Two Newer Poems

And we look up

These birdsong-chattering stolen occupations

This worldsong hysteria kissed

These frequent observations’ muted shade

of dollars and blues-tinged reassurances

as a typewriter goes fluttering and comes

burgeoning with dyslexic fruit and dropped ink

Speech grows beer and stuttered belches

turning around the tables stifled, and where take you

Under eons of traveling, aloof on the road it brings me out of my          nostrils home

Stretching in the ancient way it turns to show us

we are made of salt and grain and bitter ruin

Salt and grey where the sea washes over it

and we look up changed

Dark confinements you are waiting for to break

Sysiphus 526B4

Time is more precious wished away, sped truculent.

Distraction is more bliss than ergo sum awry,

When wished upon distracted limbs, without ameliorated scalpel,

Taught in class when never wishing stomach sparkled.

For without revenge there is a bed with covers unfurled.

And when morning bleeds the air red with the lovers,

The sum without scratching is another’s – ’out avail.

But no task more like a shattered hull.

Place up north

I had no sense of being carried along

through angled roads and under

beautiful telephone poles

When the people were asking

what were they asking

They would say

You need that shirt to keep warm

and are you trying

to place flowers in my hair

without first asking

if you have a place up north

and would I like to go there

Five sentences in

you used to go to school

you used to ride a bike

and where were the papers flying

when that mistake

was like a harsh town road

neglected and full of bumps

and you had no sense

of being carried along