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.

number 33

2007-01-24T09:37:00.000-08:00

food & thought
It was going to be a day that would try, would strain, the bands and cords inside that keep my parts together, motoring on, and moving, but I didn't know that at the morning table alone with my God and my yogurt with cereal stirred in, a good breakfast for a poor man, thinking about how gorgeous, how unbelieveable and ripe with potential the world looked in that very specific light that came down as that sun came up, a miracle, again.

Light, rising
Every thing starts to look plain:
the best job, most striking face --
shiny, temporal prisms.

number 32

2007-01-22T19:28:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Tomato and ginger and heavy noodles and fried tofu in a large bowl with enough basil to make me notice and the PBRs were a dollar apiece and I had one and my friend had one and he bought them both and the dinners too and I learn more about grace and the generous hearts of the world and we talked about things I can't pull out and hold up out of the files just now, but mostly I was just glad to be there smiling, boys tearing into the dinner meal and telling stories.

Castaways
The mind is lost past all ropes.
Poor heart: parched among the dunes.
Our souls press on in the night.

number 30

2007-01-21T19:37:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Firehouse Subs makes a good sandwich, every time, and today, in Clemson, with my friend, out of the rain and just out of a church in the basement of a bar where I sang with hands that raised for the very first time to take hold of something -- there, after that and the morning's drive we sat and ate and talked excitedly about what had just happened in that small room and it was the bread, I decided, that made their sandwiches so good with everything sliced thin and just right between the halves and I thought about how torn, how in halves I was myself in that place -- not wanting to move beyond the moment and the experience of a worshiping that ran even beyond the power of my heart's hard lines -- there was that half -- and there, too, was the other side that couldn't wait to put my feet out on that wet pavement, moving onward.

Good Meal
Our ragged line taking the
broken loaf dipped in dark wine --
some ate bits, some mouthfuls.

number 29

2007-01-19T20:57:00.000-08:00

food & thought
At a chinese joint I've meant to stop in at for months I finally moved through the door and there were tables and when I ordered the Singapore Chow Mei Fun it was red lettered on the menu and the woman quietly told me "it's hot" and I quietly told her "good" and we smiled and I sat in the corner with all the glass walls a window to the street and that seat with that view was why I'd meant to stop all that time, really, but the food came on and it was a thick yellow curry and maybe the best I've had, though I think some better will come along and I sat thinking still of the woman the day before telling me, reminding us of how everywhere our God is, how inescapable and how good and how terrifying and how solid that truth is.

He Is
He stands in every dark room.
We forget -- then feel his breath,
remember, and speak his name.

number 28

2007-01-18T20:43:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Rice from a cafeteria gets made a mountain at a time and there was a small hill of it on my plate with enough jerk chicken to get me through the afternoon and I was hungry and just out of Thursday service where a woman preached with some drama that won me over, finally, and moved me when she reminded me that Jesus is everywhere, whether I like it or not, and that he laughs sometimes, and before her we prayed and we sang and a student from Ghana stood before us and recited a poem from his forthcoming book and he told us what was on his mind, and afterwards, scanning the lunch tables, I saw him with his friends and he and his poem were on my mind so I went and they cleared the last empty chair at their round table and we all introduced and they were nice to let me sit and laugh with them when I could pick out their heavy english and so I ate with these men that brought their smiles all the way from West Africa except one from Trinidad and it was good and the rice wasn't bad either.

After He Read
All their tongues thick with accents,
his strong poem, powerful
words called me to their table.

number 27

2007-01-17T19:03:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Lucky enough to have sub sandwiches with my parents around their dinner table and how I laughed with my mom when I realized I'd piled all my dad's favorite toppings on my own sandwich -- not knowing that he likes banana peppers and jalepenos and black olives and all the specific choices I had made, we laughed at how I've grown into a taste for these things that my father found a liking for years and years ago and now they find a home with me too as I quickly become the man and we ate our lunch there, warm indoors and with each other and our family laughter which is like no other: it was a respite, that meal, between me and my old man's work under the house that morning and later that afternoon, there in January with a broken hot water heater we replaced and made work in the mold and slime and dank crawlspaces we don't want to think about on hands and knees with shed snake skins all around us and our heads full of spiderwebs -- some of them made by the colony of black widows that haunts my parents' house and I chewed my bread thinking how lucky to work and talk with my dad all day like that, him still teaching, and my hands, grown now, still needing to learn from him and finally wanting to.

