Madkus

number 66

2008-02-04T09:55:00.000-08:00

February Soaking
Winter rain for the sleepy
trees, shirtless now, putting down
long roots to mine the land's blood.

number 65

2008-01-19T20:54:00.000-08:00

Her Poetry Neurotic
I gave up my best music
hoping her fingers would move,
inspired, forging her own.

number 64

2008-01-19T20:48:00.000-08:00

Late Night Burning
We thought the fire was done
but he stoked the coals, piled wood
on, the split heart of an oak.

number 63

2008-01-09T22:09:00.000-08:00

Maybe
The heart wanders, the eyes climb
aboard, your hips cast off ropes,
and the hands ride waves in tow.

number 62

2008-01-08T21:01:00.000-08:00

Dad's Lullaby
A murder of crows scraw, cry,
sing a song in these woods of
my father's deep loneliness.

number 61

2008-01-07T13:38:00.000-08:00

New Moon
Every star hung from leafless
trees, words dangled from frosty
breaths we let go of, walking.

number 60

2008-01-04T06:33:00.000-08:00

Cat in the Sack
Tabby won't let me read, wants
her pets, wants her tickles, purrs
the book from my wanted hands.

number 59

2008-01-02T19:11:00.000-08:00

No Angels
Six of us stand in the snow
waiting for the howling wind
to gust, set blaze to the night.

number 58

2008-01-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

Diner Rush, New Year's Morning
Screaming eggs heavy waitress
first greasy hours smoking
toast more coffee more coffee.

number 57

2007-12-31T08:36:00.001-08:00

In My Lap
The cat ignored me for weeks.
Tonight she makes the climb, and
curls, thrums, asks me no questions.

number 56

2007-12-31T08:34:00.000-08:00

December 31st Sky
More than months have passed us as
the last sun pauses, blazing,
then falls into the last night.

number 55

2007-12-31T08:33:00.000-08:00

Ghost Trail
Five cardinals dart before me,
some wounded spirit passing,
blood on the snow of the day.

number 54

2007-12-31T08:31:00.000-08:00

Wandering
Any city, any place
are the same: rain and strangers
and this: she's not there either.

number 49

2007-05-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

Humaphants Feeding
Mouth the roasted salted shell.
Cracking bat, ringmasters whip,
cracked bedroom eyes, this is nuts.

number 47

2007-02-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Morning Glory is the name of the cafe, and it is, and I remember how I stopped a woman on the street in the tiny town of Black Mountain and asked her where I could get breakfast and she gave me directions and promised it was the best around and she was right and this morning, just out of a helluva sermon where a guy sang alright songs and a girl painted an alright painting in front of us through the whole service and another guy gave a bit of teaching that gripped trembly things that rattle inside me, teaching that turned bright light in cobwebbed corners under my house, after that as the snow fell soft and slow in huge flakes my waitress remembered me from months ago, even though I have hair now -- "it's your voice I remember" she said and she hugged me too when I left, my over easy eggs and potatos and sausages and biscuit all together again, off the plate and in my belly as I sat at the counter there, thinking about how we tell stories, the grains of truth in all of them and what we wrap them with, the homes we fashion for them.

Recipe
Two parts to every fiction --
truths you own and lies they wear,
your coins sown in moist, dark earth.

number 45

2007-02-03T20:29:00.000-08:00

food & thought
It was a luncheon, full-on, with a line to be served and a spigot for the iced tea and I sat next to folks I didn't know yet, we were all there to hear about this church, what they believed, what was available to us if we decided to pursue official membership there, and I ate salad like a man still learning to, and I ate potato soup as well, made by ladies with sweet hands and hearts that gave up their Saturday to feed us and there was bread, which I loved most of all and while we ate, he told me about the book he's been working on for the last year and half, and about the just-before-sleep vision that he had that started it all and I listened and spooned my soup and I thought about all the things we wear, and what I had on with my collar turned up, and I thought too about all that gurgles and surges under all my surfaces, clear to my marrows.

Self Strata
Layered under my blue shirt
is a well-washed red one, too.
Below that -- skin, bleached white bones.

number 44

2007-02-02T20:17:00.000-08:00

food & thought
He wanted to know how this chinese restaurant could serve the same rice on the same plates ordered from the same menu and have it taste... better... just better than the rest, and I thought of some possible reasons, but just kept chewing, smiling and enjoying my curried chicken and all the tiny vegetables like the mini corn on their mini cobbs -- loving it all except the five dime sized water chestnuts that I left in a pile and we talked about what seems important to us these days, my brother and me and we talked about the work we'd cracked open together this week and I was glad for the view of the street, and wasn't unhappy to see the lady that took our order again -- I like the way she smiles and how she talks and it was good and so much sweet tea to split my guts and across the table from me this man whose dream for work has been through so much fire and refinement and iterations in the last 10 years, but there we were, talking about ways it might happen, and we prayed, too.

