Last night I dreamt my bed
was a mouse’s bed.
This morning a hawk passed overhead,
circling once.
A coincidence?
A mouse dream
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Category Archives: Dream Songs
I use ugly words on purpose (poem written with a found pen)
I use ugly words on purpose
I write ugly words on purpose
ugly ugly ugly ugly
until they lose all meaning
until they lose meaning
ugly ugly ugly ugly
words words words words
meaning meaning meaning meaning
I like it that they
have to do what I say
but sometimes it’s better
when they no longer matter
The way a first taste of coffee
is exquisite and delicious
and by the end of the day
you can drink it down like water
and it means nothing at all
just (to extend the metaphor)
makes you jittery and mean
and puts a bad taste in your mouth
and builds a brooding stockade
(fence posts bristling like unkept teeth)
against sleep
In this bitter analogy, what is sleep?
Sleep sleep sleep sleep.
I’ll know it when I see it
I I I I I.
I write using these ugly words
on purpose
I I I I.
The stampede of History
The stampede of History
occurred on this site in 1872
on this prairie—flat, enduring,
tasting of noon sunshine
and its black, black shade—
where the dusk-blue flowers of History
previously blossomed.
We have been living backwards
toward that day ever since–
forgetting that first giant step,
the big blue marble the color of History,
and the light of a thousand atoms
that smelled as black as History
and roared in our sovereign bones.
On that day in 1872, which was a day
like any other, the cicada chant
of History will be heard in the land
where lately the lightning blossomed
and the concomitant thunder rolled
like enormous cannonballs
across a flattening plain of History.
On that day, you’ll put on a beaded shirt
and ride through the fusillade
of soldiers—Sitting Bull
will be with you, and Jack Wilson,
as you ride, and the blue flowers
will part before you, the land
will rise up before you, and everything
will go down in History.
Nothing happens fast
Nothing happens fast
first the Sun rises and
then it’s night time
and Carl Sandburg is
alive and
children playing horseshoes
and during that slow expanse
the mortgage came due
the elves lay down under
the hill and I
awoke thinking
Oh hell not again.
In my dream I was gravity.
In my dream I was gravity.
The pilings of the towers humored me
and the muscular calves
of the youths,
the repose and occasional slump
of exhausted hillsides,
and the sea’s endless susurrus
as it trailed the moon forever falling,
were my dance and my devotion,
my music and my mystery.
In my dream I have been gravity
and well pleased with the world.
And I lay down in mirth
And I lay down in mirth
like a bed. Later I stood
surveying the good
and the spreading earth.
Then the woods were alive
with invisible birds
and it was good, good.
I stood at my birth
and was wishing the dead
could still hear the music I heard.
Then I pictured the dead
in their cold earthen beds
and the sound of them rose.
And the woods were alive.
And I lay down in mirth
in the grass, in the dirt
and the dead in their earths
raised their voices in song.
The invisible birds
sang along, sang along, sang along,
and it was good, good.
— bent stick in the path, ridging
I.
– bent stick in the path, ridging
the dust
where the sun
has been beating down
ten thousand hours
since last it rained
if you were a snake
I’d know
what to do
with you
tip my hat
wish you good hunting.
II.
First a red
tailed hawk
juking from
treetrunk
to tall grass
under the dark canopy
and next I, emerging, see
coyotes
flashing against the sky.
I don’t understand this world
anymore.
No matter what
The tall man stood on the island
Blunt-faced, facing the wind
With his eyes as wide as a child’s eyes
And his clothes flapping about him
And the seabirds cried like ever
Just as if he were nought but a stone
And the wind rushed heedlessly by him
Till the sea rose and mothered him home
His blunt face is long since forgotten
By his people long scattered and dead
But all the same he stood there once
No matter what nobody says
Why are you still here?
(after Li Bai)
It’s spring, you say – Why are you still here?
The lichens are slowly turning
The mountain rock to new dirt,
The snowmelt is carrying the old dirt away;
Why are you still here?
I smile; my heart
Beats as slowly as the mountain’s heart.
A peach blossom, ripped from the twig
By the pummeling spring rain,
May be carried by freshet, by gully,
By stream, by river – clear to the sea, maybe;
So too me:
ripped from heaven,
Halfway to somewhere else by now.
Which is why I have no answer.
Nuisance crow
Nuisance crow
on an old fencepost:
green field behind;
brown hills in the distance;
gravel road,
deadleaf trees,
white sky,
world all around —
when did it all become
not worth a mention?
I fear my sixth decade
will make me an old man yet.
