no place

It was funny. But he really thought he'd rather be no place than the place where he was. And maybe he was right to wish it; after all, life was unkind, people - blind, and there was no one around who even pretended they understood. Well, maybe they pretended. But usually that meant they wanted something from him.

The year after all the hullabaloo, he found himself at sea. And he wondered if maybe, just maybe, he'd made it to no place.

He hadn't.

It wasn't until quite a bit later that he found No Place. At which point, he found he was No One and that the world was empty... for a moment. But the funny thing about empty is that it is often the beginning of filling up. The thing about nothing is that it permits the presence of something. No place was the place to start.
No place was exactly where he was for that moment. And no place was all right.

Tea Leaves

Tea leaves
Read in the trees
Don't know where I'm going
But the ticket is bought.

Don't cry
Just be mine
I'm not here tomorrow
So this has got to be right.

Look at the bottom
Of the cup's sweet curves
Check that you've still got it
But don't say a word.

Just down
The last dregs
And then I'll ignore you
Take your sister instead.

Don't be a fool
If you know where I'm going
Just play it cool
And kiss me goodbye.

Shadows fall
And love palls
Wrinkles grow and make us sad.

Don't tell
Hush now
I'll just read the tea leaves to know.

Bitters

Break my heart into pieces,
I'll put them in the stove
light them on fire
distill from them love,
put it in bottles
colored in red,
place them on my kitchen shelves
wait for you and then
I'll serve them like a liquor
in the cups of my hands
a chalice of bones
ripped away as you ran
and you'll drink their dark flavor
and become my man.

Henrycat

kittycat claptrap
Pyewacket what a racket
shy guy in the eyes
climb across me like a bridge.

on the verge of loving you
then a scratch and love is through
house devil, house god,
just a bump on a log.

kittycat catnip
fingers, hands, holding sands
drifting through
sad and blue,
eyes askance and back at once.

kittycat claptrap
yawn and purr
on the floor
on my shoe and in my arms
sleeping charms, nothing harms.

father can you hear me?

father can you hear me?
father can you see me?
nights when the wind blows
I look out my windows
there's nothing to see

blindsides on all sides
twelve o'clock highs.
there's no hope on the other side
but the tracks are high and wide.

he can't see his own face
in the mirror on the mantelpiece
just the frown of his mother's eyes
on the forehead, between the brows.

bluegrass blows
and the indian paint brush
glows on the hillside
pining for attention like always.

blue pinpricks of light between the blinds.
waking up to sirens.
don't be my brother, be my lover,
don't make me walk this road alone.

the rash of heat this year
just makes the clouds seem darker.
and then there's the circus barker
always on the news.

father can you hear me?
I know that you can't see me.
but someone's gotta be me.
can't be no one tonight.

Nonsense...

A post I wrote on the plane, which makes it pretty much nonsensical. But just follow me to a world where aristotelian plot lines aren't necessary to happiness.

There was once a Spanish queen who was very proud. Her skirts were always of the finest silk, and the colors dying them were of the most expensive liquids. Her silvers were true silver thread, carved from the mountains by the villages who dwelt there. Her pearlescent greens and blues were made of the essences of pine and herbs, laid over by the tears of maidens.

Her panniers were so wide, they filled half her drawing room, and as she grew older, they grew with her, until they covered a tent-wide swath, so much that no one could approach her, and her underlings used long horns to communicate. In this time, she noticed a strange sound emanating from underneath.

The sounds croaked in the morning, and again in the evening. She couldn't sleep for the low tremors and aching gutterations from underneath her skirts. One day, her eyes carrying huge circles beneath them, she shrieked in frustration, and started cutting away all of her silks. In an hour or two of vicious hacking, she came upon the guilty parties.

Many frogs of colors, each tinged by the tints of her silks, sat happily in the huge shade cast by her enormous gown. The whole small city of frogs were joyfully communicating with one another in singsong warbles and strange narrations of coughs. The queen did not cry in fear, nor did she shriek in horror, rather, she carefully moved her feet around, which she could see again for the first time in many years, and her brow wrinkled in thought.

That evening, she crowned each knobby head with a ring of gold, and bequeathed upon them ponds of their own, each to a kingdom of water and stone. She set a new fashion that made skirts quite outre' and took to wearing pants instead, turning her skirts into luxurious canopies for her drawing rooms. She painted her eyes with kohl and took to writing music upon the Spanish chitarra while making eyes at her music master.

Drawers

She worked every day in, day out at the office. But her office was not so much an office as her own personal, working office supplies store laid out in a museography of beauty. It was something about her passion for the organization of forms that allowed her to feel totally and entirely fulfilled - even elated - by the properly signed and filled boxes of her countless forms, allowing others to do actions untold at the destination marked in box 5, subline 2.1.

When clients called at her shining workspace, it was to find a neatly arrayed set of pens, pencils, papers, forms, and files. File folders were comfortably labeled with an antique handwriting, when she opened drawers, it was to survey fields and fields of files, each one with a separate name and character, each one holding its contents eagerly. When she slid the lefthand top drawer out, it was to see a veritable ocean of different colored pens, all aligned perfectly as if they were placed together in happy families of vibrancy, each with a row of their own, each nestled carefully in place, at the ready if she should feel the need to draw one swiftly to mark, in red or black, a form destined for scanning and the photocopy machine.

It was a symphony to watch her work, and to watch her read back with efficiency, the boxes filled by clients over days and days. Each form familiar, each step an easy rhythm. She captained the ship of her mahogany-like workspace.

In the morning, she arrived at work as usual. But her hair was not neatly tied up, and she looked haggard. And she went to her desk, and laid her head on her hands, and sighed a soft, snuffling sound. Slowly and tentatively a drawer opened. Slowly, carefully, it slid to nestle against her side. She looked down at it, in dim surprise. It opened wider. She looked at her softly laid out pens, her tape refills glistened in sad understanding. She leaned closer, and as she did the drawer seemed to broaden until she could lay her arms, her head, her shoulders inside. And then she rolled herself into it, and it enclosed her, a warm place, where she lay on a rather lofty pile of printing paper, and cried her heart out. A small packet of tissues proffered itself. She accepted numbly and looked out on the beautiful world she had created. The forms rustled below in anxiety, and a small paperclip came to lay by her side.

Perhaps today wouldn't be so bad.