Day With My Father
Working all day in the dark,
skinned with muddy cobwebs, now
Dad boils water for our tea.

number 26

2007-01-16T19:14:00.000-08:00

food & thought
They'd redone the floors (new tile) and the booths (new, unfinished plywood), but the mexican food was still thin, cheap and crap but me and my friend crammed the stale chips and watery salsa down anyway with a room full of college kids chugging beers and screaming about, well, everything, and in the middle of that it hit me that I'd asked God for something and he'd answered because the whole time we were with the men at the center tonight, I didn't think about the goddess siren from the coffee shop not one time, and my friend said "Hey, neither did I..." and we clinked glasses and thanked Jesus and went back to our dishes soaked and skinned with badly melted cheese, and it was then that thoughts of her, long-haired and quite blonde and walking by our small table with our bibles and mouths open -- those thoughts returned in a flood that covered all my earth and I bobbed along in my mind's gopherwood ark, everything stacked in her jeans reminding me of my past notions of the promised land and I had to turn both eyeballs, one at at time, with two hands each, to find something on the wall, some shadow to stare at until she passed us by, a sweet-scented ghost, and us with blood on our doorposts.

Answered Prayer
Realization spilled like
split yolk: we'd tended business,
all blonde thoughts of her banished.

number 25

2007-01-15T19:48:00.000-08:00

food & thought
What I called lunch was something I ate out of its styrofoam container with a spork in a parking lot as my car idled and my mind turned things over and I'd just been in a church with people, maybe fifty of us, and students read things from the bible and some stood and read things that MLK had said, and one student played the piano and led us through song, he called us into his song, and he gave us that song and finally, we sang with him and all of us heard old voices today, things first said so long before us but still alive now, words that live, that move out on our new breath, alive and wrapped in the gift in our mouths from the spirit of God that hovered over the dark waters before we were when God was about to speak, himself.

Kingdom, Come
We dream too, brother, your dream
resonating in this day
we confess hate, march toward love.

number 24

2007-01-14T20:32:00.000-08:00

food & thought
There's always so much food on chinese buffets, and never enough, and tonight the black peppered shrimp nearly sent me to the other side, but it didn't quite, and we cracked our cookies and shared our fortunes, my good friends, there, through the mountain pass and tunnels in a place called Jefferson City, and they drove me to the best chinese around, my mind and me trailing thoughts of the valley I'd just driven through, all the violence and power and cracked, sliding weight of all that stone up the shear sides of those walls, hemming in my way and the last of the afternoon's light, we ate and we laughed and it was good.

Mountain Pass
I wound through the broken rocks
where men cut us a thin road
to see you friends, break our bread.

number 23

2007-01-13T20:01:00.000-08:00

food & thought
There was coffee, of course, and strawberry yogurt in a bowl with crunchy cereal to make me feel better about myself and half of a banana that looked far, far past ripe but was sweet and cut up just fine and mixed together and then more coffee and today it is my father's mother's birthday and she is 89 years old and I call her Papaw and she loves fiercely even as her mind has abandoned her and who she has always been fades, replaced by a shrivelling woman afraid and awake in the dark and we -- none of us -- know what to do -- not with her or anyone else -- so we do all we can: we pray and we keep on trying to love -- her and everyone else -- and it was a day for lots of coffee and good talks and a birthday call to this sweet woman, getting old now, that we love so much and so badly and so more than we can lay down neatly sewn and said.

Papaw's Going Song
The eggshells of all your round
years piled at your feet, you stand
Grandmother, new life calling.

number 22

2007-01-12T20:29:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Tonight we prayed over cheap pizzas dressed up with onions we sauteed and banana peppers piled on but the real meal was the family and how they laughed, and afterwards I stuffed myself again on two sweet music sets and a chance with my brother to chat about life and what's hard and how God moves us along with our faith that don't see too good and if song lyrics and drumbeats and chatting could be food I'd be fatter now, but happy, too, as I shuffle off towards bed, my thoughts tonight tearing out in jazzed riffs and clapping that couldn't say how much I love the music people, how much my fingers wish they knew the moves.

Noisy
I can't strum. I clap off beat.
My hands, mouth, are music-dumb.
And still, my clumsy heart sings.

number 21

2007-01-11T18:20:00.000-08:00

food & thought
She took potatoes and made a soup, heavy for the belly and warm against all that's cold outside, against the chill downstairs in this place and we ate quietly with her son, laughing over simple, good things -- things the same flavor and character of the fare we spooned out of large coffee cups for bowls, her husband out to spend time with a friend, she and I sat afterwards, friends ourselves, talking about what's hard, what's worth anything, all our talk and my thoughts circling around the pennies, the monies and the thin pants pockets that don't have them right now, again, and all our words came out poor and honest and simple and sweet -- the song of folks that don't have and want to believe they don't need what we can lay hands on here.

