19. Pouring Milk

.
I pour the milk into the glass
And laugh aloud at what I see
Milk and glass are pouring me

Milk into glass
Milk into me
Me into milk
Pouring me
Into me!

18. Bukowski

Bukowski

Hello dead Bukowski, you SOB.
In most of your life a failure.
In one thing a success.
The touch of a true poet?
Knowing you are a failed SOB
but having in you something that is exceptional,
that strikes our innocence.

All that inside stuff
creating pressure,
creating urges,
out it must come.

You lucky SOB
what came out connected
to the other SOBs and moved us.

17. Out The Secret

Out The Secret

All poets only write one poem.
With scissors, knife, contortions,
they cut it into pieces,
some long, some short,
dividing truths and fictions,
creating a confession of singularities
around red wheel barrows.

Some poets leave out the best
forcing the reader to add lines
between the spaces.

This poem has taken over spaces near its end,

the empty spaces completing the

feeling of completeness in the

reader who does not know why.

16. Responsibility

.
Looking out the window
things are growing.
Things need to be cut back.
If they are not cut back
outside will not look Nice,
Nice is orderly, Nice is neat, Nice is human

But Great! is Bach's Praludium und Fugue in A minor, BWV 543,
Thank you Marie-Claire Alain, who-ever, where-ever you are.
As I look out the window
looking at what needs to be cut back.

What did Bach cut back?
I am flying with the Fugue.
I never fly cutting back.
Maybe tomorrow.

15. Sarasota Grocery Stores

.
On hot Saturday mornings
Sarasota grocery stores
hold revelations of people,
receptions of events,
details of loud exclamation,
movements of complex simplicity,
And isles of simple complexity;
a great level of noisiness,
the noise of exclamation.
The busyness of the market
On hot Saturday mornings.

The profits of complexity and
the prophets of simplicity mix,
exchange views.

The epileptic screams all to silence and stillness,
the absolute silence-stillness of a crowd.
The wonderful silence of the crowds opening awareness.
What was us is is now I
Alone.
It always was
its just that the us forgets.

14. Morning

.
In the cool clear logical morning
where walls of cereal boxes
and milk structures guard us.
A small red headed earthling says
"Last night I dreamed it was raining
and a elephant nudged me"
And there it is,
the world, the elephant, the nudge,
expanding the beauty of us all.

13. Old Ladies

Old ladies of the church sing a please god song.
Knowing him, as a good servant, who,
being aware of his worth, must be treated kindly,
and forgiven his god-awful trespasses.
Not answering when called.
Responding in silence,
not knowing silence is an answer.

12. Rouault, The Old King

Power and madness,
Eastern Cruelty (in western minds).
The brutal force of red
Isolated by conviction.
Cries with an unreleased tension
Between man and madness
Undreamt of in our aspirin ads.

11. Aunt Lou

.
The old lady leaves the old farm house.
A November day.
A ten below overcast gray day.
A chilling silence day.
An everything sleeping day.
Walks to the white mail box,
typical farmers white mail box standing
along the empty road in twig-brown November.
The old lady is thinking of her favorite brother
who ran away from Kingsville for South Africa.
Sixty years gone.
Sixty years without.
The minding love.

Long gone her sister who married an old man
who promised her a bicycle.

The minding love.

She had received a letter saying her brother had died
and his children were sending him back to Kingsville
to be buried with those he left.
The grave prepared, the minister ready.
Opening the mailbox there was a shoe-box.
Opening the mailbox there was a shoe-box.
The old lady standing in gray November,
Holding the brown box in a world disappeared.

The minister, the caretaker, the old lady,
stand over the open grave
surrounding the small box.
Home again!

10. Memory

To the little girl
on the bus
sitting next to the old man.
The little girl
on the bus
smelling of crayons
sitting next to me.
Thank you.