judas speaks (fragment)

You skip ahead, skip ahead,

to walk among the dust and raise up the dead,

always over-head of us; can't ever buy bread.

Now hunger kills me, you skip ahead,

skip ahead - burn your bridges - wake the dead.

monastic

I can feel the wait-time withering me -

it's the sum, the reel-rhyme,

the distance of that Atlantic

sea, that hole of whole blue and whole

green, the water I can't tread

or love or see. The time ticks,

turns at its fastest, slowly -

I sit with the night's clock,

sleep - dream memories and green

with slow growth, slower patience;

read Kerouac, at intermittent stays -

he's either too high

or too low - Buddhist? - for me;

but I like his simple monastic happiness -

it's like you, out there. Singing.

Rev. 8/9/10

she speaks

Sometimes,

freezing on the

on-ramp of an

interstate, you just want

the warmth

and nothing but

elsewhere, to flood

through your chest

and your hands,

to get yourself

to the other side

of the looking glass

between you

and the whole

fucking world.

To cover you

like your sleeping bag

can't. Maybe just

to hide in

another darkness.

To not piss

in the rain where

the ice-wind

cuts your legs, cuts

up inside of you

where no one

should be you don't

want.

Sometimes that's

all you want -

the warmth

elsewhere is;

might be . . . impossible to tell

with all this

shivering.

not inscribed by will

"I'm puzzled, not emotionally but logically, by the contemporary determination of women to write as women. Puzzled because this seems an ambition limited by the existing conception of what, exactly, differentiates the sexes. If there are such differences, it seems to me reasonable to suppose that literature reveals them, and that it will do so more interestingly, more subtly, in the absence of intention. In a similar way, all art is historical: in both its confrontations and evasions, it speaks of its period. The dream of art is not to assert what is already known but to illuminate what has been hidden, and the path to the hidden world is not inscribed by will."

- Louis Glück, from "Education of the Poet"

week end

You sit with no lights on.

The city hums. Not to you,

but to no one and

everyone here. The day's

small talk is done with,

and you're thinking about sleep,

sleep is on your mind.

Not small talk. You can only

take so much workplace

banter, even if it's all right.

A day skipping over the

surface takes more.

More than you thought.

Now only the night speaks,

the lights sparkle slightly,

the fridge sighs, the fan

squeaks. The one roommate

is asleep. You wait for

a couple more seconds,

think about a smoke,

but simply closing the

eyes sounds like

real pleasure, almost

like hope itself. You smile.

How simple hope is

at this hour, and how

utterly uncomplicated.

The old monks said:

Go to sleep before witching-hour.

But you're too tired for

witching or even wishing

for much, other than sleep,

maybe a sandwich, or a

good night kiss. But you're alone

and too tired for witching,

so you smile, listening

to the soft static hiss.

The city hums,

the lights sparkle.

You'll probably even forget

to brush your teeth.

The rain rattles you

after awhile, after so many days

of the grey

spilling over your windows.

Then, the sun

comes charging into the sky.

Things

look much better.

impediment culture

In Oklahoma I grew up with Indians.

Didn't know that they'd ever left anything

but Florida, which at the time

didn't sound that bad to me,
as hot as it is there.
In Smithville
we were all poor

as possums going through the garbage;

it didn't bother me or my

Indian friend Steven,

who could barely enunciate because

of a speech impediment

but learned to say fuck long before

it ever occurred to me.

I'd always pretended

to be a cowboy,

riding right next to John Wayne,

where heroes wore guns, not face paint.

(And the ones that wore face paint

were usually white guys anyway,

so what difference did it really make?)

You would've figured I'd have gotten

a better idea of how things had been

if how things actually were

was not the normal human shit

every little no-light town has to deal with.

The sun comes up. Goes down.

People are poor, drive drunk,

go to jail, die alone or they
end up "killin' themselves"
in the seat next to Vic Hopper's dad, mysteriously,

and no one cares -
there were drugs in the car -

because it's just "thugs killin' thugs," that's all.

And nothing about their color, nothing

about their color at all,

just the shit we were all swimming in,

and the stupid mostly-

white men running the school.