Poor Folks
Snow outside, we're money broke,
sipping hot chocolate like it's
steamy champagne. Thin faith smiles.

number 20

2007-01-10T19:48:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Made a chickeny stew tonight with heaps of hot jasmine rice and we were quiet as we dipped spoons and I sat stewing myself, still sitting in a circle with the boys at the local detention center the night before, all of us there, gathered with all our ragged bags and huddled carefully, distantly, hope straining to be heard, to speak up, gospel.

Circled
Men and boys, shackled and free,
pulled our chairs, guarded faces
up to each other, searching.

number 19

2007-01-08T19:10:00.000-08:00

food & thought
By the time I made it home to make dinner for my belly and the family I was set loose on the high seas rolling in me, adrift with a dead engine as I cut the chicken thighs to pieces sized like my thumbs, like bites and played with herbs and a sauce -- I don't make sauce -- but tonight I made sauce, right there in the pan and steamed vegetables with no steamer and there was rice too, and I forgot to think about poetry until just now after another cup of hot tea and the sleeps are coming at me and since I got home my mind has been doing its own thing and I can't say I'm happy about that, now that I'm off to put it to bed because all of it has simply made me very, very tired today.

Cast Off
There are the days where my mind
refuses to join the raft
I'm on, taunting the many sharks.

number 18

2007-01-07T17:57:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Driving through a cold rain this morning after coffee and coffee and coffee and a day old cinnamon bun sticky with apple bits and goo I scribbled two madkus as I changed highway lanes and the one that follows is what came best and built-up and last in a morning series -- I'd made three others at the coffee bar counter after hearing the news that two more dear friends are getting married and I chewed and sipped and watched the people about me, paired up, nucleic, or split off, fissiong atoms, we circled and we burned before I walked outside and drove off winter-soaked and pelted and alive and on my way to what was next where I would drive, scratch, continue to sound my thoughts about this conversation we call prayer.

Denouement
I cast prayers into chaos,
words molten from the deep forge --
he plucks them hot from the stars.

number 13

2007-01-06T17:02:00.000-08:00

food & thought
At a gas station in the early morning I bought a large coffee and a cheap breakfast biscuit and I drove through a day warm enough to be late Spring wearing a getup strikingly like my father's daily work uniform on my way to build long-promised bookshelves thinking as I shifted and steered my way down the mountain that we are the product, the people of our makers, God and parents, and we cannont escape this, only wake up to it, embrace this and drive onward.

Gospel Truth
We deny with our fool mouths
yet our Maker breathes under
our skin, rises, claims his own.

number 12

2007-01-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

food & thought
There were six of us at the table: four of the family I live with, me the surrogate son, and a daughter's new boyfriend, here to meet the parents for the first time, and we ate baked mushrooms filled with good stuff and finger salads and spaghetti with the bread, the loaves torn to bits and plates of oil with salt and cracked pepper and we all laughed and we all passed plates and eyed the young man, comfortable or passing for comfortable and I thought about the miracle of guests and what it's like to pull a chair up to a strange table, what it's like to have a stranger at the table and how we aren't as strange as we clear the dishes, pour more wine.

Guests
For them, foreign everything,
a strange fork. For us, we break
bread with our finest faces.

number 11

2007-01-04T18:10:00.000-08:00

food & thought
I sliced the pork thin with enough kosher salt, and lots and lots of black pepper and then more, more pepper and it seared in the heat and then a mountain of broccoli and that was it -- all for the vegetables -- enough said from the plant kingdom, all over wide noodles in a thick sesame sauce and wine, red wine out of my favorite coffee mug and that was dinner as I chewed it, tired of rolling words around and out these last few days and now more words and I was thinking then and am still thinking now about where all these words come from in the recesses and crazed filing cabinets within me and about the magic that lays them down in bed with each other, here and other places too.

Writer's Prayer
Through walks that stretch over years,
at the desk or searching her
face, he hopes for some good words.

number 10

2007-01-03T06:21:00.000-08:00

food & thought
A bland Moe's burrito crammed in my belly as I sat on the veranda with the smoking employees, irritated and on my way to an appointment I was more or less empty, no thoughts burned in me, every thing was as fleeting and thin as the clouds scudding by the full moon in the middle of our cold and windy night.

Untitled
I reflect the moon, in turn,
both swollen with a fullness
tonight, cold miles between us.

number 9

2007-01-02T13:20:00.000-08:00

food & thought
The Doc Chey special of the day was chicken and red peppers mingling with broccoli buds all spicy and I chose noodles, udon noodles heavy and wide for a thin, cold day where I sat down with two men I respect and enjoy enough to laugh with and even be honest with sometimes like today when I wondered driving downtown: "What are we each dragging to the lunch table today?"

