New Poem - Wet Cement

Hey.

Here's another poem based on a Patreon donor prompt.  There's hundreds of hours of weird, wonderful content on the site; all yours for pennies a day!  

WET CEMENT

Clinker:

The raw, inert 

guts

poured into a bucket.

Activated 

with common water.

(too little

and the end result

cracks)

Hands steady.

We pour.   Somewhere,

A clock's heart throbs.

One day, two (maybe) -

And it's set.

Tending to the surface.

Smoothing out 

the anxious bubbles.

Imprinting our descendant's skin

which preserves for 

half a century, long after

we mere carpenters

surrender our trowels,

our gauge rakes, our 

artisan paddles.

Night.  A shift concluded.

We sleep.

That tabula rasa 

stares expectantly

at the moon, its godmother.

Lovers, vandals, the 

hulk of anonymous

men,

starving for any 

lasting impression,

they too may leave

a mark; scratch out their 

initials, scar this

constructed child

with a careless 

tire print.

We prepare.

We cordon off.

We erect warnings.

We compound with quality materials.

We broker faith in our neighbors.

We fret.  Too many pock-marked

progenitors

littered with selfish influence.

It's just concrete, you say.

We bow our heads,

casting concern upon 

the  trodden, rough-shod ground

while others amble, cock their chins,

eyes skyward.

New Poem - Oneironaut

Hey.

Here's a new poem (but super cool Patreon folk got to see it first - you should totally be one of them)

ONEIRONAUT

You.  You till

That fertile lie:

What you, sensate,

Clarify as your self-sure

Surroundings,

Is binding. True. 

Persistent.

There are ghosts

Suffering

Between the minute

Atoms

Of your unswept floor.

The screen

To which you fixate

In hazy surrender

Is not static;

Rather, its canvas

Tears draft upon draft

In rapid succession

Yet the eye

Betrays witness.

The night is a malleable clay.

The day, likewise.

I have seen

Plastic drinking straws

Pierce the hide

Of a brutish white birch tree.

I have crept, silent and custodial, into my mother's dreams.

I straighten the dream-table.

I discard the dream-waste.

I launder the dream-garments.  Hang them to dry on the dream-patio.

And

In my own

Frequent confrontations

With the wizened

Night-Incubus,

I act as script supervisor.

Surely,

I challenge,

you've realized

This character,

My father,

Has expired. 

My skin

is not wire-shackled;

An airplane

Cannot guest

A serpent,

Three-headed, rapt

With hunger.

I rub my hands together.

Cradle the dream-beasts.

Mash their form into

A microphone

Or a talk show

Or a bookstore

Or a soundstage

Or a theatre.

I do not accept their false face.

Rather,

I craft another,

Shadow following shadow.

New Poem - Beowulf

Hey.

Here's a new (well, new for non-Patreon folk)  poem.

BEOWULF

The chaos
of the writhing present
is this:

No shadow exists.

Any meter of action,
Whether mired in global friction
Or scrawled inside some antiseptic suburb
Or grunted out
In a airless tradition-territorial,

Will be inhaled.
A limbic frenzy of response will follow.

The object, the analysis of the object,
The rebuttal of the analysis of the object.

It is a beautiful chaos.

Frightened as we are,
We are humbled by the exalted
Equivocation
Each message, each suspicion-speech
Brings.

The past yields no prism of conjecture.
Rather, the most aggressive narrative
Sticks like pitch,
Like ancestral scars .

Grendel was a monster.

Beowulf, his slayer-savior.

So says the tale.

We nod sagely,
For the writers, the orators
Are honorable men.

Yet silhouetted, faintly,
In that puckered scrawl,
(a hagiography made binding
by a millennium of preservation)

Are unwritten details
Which, if said events unfurled
This present time,
Would not rest in un-eddied
Night.

Who creeps
Into a house
of a  grieving mother?

Who kills
A mother
Whose son you've grave-gifted
With her own blade?

Who defiles
The other,
And rather than own
Their brute sentence,
Seeks pity, seeks
Clemency, seeks
Weasel words?

The mask of art,
Kennings,
Cannot eke out sanctuary.

Your tousled hair
And gawky smile
Is not your true face.

Brock Turner.
Beowulf.

Be it
"twenty minutes
of action"
or
Grendel slandered as
"a man outlawed
for wickedness, he must await
the mighty judgement of God in his majesty"

It's pure Anglo-Saxon propaganda.