Phoenixification
At the bottom of his sea --
his heart's mysterious trench,
unquenchable embers burn.

number 43

2007-02-01T20:58:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Just down my road in a direction I hadn't driven it before was a mountain and after driving it up, straight up into the clouds that filled my world up with snow and ice this morning I turned my car and moved back down the grade, stopping to see the shrouds wrapping the landscape across the valley and on the way home finding an Amish store I stopped and bought a small round loaf with good grains and seeds and some farmers cheese and some jerky and a bite of fudge too and tried to eat as slowly as I could make myself thinking about my morning shower where I fell down in the steam and hiss of such a powerful realization of the death in my limbs, and the life, too.

Three Days
We are the tomb he enters.
This skin will be rolled away --
wrestling until the dawn.

number 40

2007-01-31T20:38:00.000-08:00

food & thought
It was no accident at the bar that the dinner between the three of us was a sliced loaf of bread, a bit of oil and salt and we raised cold mugs of beer, clinking, and at some point laid things down on the table -- difficult things out of our shadows and things we couldn't explain and so much we'd rather not remember and in those moments blood was drawn, something thicker than blood even, spirits -- spirits were rent, and we shook on that and we sensed a brotherhood defining itself, taking shape and taking oath around that table and we walked away, my own heart pondering the implications of bonds that will go with us, beyond our deaths.

Bound
Share your shame and shoulder your
brother's: our trust demands trust.
We press on, a bloody band.

number 39

2007-01-30T20:26:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Bowl full of lumpy breakfast again, but in a different kitchen as I stood there in the morning quiet talking with a mouth mindful of the heads still sleeping in my brother's house -- we passed new bits of news back and forth across our coffee mugs, glad to be there and giddy on yet another first day with such warm, familiar smiles and scenes out the windows.

Just Ahead
We take quiet steps up to
the edge of what yawns before
our nervous guts, racing blood.

number 38

2007-01-29T16:51:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Some times the new food works out and you know it in the first bite, and some times it doesn't work out at all and you can smell that coming and then some times, like tonight, you finish what you want, put the rest in a tupperware bowl for lunch tomorrow and you still aren't sure if it worked, but it was pasta with peppers, the tiny skinny green chiles and a round red one and slices of discounted mushrooms and barely enough snow peas to register at the grocery store register and then some boiled pasta spirals and two cans of albacore tuna and much kosher salt and black pepper I could smell over everything as I stirred it up, dubious looks falling out of my face and into the wok with a little more olive oil and I chewed and thought about how busy the day had been, how many words I'd made and about the phone call I got where I had none of the right words: "Don't hang up," she said and I didn't -- not for a minute until after we'd cracked what was quiet between us all this time.

Hi Lo
Some days racing boldly on,
Some waiting for things to break,
I grind my far-apart gears.

number 37

2007-01-28T16:28:00.000-08:00

food & thought
There was a blueberry bagel with a little butter, a little toasted, too, which was nice because besides that there was more yogurt with some of the last of that healthy cereal that tastes like healthy cereal and in the middle of that breakfast, the day coming alive outside the window, I remembered my fascination with heat these last few months, my encounters with it, and I had a gen-u-ine moment with that fascination as I made an important realization about the connection and distinction between heat and things that are hot, which makes heat and so I wrote that down.

Heat
It's an energy pounding
out of something hot. We see
it shimmer, watch it wither.

number 36

2007-01-27T16:17:00.000-08:00

food & thought
There was eight of us or so huddled round a tiny table in a small corner of a dark bar and the bad music, which was live, which was happening right there in front of us where women with hairy pits danced some kind of yoga, feeling free, I hope, and around that table we took turns telling stories about the young married couple among us -- the ones moving away this week and us here telling goodbye and until-next-time stories, wondering, all of us at some point I think, if we would ever see them again this side of death and we'd had dinner at the church, a little bread and a little wine, and now we were sipping a little more wine, a bit of beer, dark there in the shadows, and God that boy got up and danced with those women and he rolled on the floor with them and all very slowly and never cracking a smile and Lord I still ache for how I laughed those huge rolling tears hot out of my eyeballs.

Going
We break, bleed a little in
the space of their last leaving
as they walk away from us.

number 35

2007-01-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Me and the old man ate our sandwiches, thinking about mom's empty space at the table as she was hurtling through the jet stream air on a plane back to us in the hands of strangers and the God we asked the meal's blessing from and he wiped things from his moustache and we laughed and I collected some crumbs from what he let fall from his mouth, swept them up into my pocket, seven syllables apiece that sit together, now telling something about our day working out in the bright, cold world.

Things Dad Said Today
"They've got bright blue plummage."
"People don't do what they should."
"Pilot holes are for sissys."

number 34

2007-01-25T09:46:00.000-08:00

food & thought
I ate pita bread, three pieces, calling it lunch and it was a reminder of the communion reminder as I sat thinking about where she's been, where she's come from, and what she wants to hear versus what I have to say.

Hello?
She wants to break my silence.
I have only one word left--
he's paid for all my poems.