graduation
fulough, an Easter sympathy card
do not lose
as long as you catch sugar and wine
in your folded hands
we will love
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