bowl of soup

hey rosemary, i promised you an issa tribute poem, so here we go... 

first, the rice goes into the soup

then the fish

carrots, mushrooms, leeks

the poet stirs it with a stick

 

and the song that he sings, wordless and off key, goes into the soup

and the smoke of the fire, bits of drifting ash

whatever the wind brings along

                remnants of rain

grains of earth and herb from a thousand plowed fields

 

mountains crumble in the poet’s mind

become loose boulders rolling

become round and smooth and wise

some grind down to dust and wait for the next mountain to rise

                some travel the valley

seventeen perfect pebbles roll within reach

go into the soup

 

the last drops of saki and a thread from his shirt, into the soup

 

he adds the vanishing memory of youth

all the leftover laughter of summer festival

                                        drunk friends

all the footsteps that stumble

                dew drops

                                nightingales

                                                lonely cricket

into the soup and stirred with a stick

 

the spirits of scarecrow and firefly, into the soup

the stars and the moon above, tangled in the gravity of soup  

crash into the soup

 

soup becomes universe

alive

 

the poet sits, symmetrical in silence

(night - highway - fire - soup)

 

he holds the bowl with both hands and takes little sips

                                               the soup is hot

 

 

 

 

“clear view

in the soup kettle…

the milky way”

kobayashi issa (priest “cup-of-tea” of haiku temple)

posted for poets and storyteller united writer's pantry

the sunday muse #179

 

in thru the back door

out thru the front door

grab cookies from the counter

as we go

in thru the back door

out thru the front door

this is how we play

at jeffreys’ house

 

under summer leaves

under cottonwood trees

lizards and lady bugs

in thru the back door

out thru the front door

grab some cookies as we go

 

grandmother gets ready for church

grandfather rides the porch swing

melanie wears a pretty dress

i wear a clip-on bowtie

in thru the back door

out thru the front

race around the house laughing

summer all day long

 

all these years

boarded up windows

peeling paint and creaking boards

in thru the back door

out thru the front

good to know ghosts still play

in jeffrey’s house

posted for the sunday muse

this one just fell out of the sky

 this poem was a gift from the gods, it just fell out of the sky and landed in my hand.  an ice cream truck stopped in front of my building and i recorded it thru the window, and standing there, i saw what i saw. love it when it works out like that.

jalopy dreams · ice cream truck poem

so i hear the ice cream truck coming

                outside my window

so i go to the window and look outside and see the sky is clear

                a midday blue, And the trees all have That

midsummer green about them and i think

                                                                that is fantastic

and the truck pulls up and children are waiting

and the music is playing and spare change is falling everywhere

and ice cream cones are melting everywhere

                and i think that is fantastic

and i’ve got ten dollars, somewhere, and shoes, and wait

wait right there, that’s the crazy chicken-leg lady

and her dog

and Her boxes and her bags and she’s got crazy all tangled up in her hair

 

 she’s walking right in front of us with those two crazy chicken-legs

                                                that is fantastic

 

so lets take inventory

one window, one ice cream truck, one ice cream truck vender song

we got all that

and she’s in daisy dukes and pink tee, two boxes on her left shoulder

three bags under her right arm, her car keys jingle, and she has a bell

a jingle bell on her keychain that rings everywhere she goes

                                                                                                and that is

fan-

tastic

 

she yells at her dog, who wanders around on his own,

no leash

“hey! get over here!”

and then she steps in something and it swishes

 

she wobbles, nearly topples over

hopping on one foot she looks at her flip-flop

                                                and it’s dog shit

all those boxes and bags balancing on one crazy chicken-leg trying not to topple over

                into dog shit, i tell you it’s fantastic

                                                 

and one of the kids says “hey crazy chicken-leg lady, clean up after your dog”

 

she growls and mumbles and barks

like she’s got tourettes and just smoked meth

she shakes her foot trys to kick the shit off her flip-flop

                leaning tower of boxes bags crazy lady legs flapping shitty flip-fops falling off

                                                                                and her bell just keeps ringing

                                dingalingalingaling! dingalingalingaling! dingalingalingaling!

and that is fantastic!

 

oh i laughed so hard, i laughed so hard

 

i laughed so hard i had to write a poem to celebrate it

                then went down

                                                and got some ice cream

 

posted at poets and storytellers united

the sunday muse #175

 i saw two pixies on the downtown train

i’m sure they snuck on at the parker station

i’m sure they didn’t pay

so odd to see two pixies on the downtown train

in the middle of the day

one spoke the language of sunset

the other spoke riddles of sunrise

surprise!

i saw two pixies on the downtown train

and it nearly killed me

two pixies caught wandering in the middle of the day

one says (hey play it cool)

                                                the other says (yeah act natural)

i saw two pixies walking naked thru busy city streets

buying apples

 

two pixies sitting on a park bench, shoulder to shoulder with a hobo in the middle

and they babble and they blunder

he learns all their whistles and winks, the stuff they say with the stuff between their toes

                and he learns how to raise baby birds in his beard

                                                he learns a new sutra

                becomes a buddha!

