TRY AGAIN (Issue I.2)

     I try again.
   I still do stuff, just not adept at doing it. The one thing I'm still having to figure out is how to control the size of my images. Images are better in this post, but not yet as I want them.
​     I don't intend to post this often in the future, but I still have much to learn. The only way to do that is try again and try again until it all comes out like I want.

---

black and white and red all over

​

twit about town

country roads

driving country roads,
blue plate specials in roadside cafes
in little country towns
where everybody comes in for lunch
when the noon whistle blows,
everybody knowing everybody,
calling out to them, hey, Woodrow one might say,
howdy, Mitch, would reply another,
old men and old women coming in together,
separate, women talking woman talk
at one table, men making manly conversation at another,
old men in straw hats, women in
print dresses, hair done up for seeing people…

little cafes
with old gas pumps
out front
that haven’t worked
since the main road moved 28 miles
east 40 years ago, the rusted metal sign
with the dinosaur, regular 17 cents; premium 21,
hanging by the road, clanking in
sweet county breezes
blowing down from the hills…

little cafes, with homemade apple pie
and coconut pie and chocolate and lemon pies
and a waitress called Phyllis
and a cook named Milo rattling
pans in the kitchen and singing
Ernest Tubbs songs
in a high and quavering voice
just like Ernest did on the radio

little country roads,
winding up and down and around the hills,
through tunnels of tree limbs
hanging low over the road, crossing glass-clear creeks
trickling over low-water bridges, frogs on lily pads
croaking and flicking flies with Lash LaRue tongues, sheep in the meadow, cows in the corn, a donkey
nibbling grass while a pair of horses
watch the road passing,
and me driving by yesterday,
driving the country roads with my friend,
making me feel like a country boy
on the loose, driving the little roads,
the closest I ever come to being a country boy
again

Chihuahua sunset

And here's another poem from the third book, "Goes Around Comes Around"


I'm thinking soft this morning


I'm thinking soft this morning,
soft autumn breeze on sun-warmed skin,
like the soft middle of fresh-baked bread,
crusted all around

the soft fur behind a kitten's ear
and under its chin,
the fresh smell of soft sheets
on a wedding bed,
the soft squeeze of a woman,
the velvet slide down her back
to the rounded slope of her rear, 
the rise of her breasts breathing in and out,
rising, falling, on the soft edge of sleep,
the moist center of her calling,

and the damp cheeks of my son at four,
eyes wet from a bully's taunt
as I held him close,
"you are a good person," I tell him,
my voice a soft whisper in his ear,
and a strong,brave boy
whose mom and dad love him,"
​I say...

-----

I'm thinking soft this morning,
remembering the touch of days
brighter  and smoother than today

I

Cortez discovers Mexico

a winter night

winter night in the last moment before dusk falls,
the sky is clear, light blue, like the "it's a boy" blankets
you get at the hospital to warm a new-born son,
thin, almost transparent blue...

moon is bright in the soft sky,
not full, flattened a little on one side of the globe,
flattened at the South Pole so it won't roll off your desk

Antarctica folded in on itself...

a chill wind blowing from the top of the hill, 
raising a shower of golden leaves from trees along the creek

light winter-home taste of chimney smoke in the air

ten degrees cooler than the numbers on the thermonmeter read

very quiet...

​

derfluckenflegga

It strikes me that this poem, by Sara Patton from her book, "The Joy of Old Horses." It is of kind I might  write, and have, many times.


Country Roads

I spend my life
on these country roads
lost in uncut grass
and sky, 

passing
abandoned houses
I half recognize,

slanted light
on a tin roof,

my own face
in a second story
window,

the broken maw
of a doorway
deepening
into ceaseless
longing.

The hills stretch
like a mountain lion
unfolding honeyed limbs
in sunlight

and from far away
cries of doves float
as night approaches

I grow
to understand 
my ancestors:

a handkerchief
tucked into a sleeve,
reading in a good light,

every scrap
of love hoarded -
like string.

The embrace me
as night saddles  my mare
with moonlight

but still
I cannot stay.

​crossing the bridge together 
(a John Lewis tribute)

never been to Chile

never
been to
C
h
​i
l
e

but
would
love
to
go
some day
so that
s
t
r
i
n
g
b
e
a
​n
country
s
t
r
e
t
c
h
i
n
g

all the way
d

o

w

n

the

P
a
c
i
f
i
c

coast
of
South America
to near
Ant
arcti
ca -

down there to
Tierra
Del
Fuego
which means
Land of
the Fuego
in
Spanish

and I'd
surely
​like
to go there
​someday

co

den of iniquity

bananafanafofanaa

I had a passport picture taken today

a good, double-duty deal -
after the border agents take a look at the picture
and arrest me as a tourist
the very same picture can be used again
when they book me into that Cuba place,
Guacamole, or whatever,

Dee took me down to Walmart
and sat me down on the passport picture taking stool
and I don't even know why I need a passsport
but I guess she'll tell me when we get
wherevere we're going

and I don't really care
as long as it's a civilized country
with coffeehouses
and internet and dependale WIFI
so that being there won't interrupt my life
too much, which I enjoy, by the way,
too much to be  running off to weird places
like Upper Slobania or Botswanna 
or some bananafanafofana republic in South Amerca,
and I don't care how tasty their banannas are
cause I don't even like bananas except with Corn Flakes
and I expect nobody in those banafanafofana countries
has corn flakes except maybe the president
and most of those guys would probably rather
shoot you than  share their corn flakes, 
so where would that leave me, well,with bananas
and no corn flakes, that's where,
and the dude just cannot abice such
a tilt-a-wheel existence
​as that

Gotta go now.