Summer of 1973

It is not 1973
it is 2020 and all roads are
blocked but back in the summer
of my right thumb when the roads ran free
I was $120 and a clean knapsack westbound
on US 33 smack-dab in the middle of Ohio
thumb out on my 19th birthday oh I made time
up to northern Michigan the first night
a campfire an art student Moira
who had clouds of curls she said
All art is Eros I thought Oh till I drank
like a teenager so sulked north
into Canada and the scorched dust
of the prairies stuck stuck stuck
3 days just west of Winnipeg
then into the clear cool of the Canadian Rockies

Things You Can Do

In a room
with no books,
no paintings
on the walls,

with a click
you can look
over the shoulder
of Marc Chagall.

With his brush,
you can glide,
fly a blue horse
through a mackerel sky,

dance over the yard
in the garb of a bride,
or carry her
supine over Paris.

Cowboy Art in the University Library

Paintings with pale sky, wind-buffeted pines and loaded pack horses with wide rumps and blonde manes – ones just like these decorate ten thousand tavern walls. Or curl as calendars in filling stations in blow-away towns. Men in chaps slump over dollar-size belt buckles; their hats fold into conventions of cowboy. This artist painted a Navajo-red thunderbolt on one saddle blanket, an accent to trail-dust hues of boredom. What the armed horseback renegades who occupied the Malheur Refuge had in mind when riding out with an American flag for TV cameras.

Pietà

I am lying, arms helpless at my side and sunk into the tiny gravity wells
Formed by ribs and hip bones, framed in this comfortable chair.
It’s only a nap, in a chair that is not my mother, its arms not my mother’s arms,
Yet I sense that I am upheld by love, and a poem runs through my sleepy thoughts.
I am aware of my hands cupped without care or purpose, at full useless repose,
And I think of marble, of a sculpted body eternally at rest, perhaps the Christ
Released from the agony of crucifixion, the artist carving his ahistorical palm
Wounds like lovers’ openings in a waiting corpse, tender lips traced through the Shadows of holy

Brother, Can You Spare The Time?

Brother, Can You Spare The Time? To be fully present for the sensation of a moment where you can discover what lies behind the human masquerade, and have the chance to make everything in your life new again. You’ll uncover grief, sorrow and passion in the sensing of the body armor. The tragic spiritual mediocrity […]

Untitled

Untitled some branded some empty roadside stops stupid beasts and giant devices painted with pleasure baked by sun and camera flash visit my fresh dream we’ll sit together picking at cracks in our used cars’ leather seats Aaron Warnock comes from a very diverse family. His father was a Methodist Pastor, his sister is a […]

This is a Dove

This is a Dove This is a dove, I think. I’ve never been good at bird identification. That’s funny, now that my job is picking up dead ones killed by the windmills’ spinning blades. There are 60 windmills in this “wind farm,” lots of dead birds. I think I might get a book. I mean, […]

The Jill Hill | Twist: In Parts

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In The Orchard | 23

23 collected like sweater thread into his script floor gathers elephant trunk smolder knot at the neck and fissure what was discovered not a skeleton key but skeletal completed over the length of a conversation about spouses the weight of the wool is still there though our language is not pictorial but this is one […]

Nature is Calling

Nature is Calling Grass of mysterious light, Do you become dry from lack of love? Nature has this bearing on all of us, Take out a white paper. Draw the red cardinal bird Singing wet songs for your neighbors. Purple lilacs left a trace of dry dirt But for once They were alive with love […]