 

two pixies wander downtown after dark

two pixies in the park

one pixie whirs and twirls in autumn gold, smacking the leaves as they fall from the trees

                exploding gold, smack! Smack! Smack! rainbows of rust!  

 

the other plays fiddle

 

two pixies spotted fleeing the scene barefoot in dirty underwear

party favors and jumper cables

not a pretty picture 

two pixies, one with his head in the clouds, one with her feet in the gutter

so strange to see two pixies hijack a downtown high rise elevator

when the sign specifically says “no shirt no shoes no pixies no service”

 

two pixies on the roof of the city posed like gargoyles calling all angels

danger! danger! the strangers are here!

                                                nothing but pixie tears

                                                                then giggle and run away

                                                jumping in and out of each other’s shadow

i saw two pixies standing around downtown grooving on tunes

one of them starts to sing             (caribou… cari-boooooouuuuu…)

 

and the other plays fiddle

posted for the sunday muse

posted for dverse

chucky gravy 3rd draft

jalopy dreams · Chucky Gravy 3

great challenge idea Ingrid! look forward to hearing everyone else's poem, i'll be back later to listen

don’t take no lumps

                                out of my gravy

i say don’t beat no lumps

                                out of my gravy

cause i’ve been craving baked potato

i’ve been craving dirt fruit

put something gritty on my plate

put some soil in my soul

thirty minutes in the oven

                                is eternal

and i’ve been craving rain on hot pavement

trees with thick leaves to hide me from the sun

i’ve been craving playground simplicity

i’ve been craving crystal balls that know it all

                                and never tell

so don’t take those lumps

                                out of my gravy

oh hell no

don’t you steal no lumps

                                from my gravy

                                cause i’ve been craving love

the kind that chases me down

put both hands on the back of my neck

                when you kiss me

i’ve been craving metaphoric moon landings

and lost fate duct tape contraptions

the rehydration of the earth

streets alive, café windows full of people

eyes full of smiles, faces full of porkchop

                                (pass the gravy)

i’ve been craving wasting all my time

in old blue fords on old dirt roads

a magic stone to skip all the way to the other shore

stevie wonder’s superstition and my cherie amour

                                (pass the gravy)

that lumpy candy

cause i’m craving something chucky, something savory

something funky

                something sassy

                                it’s not crazy

just means i’m hungry for more

whatever blessing be for me

that desire

                                that earth-fire

put the fleet in my feet

put the hustle in my whistle

                                feed the soil to my soul

and pass the gravy 

posted for dverse

the sunday muse #174

 

in michigan or minnesota

                                i forget which

it’s illegal to serve alcohol to a moose

which may say something about moosekind in general

                (a drunk moose is nothing but cruel)  

or maybe speaks more about life in michigan and or minnesota

 

and maybe it says something about people in a pandemic

the skull numbing finger thumping soul screaming tic-toc of time wasting

isolation in pandemic lockdown

                                                here kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty

 

which could explain all the videos on you-tube of cat mazes

cat tea parties, cat fashion shows, fancy cat wine tastings, cat slings

cat swings and cat catapults

 

                                                which would also explain all the lost pet posters

all over the neighborhood, all those runaways hightailing to a safer space

in the wild, clutches of cats traumatized by pandemic people

scratching out cat refugee camps behind dumpsters of feline freedom

 

and all those guilt-ridden pet-parents washing their hands with anti-

viral hand soap but can’t remove the stain can’t remove the

stain can’t remove the stain can’t get clean and going insane

yes, boredom is a tale told by an idiot

full of sound and fury and furry calicos

one tortured creature begets another tortured creature

                                                                begets another

                                                                                begets another

 

and so on, until

enter deux ex machina

in times of great nothingness and no release

keep your moose on a leash

  

posted for the sunday muse

these are true stories

jalopy dreams · these are true stories

个

 (heads up! listen to the poem up here)

warning! these true stories are based on loose lips, unshaved characters

scripture translated from crop circles, fast food menus

and all the stuff stuck to the bottom of my shoe

 

true story every time i buy new shoes i have to learn to walk again

giggle and gimbal, stumble over curbs, each foot a conjoined stranger

the fun never ends

until it ends

flatfooted again

 

true story i have no use for politicians, but that’s not true

            sometimes i run out of toilet paper

true story i’m not running for mayor of truthtown, i’m not managing

a health food store, i don’t sleep inside a fortune cookie

            true story i see two moons tonight

one in the sky and one in the lake

 and drunk enough to swim for it

 

true story a man and a woman holding hands in a deli

                        pretending they’re not going to devour each other

true story i wrote a dozen emails, all in my head, which has no wi-fi

so you probably didn’t get them

true story i took the last trash bag from the box, and put the box in the bag

true story i only sleep in pictures of beds

 

final warning

all these warnings may be hazardous to the osmosis of spontaneous true story

true story, all these warnings were translated from chinese toaster oven safety labels  

with an industry standard garage sale ouija board

            (caution plug securely or power cord be detached in set

            else crisscross wires fix with fork and feel emergency

call god immediately, also, avoid soft drinks)

