Closing Arguments

Some days you're ready to die

Defeat smells different than fear

It is the perfume of hopelessness

Where the ride ends safely

But you wonder what else it could be

A poppy plant?

Festive log?

A damaged fence or rusty caliper?

Talking to you is punishment enough

In the long-winded sewer of sentences

Where one could serve life in earshot

We have the scars to prove -

Battery terminals at both ends

And Halloween masks

Resembling the common errors

Stepping down is slanted

When you can roll

Roll

Barring any discrepancy

I will leave when I am supposed to

Shutting books and shudders loudly

Locking windows

Paying respects

With zero fucks

In monk fashion

With a barrel of beer

Swinging from my neck

What's next?

Is it any matter?

We frigidly say there is space

And fire in the cauldron

But we know better 

Than to test plasma

At closer than 600 light years

Corn Cob Pipe

Each week

on Saturday

I land

the shell of a man

Performing my duty

as an upright piano

constricts with no real event

the turmoil begs;

a constant attempt 

to stay in tune

Warp speed!

for any small seed

to figuratively spit

the dreggy remnants

of whatever shavings

have come through

the corn cob pipe

VASCO

  I noticed a picture of a young boy today

in my house

He was smiling and hugging the neck of a woman 

smiling stunningly

I recognized the boy

It was me

and of course the woman was you

My initial confusion

was not the smile

which I recognized inherently

Nor the photo itself

Nor the embrace

But the missing feeling of being connected 

has thrown me for a loop

I find myself slightly unrecognizable

since you're gone

I don't have the wherewithal to draw a good conclusion

on most days

I'm so busy

with work and distractions

None of them more important than you

All of them less painful than your leaving

which still seems to shock me

and come in waves

Along with grief and crying

and snow and loss

It surprised me to not immediately put it together

The boy in the photo

The woman with the disarming smile

 For a second

they were just two people

Like people I didn't know

Because one of us is gone

and the other is going

I imagine a sailor lost at sea

Having used a star for guidance

and tracking and gauge

for so long it becomes second nature

Even when it's dark

Even in a storm that lasts weeks

he knows it is there

and will present itself again

Alas, looking up

I might as well be spinning

(which is funny because I am

and who knows what forces of nature you must contend with)

Arms up like the fulcrum of a telescope 

with no telescope to be found

Just spinning on the axis

until the two become one 

and it's all just a circle

I read about the disappearance of one hundred stars today

Nobody knows what happened to them

They just vanished

Or perhaps there is some other explanation

Extra terrestrial life forms using them for energy

or a red supergiant which skips the supernova

and goes right to black hole home

Or maybe it's you 

Plucking them from the night sky

or taking ninety-nine friends to another place in the far orbits

When the words red and supergiant found their way to me

along with the disappearing trick

I certainly thought about the sailor

and the fact that he would also have to find another star

to rest his bearings on

Unless he just decided to stay

In the storm

because at least he knew where that was

pas de deux

The bag hung an inch from then solid ground. Could it still be considered dirty? Impure or fouled? It had touched other grounds, yes. None of which were sacred, because nothing was nor had been for a long time now.
"Just put down the bag," she said.
"Nah, I'm good," he responded. As he usually would, unless he didn't; in which case he would just raise both eyebrows and thin out his lips as if to say: this is how I am me.

Later, down the path that hair and skin takes, more or less stayed the same. All the world was washed clean by rain or by pipe and there it all sunk, back into that same filthy ground held together by heat and exhaustion.

In two separate lodgings, across a not-so-breadthy lake, two lovers stood facing their side of the shore-water's edge, touching their anonymous private parts -- not so fervently, but rather with quite a soft and longingly loving touch -- behind walls, but facing each other, the magnetism too distracted to feel any true pull, but certainly not pushing them further apart, and they stared forlorn at the lake. Sleeping in each of the beds next to these statues of moonlit magnificence, were two separate celestial bodies, hosts dreams of past events, some filled with joy and some with sadness, and not to be called by any fancy Greek or Roman names: these were just star people. Not Apollo nor Persephone, just star person one and star person two. Or two and four, in this story. Or three and four, depending on how it seems. Or six billion four hundred seventy-seven thousand eight hundred and two, or so on and so forth...

The as yet to be determined to be defiled bag swayed in a hovering rhythm not unlike a wrecking ball. Inside were all those things we carry. When we are going someplace. Someplace that isn't where we sleep and just for the day.

The lakeside lovers knew not to complete the act. It would be too distracting and neither of them sure that was even what it was about. Neither of them even sure the other had the sense. The natural sense is to stay and make due and proceed. So they decided to do that, separately, and forever so. And so not a stir from the bedside and not a stir in the room. Only two slivers of light in two kitchens and two bowls of cereals getting drenched by two separate streams of moonlit milk.

One thought of Seventy-six Trombones. The other thought of Bon Jovi. Both slipped out of star consciousness and fell into repetitive-action and process construction and so went the rest of their morning until the moon went away and the sun came up over the lake blinding them both with sparkling, annoying eye-wrenching golden light. One poured coffee. The other took a dump. Both houses woke up fairly quickly thereafter and took over the rest of the remaining thought-strings so as to muck-up the very slight and extremely agitated magnetics that ran above, below and through all houses everywhere.

