A Dedication, Whatever; Followed by Breakfast

Posted on 21 July 2014 by Thomas Kearney

“I’m very honored and flattered to be picked, but also somewhat confused,” Mr. Wright said in a softly accented voice, after apologizing for the sound of buzz saws cutting trees in the yard that he has described in poem after poem.

“I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he continued. “But as soon as I find out, I’ll do it.”

Since that first phone call
I’ve been somewhat confused, sure. But finally
things are back to normal, I think.

Anyway, I awoke this morning
then didn’t bother to get up.
The sun was shining anyway,
like always. So, I thought… after a while…
why bother
getting up?
I just lay there for a while,

thinking about nothing in particular,
and not wondering why things weren’t really going anywhere.
I don’t care about progress, anyway,
it doesn’t interest me. Never has,
even though I’ve somehow lived to see my seventies anyway. You see?
You don’t really have to try.

And really, why get up, after all is said and done?
Well, said, anyway.

Although, one gets hungry
eventually.

And the people at school aren’t really waiting for me to show up.
They already know where I am,
or suspect that I am
probably just lying in bed, or dead.

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A Following Song

Posted on 16 June 2014 by Thomas Kearney

Down by the hill, or lower down,
The larks and lizards built a town.
They sang for fun and lay in the sun
And life was easy.

Seasons came, and came, and came,
And some were different, some the same;
The flowers grew, and blossomed, and blew,
And life was easy.

But a lark grows bold to stretch its wing
While a lizard sleeps and dreams of spring.
So the larks forgot – what the lizards did not –
That life is easy.

Then they went their ways, no one knew why,
Some to the desert and some to the sky,
With the turning spheres and the passing years,
Like life, so easy.

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The Things That Came (Monster Slayer part 3)

Posted on 12 June 2014 by Thomas Kearney

Out of some place they came
Out of any place they came
And everywhere out of place
Making the whole world out of place:

Kicking monster, old-age monster,
Yaitse, eye monster, rolling monster.
And that’s not all, there are
Monsters nobody ever saw.

Old man said:

Pretty soon
They gonna monster us all up —
Pretty soon, mind,
Be no more people.

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Another View of Mt. Fuji

Posted on 3 May 2014 by Thomas Kearney

After a drunken night, the fog starts to clear . . .
What the fuck?
Where’d that mountain come from?

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The Lovers

Posted on 1 May 2014 by Thomas Kearney

Listen, so our lamp
goes out – it just means
there was someone needed light
more than us; it just means
we had enough.

Maybe
that light went to someone
underground, who now sees
the cave of wonders she
was stumbling through before;
or else a midnight thief

is about to be discovered;
or maybe the place where
it’s noon right now just got
a little bit brighter.

Anyway, you and I,
we both know there’s really
no such thing as the dark.

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Memento Mori

Posted on 29 April 2014 by Thomas Kearney

Old man sung up a crow, imbued
him with all kinds of mess,
a million ways of saying Yes
to anything that’s crude

He was divisive, he could slice
an ordinary stone into a knife
as if what cut might somehow be alive
and thrive on strife

Some said he’d killed the lark
Stone dead, that’s what they said
(though others would insist instead
her own song broke her heart)

And she – she was a battle, never right
so when she opened up the door, blew out the light,
who knows which one had won or lost the fight?
— Then it was night.

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Against Order

Posted on 18 April 2014 by Thomas Kearney

The arches found the city which the river underlies.
The tall cathedral towers are aspiring to the skies.

We would all be very happy in that geometric land
Some above and some below, but each according to a plan.

The rich are the deserving and the poor accept their lot
And the rich have mausoleums and the poor will get a plot.
Meanwhile, what symmetry and balance we have bought!

Did anybody notice that the pieces fit so neatly
You could jumble up the city once and fill it in completely?
You could jumble up the city like a set of building blocks
Collect them when they’ve fallen and return them to their box.

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