Compulsively Aimless

Five Cent Amusements 
 The dunce did a dance with his cup of love. *** The fox in the dark makes the house dogs bark *** Most everything is expectations that never happen. Weather is the first gift from nature. *** On stage with my fears every day I walk out the door *** Soon my time will be someone else’s time *** After the storm broken branches on the dark pavement look like overgrown tarantulas.

Masters of the Universe Coffee shop idlers everyone at the center of their MacBook universe. Supreme Coffee Brain   After the large latte and venti dark roast there were fifteen minutes where I was at the mountaintop master of all knowledge or at least a Sunday New York Times   Then, slowly my foot slipped from the summit and I spiraled down the caffeine chasm  crushed in an avalanche of my pedestrian ignorance   Sound Memory The sound that comes from one small town is the place where I was young.   Outspeak the Dark Music Frantic man yelling in the distance to fugitive listeners Leaf and star burn at night The destiny of diamonds is dust Bonehouse is the body said Beowolf Words I Like relic atmosphere murmuration You're No Haiku Shark fin old gin make you grin Minor Word Distortions   Company Panic Steel Plates in Head Home Despot Artist Rectal   Band Names + Songs Stage Presence - Last Noise Milton’s Angels - Robbe...

Could a public safety slogan be adopted by poets, “If you see something, say something.” NORMAL RATE OF SPEED   Out west a murmuration of black starlings flash semaphores from the setting sun while in stoic slowness bison stride across the tributaries. In the north their distant cousins the musk ox steam and scowl under frosted scruffs.  

SIX PORTRAITS OF MADNESS   Portrait 1: Outside and Inevitable   The hermit grew delusional and portentous about the outside and the inevitable with dire moods invading his home 
no more did he trust the press, phones or the outside world in general.
 During the day he activated his nocturnal headshrinker Then again he never thought he would ever be caught violating the rules of day-night psychology.
 Last words from the smashed and dying shortwave radio warned that
 many inoperable ruptures  frustrate the dreams of obstinate
 yet sentient beings.   Portrait 2: Elves Themselves More benign than translucent we prodded the tremulous elves 
into buses  and provisioned them with crudites for the expedition ahead. Up north
when evil weasels find Etruscan elves elusive they often turn to Elvis
 and thoughts of industry A rival tribe of trolls with souls
 escaped into their underground game rooms.   Portrait 3: The Surreal ...

Returning to my random lists of books on my shelf after several years. I had to pause for a while after several moves that put my library into a state of of upheaval.  After moving from out of a house with built in bookshelves, I've had to keep my books stacked and double shelved on small shelves or stuffed in liquor boxes sitting in an attic.  I've finally been able to build shelves in my current house and see my books again.  Since then, I've also inherited books from both my parents who have passed away in the last few years.  Write it Yourself - Part II One of my first lists were books about diaries and journals including one of the most famous diarist - Samuel Pepys.   Write It Yourself - Part I Diaries, journals, logs, notebooks -- may be for an audience of one to recording daily life or possibly as a record moments in history.  Diaries cover the widest spectrum of human experience -- the drama of war ( Guadalcanal Diary or the introspect...

A Short Collection of Summer  Traveler Over the eastern Dakotas the winds exhale a cotton ball cloud and push it along over wheat and rivers just in time to notice while finishing The Detroit News and a cup of cold coffee on a Michigan hillside. Chain of Causation The daughters paddled their vacation kayaks so far out the mothers got excited and made the fathers chase them in kayaks It was the daughters plan Laughing the whole time. Right Time, Right Place Drifting on the on a yellow raft floating on the blue earth swirling in the white galaxy was the place to be that Sunday. Some Words in the Dark Evening is a wholesome sunset then Old Grandad, mosquitoes and clumps of conversation The darker it gets the more the conversation opens up until we’re just outlines of figures silenced by lighting and bellow of thunder on the western sky Postscript No wonder the Ojibwa on this land had Animikii, a bird who caused thunder with the...

Washington’s Second Alarm Sometime around nautical dawn Blackbirds and Cardinals sing and respond before the rest of us sleeping civil servants can see. An unknown audience hearing unwritten songs While we lie back in our beds small gods fly over our neighborhoods and land wherever they like. But at exactly Six AM Delta’s New York Shuttle makes its final approach sounding like a dull tornado rolling down on the banks of the Potomac Everyone aboard has stowed tray tables in upright and locked positions with no knowledge the slumbering government workforce will tell time by their descent to runway nineteen.