New Poem - Tarahumara

Hey.

Here's a new (to non- Patreon patrons) donor poem.  To get access to hundreds of content I've made, become a Patreon patron today!  Just pennies a day...

TARAHUMARA

That is not
our name,

You clap,
Witnessing.

We are merely
Rarámuri -

"runners on foot".

There is no
Need

For praise.
Do you cheer

The sunrise for its
Steadfast work?

Or the simple turkey
For the food they make?

Once,
We were farmers, race -hunters.

Before Narcos.
Before their money.

Before the rain
Became

A writhing ghost.
Made fertile ground dust.

Our children
Were taken.

Not with weapons,
But with a false remedy

For a sick soul.
Soñaderos and their

Dream medicine
Replaced with money.

The young ones
Lift heavy packs

Of marijuana
And never return.

Swallowed
By the Estrados Unidos.

Our history,
Our huaraches,

Now covered
In drugs and mud

And blood-marked
Beasts.

New Poem - Praying Mantis

Hey.

Here's Amy's (the newest Patron who's taken part in the Patreon Pledge Drive ) poem.

To become a Patron for pennies a day (and to receive all kinds of creative wonders, just click below
today!

www.patreon.com/jara

PRAYING MANTIS

There's just
One mating cycle

A single episode
Where life must tear itself

Away
From the ticking clock

And
If she's starved

If her rutting
Male's too small,

Too trusting,
If he overstays a coital welcome,

She'll size him up
Before, during, or after

Sperm's delivered.
She'll cradle his head,

Facing him,
And with her teeth,

Wrest neck from body.
He'll spasm, limp.

If he's inside her,
His abdomen will pump

Faster - just for a moment,
Sending signals - life, further

Into her flush, extricated
Body.

Having come and shuttered,
He lies, inert, as she savors

Her fresh,
Restorative meal.

She simply
Must feed.

New Poem - Honeysuckle

Hey.

Here's a new (for non-Patreon folk) poem.  It's been over a year, and I'm still laying down daily creative murmurs for pennies on the dollar!  Become a Patron today, and get early access!

HONEYSUCKLE


A concrete
Wall,
Unfettered,
Attracts no butterflies.
Yields no dewy, musk-melon scent.
The eye
Interrupts its focus, already bored
With the grainy, flat expanse.


But
Add some
Climbers,
Perfumed tourists
Not merely occupying
A space,
But wedding that fixture
To nature, to the synthesis
Of dual-fed time.


A permission
To surrender
Can be beautiful,
Can till color
And shy, minute majesty.


It is
My fondest wish
To live
En-gathered
With loving fragments.

New Poem - Dinosaur

Hey.

Here's a new (for non-Patreon-types)  poem.

You can join in on the daily mischief - just click on www.patreon.com/jara and sign up!

DINOSAUR 

Dig tool's 

Blunt plastic at both ends. 

Takes precision. You can't just 

Jab into the slab. 

I coax my nephew: Tap Gently. 

Like you're knocking on a door, 

Some secret code.

He digs. I brush. Fervently,each sweep 

Scraping past the silt of what is known 

To find the fossils buried within. 

We're Making Progress 

Dr. Seibert, 

I murmur. He squints a smile, 

Takes both the dig tool and brush, 

Sets upon the yielding earth. 

I read from the kit's glossy activity 

Guide: Fossils Can Determine 

Many Clues About Dinosaurs, But Not All - 

Dr. Seibert pauses, 

Cocks his head 

In apprehension: 

Really? 

Sure, I say. For example, 

Color. There's no evidence of 

What hue a Triceratops actually was - 

So We Can Make 'Em Whatever We Want, he grins, 

Taps, Taps, and Grins. 

Yes. 

Very little dinosaurs become fossils. 

Time's a thief, 

And It takes extraordinary preservation, 

Little water, 

And - 

                                                                       His hands strike the surface of a shiny, 

                                                                       Jewel-like Tooth, 

                                                                                              embedded in the clay. 

                                                                        Yawning up in greeting. 

And I wonder, 

Will this memory 

Be an artifact 

Subsumed, decomposed? 

A story is a fossil where the bones 

Have been replaced

With questions 

New Poem - Misanthrope

Hey.

Here's a new (new to non-Patreon folk) poem.  Based on a true story.

To get daily, weird, wonderful stuff for pennies, just become a patron today!

