the Little House Poems
My mind has been on the slugs as I’m smoking green tea watching the rain fall in Seattle, does anything grow in Autumn? All I see are slow fades and bright colors, my eyes shift when I ain’t wearing my boots because my feet slip too easy on these wet leaves, I’m leaving, I think, but then I run into a new girl and she speaks in poetry and looks like a celebrity and I’m stunned, we’re dating, I’m staying I guess, this is all still a prayer I guess. It’s now seven in the morning and already I’m working/hustling to pay off debts looking in the past when my entire body is aching towards the future, and presently I’m sitting on my ass, I need a walk. I need to reassess where my dreams lie because my pillow is cold every night. Jesus Christ your name still feels like honey on my lips though bitterness in my stomach, where have you gone? I’m here still in Seattle, still waiting and running through snow exhausted thinking that there’s gotta be a better way but I might be blind because I see nothing.
I am not yet in the flow.
Is this a good metaphor? I can’t tell if it’s hitting or not
the Flow
I’m not angry or nothing
towards the way things turned out,
it was just easier when you were in California
and I didn’t have to check every black-brown hair fair skinned chic girl
in every goddamn room I walk into
and then you are there and I have so much to say
but no way to say it- I’m frustrated by the way things turned out
honestly, I pray for your happiness just in case
some benevolent god hears my voice.
Sucker
As Phil soothes himself with his guitar I sit out here dreaming of a different form of creating of capturing moments like this, there’s nothing like being high. I wouldn’t trade where i am right now for a pot full of gold and a beach with a babe in a bungalow- this is the grit of life, the gunk and the funk and the fresh and the getting clean tattooed body feel the universe if you want to call it that
the vibes are all around, like sounds, like the ocean floor seaweed swaying and hipping so elegantly and why not say sexual? all the earth is reproducing the old with the new creating the first and the last and i am a part of it, feel how grand that is, the image of god, and stripped of my ego i will liberate myself, but not my, the self, which i am and am not. doesn’t rumi sound great right now? The trick is to find the time, the right now, to go with the flow and the dao and find yourself on eternity's shore smiling and wet and childish growing from a man to a human- it is a consequence and a privilege- don’t neglect what you are learning, what you are seeing, here, at work, while high, in between time and don’t forget the important parts- keep moving, i am motion and these words are emotion and together something phenomenal, if you walk and see, will emerge that is truly holy and profound and the first and the last, into more and more than i can believe.
Here Right Now
Concerning the Moon
looking like a slice of amber and the sky
the same as the ocean swallowing whole
so we were left in the wonder of that abyss~
if i could be anything, i thought in the dark
it’d be a cartographer of the carevessas of her lower lip
and the whirlpools in her hair
her collarbone arced like my cascade mountains
and her shoulder rolled out like a pacific island ~
i’m not sucha romantic that i pray for the future
but there’s another ocean in the meaning of words
and as i take another dive i’ll look back on this as another
time - what a funny thought, i’ll think, and then go out to find
the Moon, still in the sky, i’d imagine, looking
star light white and amber red swimming in the dark.
Concerning the Moon
The colors surrounding the lake tonight, even if absent of the fireworks, were like melted crayon pastels painted before the eschaton advancing towards us like the chariot of God
the fireworks were still super bad ass tho
Last 4th of July
Starting out with a bang and a flash in the pan calling the kettle black
the ball drops, all the cliches, we eat it up like cupcakes then burst forth into January
chattering teeth through our smiles, whiskey for warmth? Yes and a kiss
and a skip and lets get lost while we’re at it
into another year with the weight of everything we’ve ever known
all behind which is easy to say, I’m such an idealist
which is allowed, especially today
when the night is ending and the new year beginning
and when I can't look straight into your eyes without smiling
because you take up so much of my mind
my breaths huffing and puffing as we are walking
and everything like this has happened before I’m sure
but how nice to happen now with you at the start of a page
and trace the line all the way down or scribble
back wildly back up the stairs back into the room
back into the warmth back with a kiss back bursting forth
Last January 1st
I’ll let the coffee waft waving through the house rich like
sunlight through cracks and slits and windows-
meanwhile Austen jets off to church (for salvation)
and Henry heckles a hundred dollars (for savings).
I think we are young and unsure of how to exactly
frame questions concerning the genuine laughter
and sudden fits of tears
(at least we all feel something similar). Across the street
two oak trees stand, and from Peter’s couch
I have studied for a year as they have shifted
with every season and color, yet remained steadily confident-
I don’t think the answer is there, but doesn’t it phrase the question
in a way that makes you say ‘yes, yes’?
I know that I am young and unsure, but I am becoming filled
with candor, and generosity, and strength, and appreciating
something simple and enchanted, like this smell of sunshine
mixed up with my cup of coffee. It isn’t just
dancing I hope for (I do), but I also hope to wrestle
with God for a blessing, to climb a ladder
and awake saying “this place is holy”
What's the Question?
Somewhere the same film runs
on, but as for this
one, it is time to end
Last Poem I'll Write About Her
the Little House Legacy
Pine cones on the concrete and Evergreen in the air I remember
this all from last year, so it’s time to run
while it’s still Fall
don’t let it get you, don’t let it get you down
.
.
.
Maybe not every lesson is worth a lean but bank on the Fall
crispy and loud and shaking, knocking at the knees
since real eyes an crumbling expectations- not everything is an Evergreen, some leaves
turn colors and fade, disintegrate on the street or mulch into soil
there’s a difference in purpose, remember?, you’ve got to stretch out to be big, remember?
But it was such a little house
and I only played in traffic twice, the shaking roar of the buses
usually reminded me right where I was- I’m just grateful
for the passage of time, both the golden hour and the foggy days, I’m just grateful
that none of the mud slung stained my favorite sweater, I’m just grateful
for most nights feeling the beat walking like an urban cowboy on the concrete
writing out singing to the sunset colors on my blank mind- again,
it was one long lesson on breaking expectations, and about time
I've released into the naturalness I fought
so hard to cultivate, and for squeezing
sweet and sour ambrosia drops out like memento-memories into a jar
and when I’m ready I’ll drink it full for goodness sakes.
I thought myself real and free but then awoke one day to something new and saw all these strings yanking and pulling and dragging me around on stage and even if I enjoy the play it is real authentic masterful impromptu I'm aiming for /// so I keep cutting strings, to stay with the metaphor, and there's this free fall and a new practice of a new virtue and then a real hard "clunk" and then new all that and new energy from somewhere releases like a second wind and all I thought I knew I now can't say I know
but arise a rice ah realize ugh lies
but try again, try again
but arise a rise real eyes!!!
*blink blink*
It's a new morning and I'm feeling like its the first day for everyone ever because I remember mornings feeling like its the 38th, 39th, forty days tired soon as I awake, but not this morning ~ my energy is that of a child's dream with the think of play and create and ain't that the same but 'fantastic' is all I can think - I talk aloud in the dark, is that what you mean by prayer? I pray, I pray, you shout LOUD and I'll howl (I'm Howell) laugh at is this is a party so why shouldn't we smile and growl? Don't be so nice show some teeth or try to get some sleep or purr in your seat it's all here for you what do you need? Well, you see, that is what I'm concerned about.