Additional K Poems November 2012

A change of menu for the dogs

I have gotten in the habit of feeding my dogs rice, along with their dry dog food. I don’t know where I read that rice is good for them, but Joan just read, on the internet, that rice helps to dry their skin out, and we have been have a large problem with animals scratching all through the night, (gas heat?)almost to the point where I have considered kicking them out of the bedroom, that they normally share with us, at night. So instead of rice, this morning, the dogs are getting thawed out frozen vegetables, and a cap of salmon oil, hidden in a small wad of peanut butter with half their usual cup of dry food.

Morisson, and Penni, have eaten all their new food. Dylan is pushing broccoli and other green things to the side of his bowl. We just split Dylan’s leftover green things with Penni, and Mo. Everybody seems happy. Wish us luck with their fixing their scratchin’!!

………………………………………..

A fourteen dollar breakfast

The hotel that charged us $45 to park our car

in their garage; valet none the less, also, wanted

us to pay $14 for someone to bring a two egg breakfast

to our room. Service they call it!

…………………………………………..

After the show is over

Does a dog that just won first prize

know that it was the winner? Does

his master treat him any different

after the show is over?

……………………………………………..

And Think

There is something on my mind,

and I find it satisfying

when, mostly, I like to sit alone.

…………………………………………………

Are you a corn bread eating mother fucker?

Joan is in the kitchen, right now, baking four corn breads in an iron skillet. One, we will eat as cornbread, and three, will be made into stuffing. I love stuffing. Corn bread I ain’t all that crazy about, cept for sometimes when there is a lot of butter about.

“It’s like peeling a rock,” Mikel, and “I’ve lost my groove. Joan is peeling a rutabaga, as she says this. “I feel like I am peeling a rock.” I offer to peel some. She turns me down. Whew. I hate peeling, and that rutabaga mother fucker looks hard as hell to strip down.

…………………………………………………

Death is pretty final

I’m volatile like a cricket

should be moments before

being eaten by a frog.

But the frog gives the cricket

no warning. The cricket never sees

the frog’s tongue coming

like my friend never saw the man

walk up behind him and shot him to death.

Sometimes, there is room for depression

that no pill can cure.

………………………………….

Fuck.

I just spent over an hour trying to enlarge the icons on this laptop, to no avail. How very frustrating. Simple computer things often baffle me. If left to my thinking, we would still be striking sticks together to make fire.

This computer is supposed to be dead. It is, at least, seven years old, is machine gun bullet like ridden with bits and pieces from meals that I have had, over the years, sitting in front of this computer, and cranking out poems, and journal entrees. The five is missing. The computer hasn’t let me get on the internet in a couple of years.

There are a lot of memories on this computer, most of which have been transferred to a new, faster model. I thought that this machine was dead, but I never gave up on it, never put it by the side of the road for it to be found by a new home, a home that would hopefully give it life.

Computer repairs are not on the books for a man eking it out somewhere down below minimum wage. Those computer guys, and gals, are expensive. A blessing was bestowed upon me, though, yesterday when the man at the computer store fixed my computer for me for free.

It is so weird, and fun, to have this computer back in my existence.

I am thankful to the man, and to the machine; more to the man at this minute, as the computer is only letting me play one song over and over: “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More,” by The Allman Brothers. Hey, maybe the machine is trying to tell the man something?

November 3, 2012

…………………………………….

Did the butterfly fart in the marshmallows

at the m and m exhibition, yesterday?

…………………………………….

Visitation

Drunk

again

in a

jail cell

screaming out

from  behind

the bars

at  God.

God,

why

have you

put me here,

once again?

Is there a lesson

that I must learn

I wonder

as I put my head

on a puddle of

my own puke

and use it as a pillow

to sleep on until

it it time to wake up

and face The Judge.

……………………………………

Everything I Own Doesn’t Have To Be New

I cleaned my shop vac, this morning.

The thing stunk. I had been using it

to vacuum water that I spilled on the carpet,

in my office/bedroom and had left the vac

in the room without dumping the water

There was tons of animal hair in it, too, and dust. Man there was a ton of dust.

I didn’t go achoo, but I was glad when the job was over, and I could go on with the rest of my life.

…………………………………………

I am powerless

I am powerless.

I am powerless.

I am powerless.

Someone killed

my friend.

……………………………………..

I hate waiting for the bagel to toast

In the toaster nothing to do but sit

There and listen no way to help it along

or to cheat a little bit. Hell, the world

could fall apart, but all I need is my bagel, buster.

…………………………………………

I’m a white person living

in an increasingly less

white people world.

……………………………………………..

It’s me, again

I’m on the road

I’ve got nowhere to go

but these places in my mind.

………………………………………………

It should be easy to write a poem

and sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn’t.

………………………………………………

No thought of ever holding a rake

I, sometimes, wonder

where the leaves come from

and where they will go.

……………………………………………….

Our Hearts Will Beat Together Forever

Head on her chest

I just told Love that I will cry

the day that I can’t hear her heart beat,

She looked up at me and said,

“Well, maybe, that day will never come.”