MISANTHROPE

About

twenty-six days

before he died

in a suburb

in Idaho,

my grandfather

grew convinced

the neighborhood children

could sniff his senescence

and he took

to sleeping

with a loaded

Colt 45

under his pillow

My taciturn grandmother,

still daily

and for hours

(until her fatal emphysema)

composing her feathery hair,

finally hid

the handgun,

but expired

before sharing the location

So there

we were,

Growing up quickly.

Screening every parcel of

a pre-fab dwelling

(with a toddler inside)

Hoping first to disable

that final

fuck you

Gestured

by a man

whose field of fucks

had grown fallow for decades.

More skeleton and whisky

and cigarette smoke

than heart.

New Poem - Exodus

Hey.

Here's another new (for non-Patreon folk)  poem.

EXODUS

And with
the ground behind us,
trodden underfoot
by our congress

and when
the salted earth we
stained, mottles
and catches wind

We have,
without tears, without elegy,
without the
pale historian's scrawl,


Eaten our
dead.   We are ambulatory.
We march,
yearning for - what?

Not home.
Perhaps a gentle cove
Where children
Cannot spy ghosts.

New Poem - Friendship

Hey.

Taking a momentary break from KING OF THE HOBOS prep/freakouts (opening this Thursday!  Playing for three weekends/11 shows!  www.kingofthehobos.bpt.me

Here's a Patreon poem.

FRIENDSHIP


Two days.  That's all we had.
Abducting him.
Sat him down across a second-hand computer.
Made it plain:  You're not leaving
This apartment, seeing the seasons,
until the work's warm, stapled, and delivered.
Until you graduate.


Joe and me, we slept,
we slept in shifts.  Kept him awake
with coffee, with brainstorming paragraphs,
with friendly fire from burp guns.
Seemed
impossible:  Kueberth put off
six term papers and now,
the clock was bleeding dry.


By the fifth paper's
end, and the last
frappicuno,
Kueberth wouldn't stop shaking.
He was a grasshopper on a
saucepan.    Suffering just so because
he knew how damn close
success was.  Shuttered his muscles.
Closed his eyes, headed for the bathroom, locked
the door.


It was then that I knew that sometimes
you have to drag those you love
into victory's barbed wire.
With what tools and nonsense
this stubborn beast of time provides.


With my father's
creative mischief,
I picked open
the lock.   Found him
sitting, sobbing.  Leaning next
to the unused radiator.


And, out of some
perfect madness,
I began to speak
in a gruff, patchy brusque.
For twelve minutes we spoke,
metal and man.  Called myself
Thermidor (the heater's name),
Teased and cajoled Kueberth
to get those fingers
moving.


That he did.
Haven't done many selfless acts
in this time.
But seeing him take that
stage,
sneaking pictures several thousand
miles away of him,
a wide-grinning wife, a baby girl,
I'll keep those moments.   When I
put my wretched self
to use.

Poem - CD

Hey.

Here's a poem I wrote for Patreon about my oldest nephew (who turned five this month).
I think he's pretty darn cool.

CD

There's an allosaurus
Neck deep and ravenous
Inside a hapless stegosaurus
When he slams shut the book,
Wheels to face me,
and whispers:
I've just released a new song.
He wants to be
a gardener
a singer
and a paleontologist.
All three careers tasked
With the ministration
Of patience, digging deeper,
And solitude.
I clap my hands, gesture to the
Theatre of the living room.
He grins, a bit too tightly,
Spins in another dervish,
(as if shaking himself braver)
Ambles to the center.
A beat, he oversips a breath,
He sighs and with that exhalation
Every bone wresting him upright
Surrenders.
Puddle of nerves crawling towards me.
We tickle one another,
And as we play, I wish I could tell my nephew:
Fear does not weaken us; it simply
Develops a deeper appreciation
For song.
For, before I had a voice,
Before I trusted that what came forth in sound
Was useful,
I'd hold concerts in pillows.  I'd sing
Quietly to push tears back inside my sockets.
With breath finely tuned I'd attend each sore
And aching bone.
We sing to keep living.
There is no rhythm, no explicit coda, no familiar chord in
Our frightening seconds.
We sing for ourselves, a constant performance,
Pulsing like the veins
In a newborn's skull:
Here.

Here.
Here.
Here.

Here.

New Poem - Family

Hey.

Here's another new (again - new for non-Patreon folk) poem.  You should really hop on this gravy train!  10 bucks a month gets you your own monthly poem, one buck a month gets you DAILY curated stuff I make...  GO!