 

but let us not be warned

let immortal monkey gods deliver us onto random doorsteps

let us midnight snack a greasy half-burnt sunset last supper of summer

let us creature around in secret vehicles under a suicide of blue sky

let us go all weather, all together

and forget to do our laundry

 

 

2013

posted for open mic night at D'verse

weekly scribbles #83 pay attention

 so, to "choose one object in nature" and focus on it, i chose my grandfather, which may seem odd, but to me my grandfather will always be a  permanent element of nature.

a nebraska man in a nebraska-land

mending his fences

boots and bib overalls

how carefully he wove his rows

turned the earth with his thick fingers

ripe black dirt, the smell of it

the taste of it, all of it

nebraska

 

the wide-rim sky

was his hat, he wore it like a daydream

and the canopy of alfalfa and wheat

rolling in the wind

his winter coat, his face

both sunburnt and frostbitten

 

and i’m not sure which came first

the man or the land

i can’t separate the two

In any of my memories

of nebraska  

is this the creation of his imagination?

or perhaps  

these things image him

he stands among them

as pheasant run between his feet

 

a transcendental wind

blowing the world around

whistle and cymbal                                       

thru the cornstalks and sunflower

waving their feather petals

gold and green

 

posted for poets and storytellers united

chunky gravy --- 2nd draft

jalopy dreams · chunky gravy

ok, so this is draft 2 with audio, i've haven't done spoken word for many years now, 

so i'm still shaking off all the rust, this recording isn't perfect but... oh well, i'll 

keep practicing, it'll come back to me. 

don’t take no lumps

                                out of my gravy, i say

don’t beat no lumps

                                out of my gravy

cause i’ve been craving baked potato

i’ve been craving dirt fruit

put something gritty on my plate

put some soil in my soul

thirty minutes in the oven

                                is eternal

and i’ve been craving rain on hot pavement

trees with thick leaves to hide me from the sun

i’ve been craving playground simplicity

i’ve been craving crystal balls that know it all

                                and never tell

so don’t take those lumps

                                out of my gravy

nope-nope-nope

don’t steal no lumps

                                from my gravy

                                cause i’ve been craving love

the kind that chases me down

put both hands on the back of my neck

                when you kiss me

i’ve been craving moon landings

and endless human compassion

the rehydration of the earth

streets alive, café windows full of people

faces full of smiles, faces full of porkchop

                                (pass the gravy)

i’ve been craving wasting all my time

in old blue cars on dirt roads

a magic stone to skip all the way to the other shore

stevie wonder’s superstition and my cherie amour

                                (pass the gravy)

that lumpy candy

cause i’m craving something chucky, something savory

                something funky

                                it’s not crazy

just means i’m hungry for more

whatever blessing be for me

that desire

                                that earth-fire

put the fleet in my feet

put the hustle in my whistle

                                feed the soil to my soul

and pass the gravy

chunky gravy ---1st draft

don’t take the lumps

                                out of my gravy, i say

don’t beat the lumps

                                out of my gravy

cause i’ve been craving baked potato

i’ve been craving dirt fruit

put something gritty on my plate

put some soil in my soul

thirty minutes in the oven

                                is eternal

and i’ve been craving rain on hot pavement

trees with thick leaves to hide me from the sun

i’ve been craving playground simplicity

i’ve been craving crystal balls that know it all

                                and never tell

so don’t take those lumps

                                out of my gravy

nope-nope-nope

don’t steal no lumps

                                from my gravy

                                cause i’m craving love

the kind that chases me down

so put both hands on the back of my neck

                when you kiss me

i’ve been craving moon landings

and endless human compassion  

the rehydration of the earth

streets alive, café windows full of people

faces full of smiles and mouths full of porkchop

                                (pass the gravy)

i’ve been craving wasting my time

in old blue cars on dirt roads

a magic stone to skip all the way to the other shore

stevie wonder’s superstition and my cherie amour

                                (pass the gravy)

that lumpy candy

cause i’m craving something chucky, something savory

                something funky

                                it’s not crazy

just means i’m hungry for more

or less, whatever blessing be for me

that desire

                                that earth-fire

put the fleet in my feet

put the hustle in my whistle

                                feed the soil to my soul

and pass the gravy