Ophelia Street

Through too fast spring, past too green fields, clumps of bluets and a ravage of violets just before Ophelia street screams: "Stop!" so I do, driving once around the block and veering over the slag, just under the railroad track. Over the trestle, then two, and you scare the muddling, scuddling teens in amongst the mayapples, white violets, spring beauties-- and they are: count them every one ... young and on the river bank... with garbage scattered all around. Iron spikes in the sun, the stink of creasote, and the hand of a possum reaches out and touches me. The body lies apart, it could be mistaken for a woman's fancy hat...Dirt and garbage shall follow me all of my days...three trains go by and they're tearing apart the covered bridge. Corrugated metal swings on a high tree limb but the town is full of kids and grown-ups on bikes, and fisherpeople cluster at the falls. A pond with swimming irish setters and a bronze girl reads her book in the sun, with tulips. A cop arrests a young man and the church bells ring. Doug sez the tornado took all the trees.

wet and growing

wisconsin door crashes through my livingroom..standing on the watery plain of a foreign world. rice and beans for supper dutchman's breetches on the slopes of winnebago

life drawing

life drawings
what do you think?
seems life-size or at least large size have been forgotten..coming soon...

logan

An ant on the drinking fountain, an ant on the bathtub, a red-winged blackbird conkarees in the windy oak with no leaves yet, and a pair of grackles walking around in the backyard

dark trotI

didnt know they made 25 & a third oz cans of beer.the seven of diamonds, a blue colored-pencil, a list of steps to make a pro basketball team, lots of barking dogs.... note to self: get daffodils from the woods

spring in mcdonald ohio

coltsfoot blossoms, violet leaves, deer and coon tracks in the mud, intricate furry oval clumps that are buds, red & white + grey + yellow falling and hitting the earth with soft "thpts!" like raindrops...rousing a hawk from a perch overlooking the murky pool where the peepers trill evenings. It's much too hot to think properly... carrying home 3 cans & a bottle of northern beer... wind blows hard then a smattering of rain

dead swans

The virus came thru them as they pulled feathers from dead swans..familiar buzz of dougs snoring, rising & falling in circles in the dark At night there is only the circle of lamplight to work in, everything beyond is blanked out & cannot interfereI noticed a large tear in his dress shoe where it had pulled away from the sole one night when we were out.

coo with vigor

furry cottontail breaks & runs under the pines only when I am 3 feet away. And it starts to snow. The daylilies are sprouting, we hear mourning doves cooing with vigor, mornings

marching springs

Today is the first day of spring, the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. On this day the North and South Poles are equally distant from the sun, so we will have almost exactly the same amount of daytime as nighttime.
The novelist Margaret Atwood said, "In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."
Emily Dickinson said, "A little Madness in the Spring / Is wholesome even for the King."
quoted from http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2006/03/20/#monday

celebrating

Eating pineapple out of a can... binoculars a tool on the glass at ready...smell of rain in the dust attracts a moving body to whilst the road...they wandered thirteen valleys and then he was dead.
****celebrated Valentines by getting married
celebrated xmas with 3 police cars and a wrecker thrown in for good measure; on New Year's cleaned out the gutters & recycled aluminum for cash.

awoken

Woken again by crying--this time an elderly black crack dealer, weeping high

everytime before lie down to sleep i feel like only particles, dissolving in space, feel like nothing

lightening flashes

Lightening flashes against the livingroom held back by cloth curtain -- the sky is moving around out there; big dark wet world with no soul, little soft fuzz-covered beings trying not to get cut or smushed...
striking rain , hitting, hard drops against metal, against shingle, tar & wood, volleys of thunder rolling and wiping the smokey Valley fields of hell.3/12/2006 5:01 AM
Hours later peal the peepers out of the damp nite
Three a.m. rain beats on metal.

Thunder gentle in the morning, patting down the neighborhood where birds of all sorts chase one another and nest--- Spring is warmly breathing on our heels

robins whinny & neigh like horses in the rainey mud everywhere.

giant snowflakes fall miles apart, strong winds around the house, robins whicker, warm bird on cold snow

slicing war

sliced war sign into strips to fasten to warm the house

cyano logan

world turned over on it's side the door beside the cactus
trees in the early morning gravel

sparrows in the yews dead
logan roads run him down over

stormy weather

we sat in the strom-darkened truckstop drinking the last of their coffee
listening to hail & the words of the seneca woman

before finding the black metal death traps and falling quickly in cold water
bone striking rock

son of beech leaves and credit cards
black storm wind rustling through your files
But there's Venus and the crescent moon flitting behind ragged clouds

billy collins tells me poems are emotions
and the radio preacher tells me imagination is gone
coffees three and four
dark.
Only trucks.
And dark.

Some Velvet Morning (featuring Lee Hazlewood) Lyrics - Nancy Sinatra
Male: Some velvet morning when I'm straight.
I'm gonna open up your gate.
And maybe tell you 'bout Phaedra
and how she gave me life
and how she made it in.
Some velvet morning when I'm straight.
Female:Flowers growing on the hill.
Dragonflies and daffodils.
Learn from us very much. Look at us but do not touch.
Phaedra is my name.
Male: Some velvet morning when I'm straight.
I'm gonna open up your gate.
And maybe tell you 'bout Phaedra
and how she gave me life
and how she made it in.
Some velvet morning when I'm straight.
Female:Flowers are the things we knew.
Secrets are the things we grew.
Learn from us very much.
Look at us but do not touch.
Phaedra is my name.
Male: Some velvet morning when I'm straight.
Female:Flowers growing on the hill.
Male:I'm gonna open up your gate.
Female:Dragonflies and daffodils.
Male:And maybe tell you 'bout Phaedra
Female:Learn from us very much.
Male:And how she gave me life.
Female:Look at us but do not touch.
Male:and how she made it in.

A car blares raucous music out it's open windows....BUT it's the sound of bagpipes!
Fox runs-- slowly--- across the highway, to the sewage treatment plant, in the night.

Mud starts to dry. Suntea. Black paint under fingernails.

Potato salad, green grass
potato salad, green grass
No asparagus, only pine
Little horses' feet gone to seed everywhere, when will they ever learn?
Mustard glowing and electric dandelions shrieking
fresh young sweet sap green little leaves
flittering in warm breathes breathe breathe breath-taker,
bending willowy, smiting sweetly.
Will Illinois never end?
Blowing your heart into a million dogwood petals, my love lies dying at your feet.
Here a gamma-second, there a gamma-second...slippery pennsylvania butler rocks making his pockets sag.

"I climb the road to Cold Mountain,
the road to Cold Mountain that never ends.
The valleys are long & strewn w/ stones,
the streams broad & banked w/ thick grass.
Moss is slippery, though no rain has fallen;
pines sigh, but it isn't the wind.
Who can break from the snares of the world
and sit with me among the white clouds?" Han-Shan

the germ, the speck, the spot, the first drop, the scratch, the inkling, the dink, the dankery, dankery-do, the where-with-you: the festering idea of the Tale of Two Valleys, One of Paper, One of Steel What do they have betwixt common: carbon. The stuff of stars (space art) We take their taconite from their Range; there is a box sitting in the Youngstown University: it is red and white & black and reads: "Appleton Papers".... Here in Youngstown we've fallen down, sweet Jenny, you furnace, you! burning bright, get out to do those mills, get out, get out 'cause now he sings of the Rising... It's hot and cold, and now the sun is shining. The hiker from the hills is alive!