This poem's a snapshot of my childhood.  Poor as we were, we had some great summers sometimes.
This was one of them.  I've written before about how games shaped our family.  Here's a brief window into that devotion.

FAMILY

Three children sleeping across a Monopoly set.

A note squats on Free Parking, impatiently scrawled with a magic marker:

Weenie's Turn. Dozing without blankets.

A thick sheen of sweat coating their syrupy cheeks.

Discarded Slurpee cups, a Little Caesar's

Pizza box, A radio (won in an costume contest), still lightly playing, set to

"Kara's Love Line". And, as these siblings dream,

A caller (Charlene) with a catch in her midnight speaking voice

Dedicates

A song to her husband

(Rafael) serving overseas in Japan.

Kara, the sensual DJ, hums to life. She soothes,

Each word caresses the evening air. A little pause, and Heatwave's

"Always and Forever" cradles the sleeping trio.

There, until morning, these children remain.

Stuffed with romance and sugar and paper money.

Poem - Now

Hey.

Here's a new (new to non-Patreon folk) poem.  If you sign up NOW and become a patron for as little as a buck a month, you get all kinds of daily stuff...and SOMETHING SECRET AND AWESOME will be announced August 1st to you first!

NOW

The web of flesh

between my thumb

and index finger

is a reset button. I pinch

and press it when overwhelmed by

the hazards of memory, the persistence

and manufacture of future time .

There's pain. Kind which slams shut the book of distant daydream.

A second passes. No poems are written.

No elegies of the past held.

Every fiber on my skin yearns for a signal.

Unprotected, eager, accepting each new force

without coveting.

New Poem - Reverie

Hey.

Here's a new poem (well, new to those who aren't patrons on Patreon - and if you aren't - DO IT! Super cheap.  Starts at a buck a month, and I send you personalized, curated things I make daily.

REVERIE

You. You are clad in a slip 

of storm-shadow. Afternoon 

daydreams on a spartan bed. 

Until the moment you rise

and feel the sudden weight upon your brow, 

You maintain that magic circle, 

Feed the mewling, frightened worms 

with stories of her, 

The love-that-is-to-be. 

A soft, time-worn hand cradles in the thin light 

an imagined waist. An unused pillow 

is simulacra for her nape. There is no face. 

No combination of sage syllables 

forming a clear name. 

No sign. You listen for a voice, and hear the low and present hum 

of the living city. 

Two clues keep the spell electric; 

She secrets the faint, gentle scent of chocolate, 

and bears a warm, crackling embrace. 

She presses you hard, and every hair, 

every scent, every mark on your skin 

is measured.

New Poem - Wine

Hey.

Here's a look at a new poem.  Patreon donors got to see it first.  For a chance to see daily, curated content that I make, and to be a part of an artistic, delightful community, click here to become a patron today!  You can do for as little as buck a month.  Ten bucks a month or more gets you a personalized monthly poem like this one!

WINE

 It was....twelve? 

Fourteen years ago? 

The past is microfiched, stretched into 

Quick, rolling sheets. 

First day of a new year. 

Circuit knocked out power in the boiler room. 

Lowest level of the ship. 

Elevator to breaker, just two hundred feet. 

Pitch with limpid decay. 

Flashlight, a useless prop. Crawling on my knees, 

And as I felt for the railing, heard the vessel gently moan as she rose and fell, 

I was stabbed. 

With no noise, I screamed. 

And, though this was a tomb of rust

and make-believe, though I had led thousands of strangers

to this altar of fear 

and cackled inwardly as they cried, 

For that moment, I was horribly, tenderly alone. Only I could flip the switch, 

A thimble of blood lapped out of my thumb, 

cast a shadow on the predator, 

Wine. Two glasses. Party guests from the night prior 

Went exploring without a map. As the old year sought its requiem, 

these two strangers spent the evening 

between the sprawling husks of rusted, slightly leaking plates. 

And now, no more. 

Hand throbbing, I pressed 

towards the bow. Foot by precarious foot, 

Testing the darkness. I had counted these steps, 

once,

fifty-four. Sighted, I'd been known to race them

and terrify a crowd in under six seconds. 

Not here. An hour lapsed 

until I finally stood up 

opened the box 

flipped the switch 

and roused the beast awake. 

I smiled, sadly. My hands reeked of dried 

merlot and iron. Another year 

with the same old ghosts.