Red Sea: Transit

A grey day in a city of light
though it has little to do
with Paris—a terminal
at the
airport’s edge.

There are no discernible clouds,
just an all-over cover, and a wind
that unstifles the trees.

You want something,
that unasked for movement that comes just in time,
when your life and all that is arrives.

Fuck it
comes out of your mouth,
too loud.
People at the other table turn,
then turn around—
back to smoking,
to the window
where the world is—a bit of brightness
inside the grey, the
planes in a line
and the wind won’t die.

The Old Man sleepeth.

Birthday, a year ago.

Baby Nugget!

Red State Child Psychologist

Peter Pan

has thrown himself

under a train.

Rue

the day

of everlasting

rain those

never ending dreams

pounded to transparency.

What good will

it do to tell

the children

they must grow

older strange hair

sprouting from

stranger places

their unlined faces

someday turning

creased and worn?

It’s the adults

lost, forlorn,

pocketing once bright

pictures of

railway stations and

far-off places

creased and folded

by the new sweetness

of those unpremeditated

glances

and limitless

chances just beyond

the camera lens.

Let them gather

With their gaggle of

friends and chase each

other round and round

the grass.

Oh please don’t tell them

of Peter Pan

and his demise—just

let him pass.

Don’t say

a word until

it’s time.

The Grave Digger by A. Wyeth

The pick-axe

strikes the air

between the leafless trees

dying out of earshot in the field of weeds.

In the dust the bones

push through the skin—

night penetrates the eyelids

as the wind breathes through

slight flutter

in the lashes.

Suddenly flares up swiftly

like sparks in the darkness

when the end arrives—

a brief illumination locked

in the innermost back of the eye

where whatever was splays

the jaw wide open.

Down the slope forget-me-nots

the other side not now

though bloom there

mid-arc

in the mind’s downswing.

He feels a fervent

blister where a callous had been.

Each swing tears away the skin.

New tenderness

fills his hands.

-Portrait of A Well-Digger’s Ass By Francis Bacon-

Here it begins

though no sky

that dark inside

the mounds of earth

piled higher beside.

The point is in sinking

like the world itself drinking

him up though he knows—

the deeper he gets

the closer he goes—

excavation the goal.

Yet still, the weather.

As though that’s all he were.

So hard to recall when the descent began—

that initial hole.

It seems like forever

the digging that spading

all downwardly wading

his mind like a splatter

contained in a whole

with the walls, earthly matter

bleeding freely and cold.