………………………………………………….

Quit that scratchin’ dogs

I have gotten in the habit of feeding my dogs rice, along with their dry dog food. I don’t know where I read that rice is good for them, but Joan just read, on the internet, that rice helps to dry their skin out, and we have been have a large problem with animals scratching all through the night, (gas heat?)almost to the point where I have considered kicking them out of the bedroom, that they normally share with us, at night.

So instead of rice, this morning, the dogs are getting thawed out frozen vegetables, and a cap of salmon oil, hidden in a small wad of peanut butter with half their usual cup of dry food.

Morisson, and Penni, have eaten all their new food. Dylan is pushing broccoli and other green things to the side of his bowl. We just split Dylan’s leftover green things with Penni, and Mo. Everybody seems happy. Wish us luck with fixing their scratchin’!

……………………………………

”If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning "Good morning" at total strangers.”

--Maya Angelou

Someone should have given this advice to my father. My brother, and I, used to marvel at what an angry, depressed, mean, old man my old man was in the house, and then how he would light up to be the happy Irish man, the minute he got out the door, and got around other people. My dad had a lot of issues, and he took them out on us. Oh well, he had a lot of good points, too. I’m sure that he did the best that he could with what he was given. My job is to not point a finger at him, anymore, but to not to be that way myself, and to not pass on the behaviors to my kids. Rip my father. I thank you for the good things that you gave me, the good things that you taught me. I apologize for the shitty things that I did to you. I was not the perfect child that you sought. I’ll be where you are, one day, part of everything, again, and while I am still here, I want to have a smile on my face, in the house, and out.

………………………………………….

Rolling quarters

Her paycheck is not direct deposited until this Friday. My check doesn’t come until a week later. It was time, this morning, to count the quarters. I had ten dollars and seventy five cents worth of them. I got real organized. I put all the pennies in an empty mayonnaise jar. All the nickels, and dimes, I put in a small coin bank that is shaped like a railroad engine. I thought about giving the train, and what is in it to my oldest grandson for Christmas. I will think more on it. It seems like a great idea to me to gift him so with such. I gave him his first book. Now, I will give him his first savings account. When you don’t have the money, or the interest in, slugging it out with your fellow country men and women, on Black Friday, you have to be creative in your giving. Often, I give poems to friends and loved ones. I think the loved ones might be burned out on getting poems from me. Family does not treat a writer the same way that a fan of the writing who lives somewhere else might. To them you are just the same old schmuck that you have always been.

…………………………………………

Somebody somewhere wants you.

You’ve got something they need.

………………………………………….

Tai Chi

He asked me how I was, and the answer that he taught me was, “Wonderfully Hungry.” He explained what that meant, exactly, but my mind was moving so fast that it did not catch on to what he said. That is what the next class is for. This was my first ever Tai Chai class. I dug it, and I will be back.

I laughed several times, during class, as my instructor showed me how a few of the moves worked. I realized, immediately, that he could have broken my wrist, as he pulled from a strong grip that I had put on his arm. On another move, again gripping his arm firmly, I laughed because, as he twisted away from me, I was strongly aware that he could have broken my elbow.

……………………………………….

Thanksgiving is full of Love

We're watching The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. There seems, so far, to be less floats on the show, this year. Joan says that she saw, somewhere, that they were going to use the parade to advertise that New York City is alive, and kicking, after Sandy's vicious assault, so we are seeing dances from several Broadway shows, instead of massive floats, straining at the strings. Joan says that the floats are coming. I hope that your Thanksgiving is full of Love.

……………………………………….

The Beauty of Our Country

The man on the radio is singing

America The Beautiful. Is there

a flaw to beauty?

………………………………………

The Time Is

I just told Love, over our morning coffee,

that I was going to buy another clock

if they were still on sale, and she said,

“Another clock? Where are you going to put it?

Basically, I have a clock in every room in this house

as I have tried to have a clock in every house

that I live in. I’m not sure where

this need for clocks comes from.

It could stem from getting in trouble

for being late somewhere as a kid,

or it could stem from not wanting

to be anywhere at any particular time.

………………………………………………….

There’s just some things I’ll never be

Like a fire hydrant, or a man In love with

A woman who won’t love him back.

………………………………………………….

What I meant to say

Bagels never cooperate with me

They are always too big for my computer

Did I just say, “computer?”

Isn’t that silly? I meant to say toaster.

………………………………………………….

Working in the yard

I’m starting to think that my Love needs

a twelve step program that would help her

get rid of shoes that have looooong lost

their usability.  “NOOOOOOOOOOO,” she says

I can still use them in the yard, pointing to

a pair that you couldn’t even pawn of on

some homeless person. All I can think

to say is, “Honey, how many pairs of shoes

do you need to work in the yard?”

……………………………………………………..

“Don’t hesitate cuz your love just won’t wait.”

--Peter Frampton

This Peter Frampton lyric speaks volumes to me. I spent years avoiding love, deriding love, attacking love, saying that it did not exist, or if it did, it did not exist for me.