appendix to 7 locks to over the falls (next train to clarksburg):
what will we do when the things stop
what if all the beautiful worlds in the universe
are in danger
what if there is more than one infinity
what if when i watch thinly veiled clouds sweeping
across the moon the reflection is somehow
our continents and seas and not the sun
what does the hawk deborah saw but i missed
think about the squirrel i see eating
nuts in the middle of razor wire
what if the sparrow landing on the outside ledge
of my jail slit window is a dead transwoman
or for that matter the fox trotting down
the road where sheriffs in vans drive in people
in shackles from human abusive courts of laws
or the groundhogs or mourning doves epecially
the one with a white-tipped tail or the
robins or crows or grackles or cardinals
in that quiet road to incarceration
from a narrow strip of honeysuckle and trees and brush
in front of a super highway
what is the fortune of the one or two buttercups
escaping the blade of the stand behind
mower who circled the jail riding five times
with sunglasses and a hat on
or the brown broad blade of grass
that i thought for a while was a moth
amazingly fluttering in one spot in the wind
and oh just one redwinged blackbird
like i used to see in great huge flocks
riding my aunts old white bicycle riding
thru farmland around my grandparents
van dyne near winnebago in summers
april isn’t cruel to me yet i’m 62 but one day
will it be
a yellow butterfly in and out of the rolls of razor wire
a blue bird my last two days once while i stretched toward the sun
in the basketball cell with grated openings
why was houses of light so beautiful to read
aloud under my breath four times over
at night so as not to wake my loquacious
celly from dc who < > to find < > years in jail
or the very young homeless man from
dc who lost his mother long ago and spat
and sang and soiled his cell and just
really needed medicine and love
or the man from < > who
spoke halting english and said thank
you sir whenever we talked who < > and is threatened with < >
years in jail
i think it all has to do with what we do
when the things stop
is the state of this world really what the jesus
i don’t believe is the child of god
any more than anyone else meant was the reason
for inventing forgiveness
the sheriffs brought me from the courthouse
to a jail for 2 weeks before taking me to
a supermax prison for 3 more weeks because
i wanted to convince some of 12 people that if we
don’t change in 2 years everything i’ve talked
about in this poem will start to not be here
so what is there after the things stop and life
has to take a pause for a few thousand years
there is only forgiveness
sky chart:
infinity in my heart
forever folding inward
is what i give to you
store of empty space
of galaxies beating
black holes bent upon themselves
only your soul,
feeding
excel naught:
i am stuck in a spreadsheet
of human misery where joy must be
column w
row 15
counted with another on hours constantly
the count adds up the count clears
some of our parts formulas capital feeding
battery of law – nullify life
some one cell screaming
turtle is earth:
if tortuguita were left to hug the earth
how many bullets will miss
from triggered programmed psycopaths who obviously spew their hatred
given the slightest chance, as if:
nobody ever loved them
hands disconnected from their souls
enslaved by algorythm
why
can we ever know the energy of hatred
weaponized hunger servitude surrendered autonomy
lostboys pack as tethered abused dogs
fear as fuel
selfish wasteful use of radiating fire stolen from our cache
evol i say
because we have had ample time to find each other
would we say love
as embers in the rich dark night written this way:
when we die
perhaps
we touch see smell hear taste
starlight that we are
briefly
for some of us
others a lingering look
everything given laid before us
exhaling electricity of cells
set free to separately radiate rejoin forever
those we love
memory of light
explosion of life,
afterglow
true crime rhyme:
gentle wisdom
black man borne into violence
force fearless
black mother bearing violence from out
last tempered blade soaked poultice
where is the rhyme
that is the point
world wide walk back
to thru savannah humbled
seven factorial or no generation
for someone from time to time:
i think you are one of the most very beautiful beings
on earth
were i to know you thru hovering chromatic olfactory survey
and inspection
would i descend straight into you following
a map
you are a flower i would visit first and often each
beautiful morning
cold curled hours of night have passed randomly as
they do
our meeting so brief so very long every once in
a while
so jampacked aloft with motion and sounds every where
am i
so grounded fragrant transluscent face radiating all ways
are you
we both hold spectacular mottled and damaged by too
early frost
who tips the balance crush of love only to our
breathing sun
so you wake each morning morning knowing every last drop of sunshine
knows how
beautiful you are
thanks you being alive
our just one life:
time as the light fixed with in us
momentarily
just as it is passing thru
energy as the way we use it
as we will
space as the will of others
being used
fate as the combination
to unlock one just truth
knowledge as the sentient sensation
thru and through and thru
beauty as perceived permutations
of the waste of truth
factory farming:
eating minotaur flesh
for breakfast lunch or dinner
snacks in between
rot from within to without
fetid chambers
pride poison cancer manufacture
walk out holding a thread
thru a maze of humility and respect
live eat die in light
gaia haiku:
inhale
universes created
exhale
universes destroyed
breathing soul of infinity
pulses in prison:
how is a basketball bouncing
heard thru concrete walls
like a heartbeat
and what of the rim ringing like a low metal bell
accidental garden:
notice the large round stone
gravel courtyard
locked in stories of cinder block and razor wire
in just narrow windows looking in
smooth sumac bittersweet paulownia growing dropped by the wind
slice of sunlight also from only above
marking time like a dial if someone would draw it
i hope i am gone
before weedwhackers attack it
sleepless in body of cells:
mito human chondria breathing
paired alone alone alone or empty in racing
pit
stop
rna poelease herding in or out or out or in
poe as a butler of exterior force
not edgar the writer who lurks about
as amniotic fluid in constant doubt
mere revelations
self sensa senseless ation
in heal or anus of some civil or zation
procla blockla asass inations
animatraumic robotic contrary gyrations
verse stopping tired tired sense less ations
kill in the buzz
brotherly sisterly fatherly motherly
lie with me lover of april engendered patientation
mary oliver and thinking on my 49cc scooter ride:
putt putt putt putt putt putt putt putt
back roads fields hay corn cows
small stream winding to bay marshy edge
owl,
almost head on night collision
giant snapper,
helped across tarmac
crow,
dusting shoulder in flight take off
deer,
glancing off front wheel fender slow oblique passing
black ice,
helmeted temple on road
bugs,
into a mouth whenever not closed,
suv headlights,
me in a ditch aside of the road
putt putt putt putt putt putt putt putt,
same back and forth destination
favorite leg of commmute to my ‘nation’
Andy, as with every act you take (or is hoisted upon you), you seek to learn as deeply as possible—the rare truths. Or, as you say,
“fate as the combination
to unlock one just truth”.
Thank you for sharing these gems, these living, meaning-seeking ‘combinations’, and for fighting ‘evol’ with your whole being. With love and gratitude. Bill