of acorns

I have collected acorns
and cannot help but think

the squirrels are planning
wretched tribulation

this is how one sees
after brutal violation

as once I was
when within my walls

a hoard of brown hairs
settled for the winter

they skip, now, along my fence
innocent as mice

but I know those
coveting eyes

and the long blade
of their claw

of their persistent attacks
detested and admired

little bastards with tails
I see you

693. afternoons

Upon a mat of pine
there was breath
and birds
and sighing whispers

The sky fading blue
and black
through gates
of fluttering lashes

As gravity brought
supple flesh
to rest
and rise

To the perch of lip
and settled hip
of arms rooted
below shoulders booted

friday morning musings

Yesterday, we took Maria to the vet
for her weekly Cerenia shot. As we talked
with the vet, she sat in my lap,
ears up like tents. Not a word
could she know, yet alert she listened,
calmly, taking in every wave of sound.
When we left, I wondered who
had heard more.

++++++

I listen to a lot of music. Same songs
over and over again. Some with more
than a hundred plays. But I couldn't
tell you more than a phrase of a lyric,
more than a few words here and there,
and sometimes not even the title.

++++++

On those occasions where I felt compelled
to look up lyrics, sometimes, but not always,
something diminished, as if as the words
moved forward, something other,
something more beautiful
perhaps more natural
moved back
silently

++++++

From an early age I developed
a highly intuitive sense of tone
and mood, the texture of a look,
a cough, of foot on floor. I see
in this way, not so much with eye
but with the scent of movement,
that truthful flow around boulders
needed to navigate the stream,
or as I mistakenly typed: the screams

++++++

We have four dogs
but only Maria comes upstairs
and lies next to my chair
only occasionally moving
from one spot to another.

As I rose to return my coffee
I stepped upon a warm spot
on the carpet, warm as fresh
piss, which was my first thought.
Instead, it was where she had
just moved, her warmth still
in the fibers and now upon my foot.

Reach any lesson you want. I just
know it felt good, to feel that warmth,
to think of how even the carpet
knows our touch and I think of the
room, and when I leave,
what another steps into,
in my absence. Do I leave
a warmth?

He(art)

If forced,

beauty over logic

curve over line

metaphor to simile

And sight to word

He(art).

692. Von's Journal #9

Do good work. Then move on.

Hold nothing longer than necessary; especially ideas.

When you have nothing left, everything is possible.

Nothing is more true than music. Not even math.

Nothing interferes with communication like language.

If it doesn't come like leaves to a tree, it better not come at all.

To grow, give; to live, love.

Forgive often; start within.

691. somewhere, an owl

They drank coffee in bed and read poems. Each line was held and weighed, each verb measured twice, each noun fitted for plate, poked for weakness, then set aside in a pile. He read then she read. Then they read again, standing, to see if in standing the poem became something different. And it did. So they took the words and threw them into the air, swirled them as water between fingers, drank of their sweet adjectives and those little cousin adverbs. And they did this all day long until candles took them to supper, to bed, to the readings of night, of poems that breathed as they breathed, wore mood as the sky did clouds, and what was form and what was function and what flew and what walked mattered not, as plot mattered not, as the bird cares not, knows not of flight but for the flying; and her head on his shoulder, and his lips upon the page and the rustle of clean sheets was all and none and yet more than all and less than none as the vessel before and after port. And with the last flickers, sleep came, ink and paper staining cloth and fingers, as dogs too in the bed and on the floor and in this way their days became their nights as warmth beget warmth under the roof, under the sky, to the sound of night and the stream and somewhere, never seen, an owl.

thursday morning dribbles

When I was a small boy, I had one recurrent dream, a vivid dream, almost a waking dream such embedded in my memory the cold sweat I experienced in remembrance, less then ten years of age, haunted as if I had transgressed in some past life. Each time the same. I was in an army. Sometimes a modern one, sometimes not. Always I was away from the battle, sometimes alone, sometimes with one or two others. I had, in every case, run away. I had, in the waking, a dread, from the dreaming, that the enemy was coming, marching, that they might or might not find me, the war ongoing, and that I could not face them, that I must run. And even to this day, I feel the shame I felt then, the roots of a coward within me as I did as a child, as I do today. So don't befriend me. I will only disappoint you and when you most need me, I won't be there. I'm telling you now. This is how it is. This is how it will be. And nothing you can say or do can change what is, what was, what is wired to be. To run away, to be alone, to know only of the trees and birds and blue sky, to be somewhere, some place untouchable, uncomplicated, unencumbered of the web of expectation, to float upon the imagination all things ethereal, ephemeral, to lie in pace, requiescat, only the song of the long blade dancing in my ear and the cold stone of heads come stop upon this ground, laden never more with should's baggage, that thin vizard of the ignorant, the bovine of life, feeding upon the living as they shat not flowers.