Alive in Well

"You have to find your happiness," she said.
"I'll tell you what I'm not going to do," I said.

The joke about the bills and our money is drenched in wine and I can't seem to find proof that dust is alive.

45 minutes go by and there's a ringing in my ears. It sounds like a hangover, but it's not quite as industrious.

Maybe it's a cartoon. Or a radio frequency tuned to the Rihanna-dog threshold. I like Rihanna. Her ass is amazing. I think her power forward hungry box lyrics sprinkled with disappointment and planes is where things are at right now. At least for festival affects. I hear her lighting is good, too.

An hour later and I'm reheating frozen baked goods for my kids.

Two hours later and I'm on a train heading to the center of a video game. I think it's Arachnoid. The one with the spinning knob. Not the ball gently rotating in the earth. The nubby knob turny thing. There is an actual name for it. I think it's called a turning knob or a control knob. Rihanna has her fingers on the pulse of the knob of the control of the world. Everyone is Beyoncé this and Beyoncé that; but Rihanna. Everyone knows that crazy bitch represents what is really right and wrong with this world. Beyoncé, Ye, Jay. They are the translators. Rihanna is the direct current. She is the oracle transmitter and receptor. Her behavior is appalling.

Four hours later there is a lunch meeting and the secondary hell ring of managers and coordinators scamper about waiting for the drippings and droppings like wounded rats. Their shifty eyes making emergency movements so I pull the fire alarm then one of them says, "Are you fucking crazy?"
I say, "You did this. You went for the last slice of pizza like 3 times and I couldn't tell if you were going to eat it or wire it up with staples and dirty paper clips and terrorize someone with it. How can I be sure who you are? I only know that you live where other people live. That doesn't make you not a terrorist." And the rest of the day goes like that except all in avoidance with people finding small projects to finish, now mad that they actually have to work, to avoid actual eye contact, to avoid having to pass through a small cube-way with each other. All of them instant messaging that I am a lunatic. Go fuck yourself. I just bought you 30 minutes of time outside of the building while they checked for smoke and reset the security fire safety system and remembered about the box of masks in the top drawer of the desk at the end of the top floor.

They say Boho Chic or press their caramel leather into your face like its tits and then say, "excuse me" and "pardon".

This is what happens while we wait for weed to be legal.

This is the last jigsaw blade in the sawzall section. The last husk of the last grain of the last rice.

There is no denying the design apex of Nike. If they were based in Phoenix this entire mothership would blast off into space on the tail of a great fire comet. So, I am thankful for whatever hippy logging community they are currently set up in. If I could still afford Nikes I would make believe they were just normal shoes. I would pretend they weren't stardust threaded with the elemental code for life gifted to us from the heavenly creators. I would pretend because the alternative would be to live in a constant state of bliss. That freaks everyone out. Especially with people living longer and working more and for less and with less thought and less pride and more ambition and less know-how. Except for the EDM crowd. They might be ok with bliss. I don't know because I don't know any of them.

Certain times of the day are set aside for these memories. It's called prayer time in the third world. In the second world, I think they solve this with siestas. But in the first world it is its own channel spinning oldies all the time. It's on frequency 11.32 humming around in the skull right above the stem back where the tops of the ears are. Then you get hungry right in the middle. Then your frontal lobe becomes a horn and plows through the rest of the work on the desk. Then you go home.

Your list includes:
Fix the roof
Figure out water pressure
Look for leaks in attic
Half inch molding for kitchen
Find the old magician cooking up the dust
Trap and kill the dust
Drink wine




Gary Memi

Raison

After the Bull Dogs
and refusing to skid
a life's mission finally stuck
grounded in husk

Plain Janes
before corny was classic
bringing waffles to the party
weaving a blanket across all fifty

A perfect spot
a sharpened star on the walk of the everyone knows place
white in '47 and gone in '69
only to be reborn for all eternity in namesake


Charles Hollis Taylor

Less Than

Scant they said
As you filled them with bursts of light
Covered them all with the confident glow of buckshot
Frozen on a frosty beach of pure white
Perhaps the shadow of a beachball
To mark the time

Miss Trailercoach
Hailing from Edison
And Pennsylvania before that
What would the world have been
Had not the graces pulled you down
The magnetized needles aligned with the oracles
The universe needed the bikini
And you gave it to them
Never the same one
An arsenal of rockets and bombers
Sewn carefully into cups
Tied in the back
Perfect and pristine
Without judgement

Then, Cheesecake
The world caught up
Like you knew they could
Shallow divers and panting sprinters
With dollars in their cartoon eyes
Wolves with crooked smiles
And trap door teeth
So you receded slightly
Like the patient sea, your kin
A good first playmate
We will never forget
Jamaica, 1962
And most of 1954
And 1955

Perhaps our paths crossed
Getting a cheap bistek on Dixie
Or a rowdy night with glow sticks
Me not knowing
But guessing
You were some kind of Queen
Your realm not inherited; but seized
Then praised, honored, adored
Miss Personality
Orchid Queen


Linnea Eleanor Yeager