hidden in a trunk at night on a train

Loaded on a truck
folded with a tuck
placed in a trunk
listen to the rain

wobble of the crank
banging on the plank
in the middle of the floor
over by the door

here is the bridge

I recognize it

the shimmy in the beam

the banging on the seams

out on the sun
on the bottom of the sea
underneath the dirt
a time to exert

just right for now
a tingle in the brow
the pain in the back
lain on the track

up the hill in snow

as far as I can go

breath out exhaust

move at any cost

Break at the hinge
leverage a winch
weak drifting light
appearing on the right

push up again
cut on the tin
a weak movement out
a tremble then a shout.

cat

That grey cat never was right.
It used to crawl up my pants leg
and to sleep in my
underpants like it had radar.

It could have been the laser pointer
that made it's eyes cross and hiss.
Afterwards it wore a box
like a turtle shell.
It may have been the food.
Watermelon, cherries, ice-cream
whatever it could get it's paws on.
It had preferences.

It may have been the bottle of
whiskey I spilled on it it's back.
"Oh Shit!"
but it didn't seem to mind whiskey.

When I was a boy another boy
told me about jumping
off a counter top and landing on a cat's
back--breaking it.  There was a girl
there who we both crushed for.
He continued that the cat
had "army-crawled" out of the
room and knew that I never wanted to
do that to my cat.
I only spilled bourbon
on mine and later screwed the
girl.

No, put side by side these things
complicate but do not explain the
character.
It was ordinary cat.
Not at all one of the pack.
It was a beast like
all others lost in
the trance of it's own seeking.
It had a rhythmic reptilian gate
oscillating under sable,
peering
beyond the window pane,
ancient with an ear on the
seminal thought
entangled in the ruinous idea
of companionship.

Letter Etched on a Saddle

Stay with me;

with the rain and 

the animals and the fire.

Because what we love

is here and under the knife.

Once unconquerable,

the ribbon

inside reached all the limbs

and was not simply

a land by these rivers.

The water now 

follows a different path;

chosen by obstructions 

upstream.  

It flows without purpose

and sadly empties itself 

out of itself like a old

summer wind.

We have known

this step is the sky and is

fertile to swallow

armies and lovers whole.

This is why we chose this spot.

I will stay and mend the felt;

a promiscuity of twigs and lice

like ash. it

takes sacrifice

to ride 

where we were shaken out

from. Be ready,

be ready, be ready because

it is not enough to busy ourselves.

We must walk 

where all the seasons

grow and desiccate--together.

I know the place.

Let's eat: fermented mare's milk 

vegan spring rolls

horse flesh,

coconut water.

A Day at the Office

The labors screech dull.
Monkeys eat
and pull out their
eye-lashes in supplication.
Beavers turn trees to impaling posts
for mummies to suffocate
though a corky-hole.

Fruit plates, cakes, an army of
the fattened, diabetic, gout ridden
robbed, forgotten.
A new desk lamp.
New task chairs.
Executive laminate.

WAIT A MINUTE.
I have it now--
Let's drink poison
and hold our guts
like totemic Andean children.
Let's die bound by wool
alive for hallucinations in terror.
My gums tighten.
When will I get new office chairs?
Centuries pass.
I am wrapped

alive for death

and yet I understand

the mechanism of

buboes and the oxidative stresses
only because I work until 3pm.

broken plate

Let's look at the broken plate.
It fell from atop the door frame
scraping our children as it fell.
He cried, she didn't understand
the protective eye, the red tail in the
branches of the oak that soaked
an icy day.  My hands froze, we had coffee
on a snow day.

It's probably this way because I smashed it once
in anger.  I blamed you because talking is
easy, thinking is easy, prejudice is easy, feeling
free is hard, being happy is hard, taking things
hard makes it harder.

It's probably this way because I used the wrong glue.
When I tried to piece it together the face still glowed
recognizably below the new yellow lines.
Yet, I liked it better this way and it
seemed normal for us.  What a state for such a bold person--
though she is dead and is broken beyond.

It's probably this way because the materials were not strong enough.
Why use china when non breakable
plates are available? I remember my mother dropping
a bowl on the kitchen floor--she was proud.
It did not break because it was a space-aged invention.
It bounced and roiled
and cried but stood strong to the fall.
My father brooded
and suffered-unbreakable.

Is the figure too bold
a role for such a fragile medium?  Why restrain a tiger
with paper lines.  It must have exploded from within
coincidentally when it hit the wall, like a great gush
of pressurized steam.
Yes, this is it. I believe in and love this explanation.
Does she have the courage to do it again?

The Link: Uncovering our Earliest Ancestor

Just finished this book By Colin Tudge

A study of the fossil "Ida" and her history as the earliest known complete fossil in the pro-simian line.
This create represents a missing link in at the split of the Lemur line and the hominid line.  Lots of
taxonomy in this work, but still fun for the imagination.