Three Brothers Gather For Lunch
The first brought his loud stories,
the second -- nothing. And the
last sat down with quiet hands.

number 8

2007-01-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

food & thought
Over easy eggs, two of them, cracked open on a square white dish with slim, real silverware, a pair of bacons, another of toast triangles, some melon pieces -- trapezoidal and huddled with purple grapes -- all staring at the orange polenta spooned out in the opposite corner of the plate as I sat on the cold porch of Old Europe drinking good coffee in my jacket I ran back to my car for, staring through the wrought iron fence there between patrons and those marching or shuffling down the sidewalk I read Fred quoting Luke, "...or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil,..."

Good Gifts
Our fathers are evil, but
still they hear us, relinquish
their true hearts, dark eggs, with love.

number 7

2006-12-31T10:05:00.000-08:00

food & thought:
Three egg cheddar and turkey omelet alone at the after church kitchen table, quiet with a glass of spilled water puddled on the floor and Bob Segar's most poignant, reflective moment in lyrics: "You smoke the day's last cigarette, remembering what she said."

What She Said
You're an invisible man
her hands said as she let him
go and curled away, blown smoke.

number 6

2006-12-30T13:52:00.001-08:00

food & thought
A Sage Burrito from the Lucky Otter after opening my new Christmas copy of Andy Goldsworthy's "Time" at the trendy coffee house and gobbling his text and pictures up like a hungry man, wondering myself "What is my response to this place?"

Appalachain
This place, these people, are worn.
Our music seeps from deep rock.
Spirits burning, we walk home.

Genesis

2006-12-29T18:18:00.000-08:00

This post contains what I have of the very first original Madkus. I began writing them as I was working at the finest sushi restaurant in the lands, Sora, in Pisgah Forest, NC. The fare, the folks that own it, the bamboo flooring I mopped 100 times -- all of it is perfect balance, complementary and a delight. I waited tables there, learned to appreciate sushi and traditional fujinese Chinese food there, fell out of love there, made pockets of money there, found friendship beyond language there, and continued to burn off what wasn't essential about my soul there, in that place.
Beneath some of that ash, I found good words, and I began scribbling in the flat seas before the dinner rush. A free verse poet of sorts for the last 15 years, I have soaked up lots of verse, but very little with strict line or syllable count. The traditional Japanese haiku has intrigued me for some time though, and I found myself wanting to make something in that vein. Small, essential, loaded with 'gong fu', with real power. My spirit began waking up to the beauty of form, of limitations that are self-imposed and willingly shouldered. I've begun to rein myself in. To gather myself for better moves more graceful and more truthful. Patient even, at times.
I found a small answer to that desire. Three lines, seven syllables each, 21 blackjack weighs the whole round thing, as perfect as I can make them. Madkus.
Predictably and in keeping with so much of my poetry, the first ever Madku was made for a woman I didn't know. I disremember her name though I can still paint her long, straight red hair and the look on her date's face as I presented it to her and the guests she was with for her birthday dinner. I asked her some rather random questions, spent a few minutes wrinkling my head and scratching out lines and reworked lines and then I read aloud her Happy Birthday present from me, the strange tall waiter with the deep voice. It was a bad poem, truly. They left a good tip and invited me out for drinks downtown after work and were all just very nice, indulging me that way. Madku 'number 1' is lost to me forever, set to sail on the large waves of that night carried out beyond where I can see. Good.
Madku 'number 2' was composed another night soon after and I couldn't decide between two different drafts. I hadn't formalized my syllable count at that point, and it reads with five syllables in each of the first two lines, seven in the third. Not long after, I realized my folly. I have far too much to say with far too little willpower to work with only 17 syllables. 21 is much, much more my style. I polled a four top of customers after dinner when they didn't order dessert and their unanimous vote became the official version of this madku. I wrote them both on the same piece of paper and I can't remember which one they picked now, months later. So I'm picking my favorite and calling that the official-official one.
Madku 'number 3' and 'number 4' were both written for my all-time favorite customer, Denise, who I've lost on more large waves, and miss along with her whole family. She is a light among people.
Madku 'number 5' was written a few weeks ago, after I'd left the sushi joint, in a moment of inspiration that led to some meditation and some lines worth being stacked up with each other. It resides in the header of this page, as the christening piece and to guide this junk, this questionable vessel.
As I've been making these since madku 'number 6', I have planned on making one a day, at, or just after one of my meals and making a point to bind them here. Food for thought, a glimpse of each day and a response. A giving back as I take in. Thankfulness. Praise to the father, to his son, to this spirit spread among us.

number 4
Fall Chorus
We've turned, brightly becoming
ourselves. We tumble, embers
thick, close. We gather for Spring.

number 3
For Denise
Ears wince at polite music.
Your song rings true, lays softly
on our hearts after you pass.

number 2
Moored
He rooted where she
cast off his island
cutting fast a sea of wine.