Five
Mud Hound Water
Chinese lilies
come to life
emerging from muck
putting up leaves
then flowers —
flowery swamp birds
subtle swamp buds
little bits of colour
in mud hound water
Dry Talk
The way the folks
talk and talk and talk
big words, big talk
much talk, fast talk
considered talk
filtered talk
light shines in
and dries all the talk up
Six Scones
Six Scones
on the pantry shelf
six sailors
standing on the gantry
a wind upsets the sails
the scones slide off
the anchor drops
the tug casts off
Four
Cranberries?
Big Bog, Little Bog
Natural tides of Cranberry Juice
La Jus de Oregon
the juice of weird and musty backroad shacks
peeping through the trees
one mans swampy crop
another mans mediocre sauce
tomatoes loins
He who eats the lavender bud
and tastes tomatoes loins
saliva on the breast
of dying herbal sprigs
Boggy scotch
Boggy scotch in heavenly markets
sweet peat, such pitiful fruit.
Sweet pity in a dank swamp.
Swamp Scotch and a boozy heart.
Pots of Earth
Pots of Earth & pots of beef
or tender beans.
Made of clay or steel & copper.
Earthen pots of water.
Fired in the bosom of Japan.
Glazed with a Chinese Dove.
Now found
with tender bean.
Three
Active chicken
Active chicken,
cool your scratching
and break
from chicken wire pacing.
La Rois du Pot au Fue
La Rois du Pot au Fue
back alley beef stew
& table wine, a table of mine
and a rainy day & a pot of beef
plunct upon mine table fine.
Bird nest at your feet
I’m working on the casts, talking shit up at nile creek
my wrist is getting involved,
should only be using the fore arm is what they tell me
otherwise things get confused
lines get crossed
and you wind up with a birds nest at your feet
throwing a nymph into the shadows
When I’m standing in a nice
sandy spot up the river
throwing a nymph into the shadows
I feel the jaw bone in my pocket
that Lola found last week
and forgot about
a lonesome sportsman
I am a slidin' in the old bag
a lonesome sportsman in a folky prison
a salal fence and very many moths
Jesus is an old boy
Jesus is an old boy and I wonder about him sometimes
like at christmas or when my buddy
lends me a bible that his dog ate a bit of
down by the dugout
Bought an old farm
with a haywire house
full of small problems
and issues
Got ten acres
of flat dry land
gently sloping
to the south
Might fence it in
might get stuck
in the mud
while trying
Might put up a sauna
on the edge of the dugout
or a little hut
to sit in
Two
My Little Eye
My little eye gets bigger and bigger
with each beer that I steal from pa
and then drink
Pertoglyphs and Pterodactyls
Pertoglyphs and Pterodactyls
go whispering awhile
and I go flitting
through quennel lake
as summer dies out
low tide
Plenty of gulls
to crack the skulls
of tiny crabs
whose job it is
to waddle about
when the tide is out
Jainland
A crazy place this is in the wet of winter Jainland
in the darkness of my hut hunting for hares
or the neighbours dogs, guarding the plains of Nestpatitas
and things in that vein.
Marmalade
Marmalade my, quintessential spread
who arms are always open on lonely mornings
Budget Soup
pull the cheap strings of cheap dreams
and poach the eggs of Chinese ducklings.
cheap beans in the simple soil
freshley picked by the cheap labour.
the hot sun sends cheapness into the roots
of cheap fruit which then is blended
into budget soup.
non-socks
Sunshine slithers down my shins
towards my non-socks
to rest upon
my non-delusional hairy toe
Joyce
Joyce and her husband
power walk goddamn laps
until suppertime
The pumpkin tree
The pumpkin tree
feels find today
buying groceries
from boulangerie
blues from the orient
Itay woke up from a bad dream, hard
he couldn’t get back to sleep
and the next day he had to work
but not until eleven o’clock in the morning
but at seven the construction would begin
and no one can sleep through that
he sat up late listening the neighbors
and Yusef Lateef’s eastern sounds
sleep came to Itay like finely ground coffee
dripping through the sheppard’s crook
of Lateef’s bassoon
milked along, watered by spit
from the boot through the bocal
to the double reeds then down his throat
One
Bush Bean
I picked the fruit of the bush bean,
bundled it into my shirt,
tossed the soft ones to the hens
and ran the bean marathon
with just enough for one
the young sweet greens
par-boiled in the fog
just barely peppered
yet edible and friendly
Manzanita
In the fog of manzanita I'm able to hide
and pretend Im the only one
and that the forest stretches on as does the sea
Work Week
In the work week my heart hurts
and I taste some painful things
metallic and dust
and sweat stings my eyes
and boredom hangs around
and wonder wanders through
Grass
I ate the lawn that gets too long
with my grizzly bear who hugged the ground
and spit smoke and dust while my eyes got red
near some motel where I pick up trash in the parking lot
Champagne Hill
Like a boat come loose of it’s moorings
or even a dock drifting in the cove at night
I wait for her on top of Champagne Hill
forecasting winter by fire
cheese
Cheese, Cheese,
all kinds of lactose
coming ultimately out of teets
to sit in sauce or water
or growl within
cold deep caves
