Leisure Pursuit

Every day I capsize my head

with the sheer weight of combative colors

all staving off a yellow jacket

and long brown hair, like wheat grass.

I am feeding on Bibles

and other scripture

their beauties and blasphemies 

arguing for spots in line

I am tiredly chewing on

the works of 1960's antiwar authors

and the poetry of simple minded

and seemingly innocent business-men

But every time I am brimming with

the catastrophes and philosophies 

of all these healthy distractions

she loses her way

And transforms into the golden goddess

I like best

charging in on a chariot,

triumphant as Apollo as the morning sun

She sweeps away a mustached veteran

and the doubting Thomas (though both good men)

and submerges my consciousness 

in her soft, honeysuckle eyes.

I've got three more poems. And they just keep coming. I don't believe I'll post a whole lot more as I'm working out the drafts in my notebook. And I'm skipping town in 2 weeks.
A confession:
I'm in love with paper. Everything about it is enticing and wonderful except bastard paper cuts, of course.
A friend of mine lent me her copy of Vonnegut's "A Man Without A Country" a couple of days ago and I finished it today. It was fascinating. If you a) haven't heard of it, b) haven't read it, or c) are a human being, I can only think of a single thing to say: read it, stupid.

He quotes Jesus and Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain throughout 11 brilliant essays. Three great men from history, which is a favorite subject of mine. Also, I've really been particularly interested in American history as of late, so I enjoyed the book especially.

There's no point to a post like this. I just felt like typing up a grotesque entry that wasn't a poem.

If you want to read my to-do list, here you go:
-finish online missionary stuff (immunizations, family history, email)
-mail missionary stuff to mission president
-Get motor vehicle report
-get baptism pants hemmed
-Go running
-find better mission music

How's everybody doing?

(Notapoem notapoem) Black

Tonight I sat outside in the North American wind

and I scrawled on a burned and dirty cupboard 

with a dip pen and thick black ink. 

My charcoal computer played the manipulative elk tongue

(like the one moaning in the road)

gently filling an unnecessary space

and slowly unlatching the gate to a watery wave.

No tears though. 

It hated my tone.

Peter Silberman howled in my good ear

about hospitals and corrupted relationships 

overflowing with sourness

and a sense of handicapped love,

I allowed my sneaky subconscious 

to pick the melancholy music.

I was scratching away the words of my father

but about my mother, with my watermelon eyes.

Brittle chunks of keyboards snapped at me

And I wished you could feel my inky and satisfied hands. 

They'd eat yours, spreading the darkness, 

And maybe you'd understand me

cause it's all I've ever wanted, babe.

Joyous Gard

The woodsmoke girl in yellow

Changes her mind

At least a hundred thousand times

Her name is Sylvia (head in the oven)

No, Margaret (cold corpsy lips)

No, just the letter H

With a’s and l’s and y’s

Stumbling after

Cold in a sweater 5 times her size

(I know it’s the wind)

The animal arms hang down to her

Smooth knees, like chocolate

My name is whispered in a heated moment

Then never heard again

She kisses my neck

Smiles at me from across the granite tabletop

Shares her warm thighs

Then turns into Joyous Gard

With the wind choking on her high walls

And while the nobles converse

In hushed tones in the great hall

And smirk at the whistles and

Rich falsetto yells of the wind (trying to get in)

Lancelot leans over to Guinevere

And effortlessly places his cold lips on her warm, malleable cheek.

Welcome

You slowly creak the door open and

A volcano fizzes out of my chest

Like a blacksmith hunched over his grey anvil

The basement breathes a quiet "welcome"

(she's on my side tonight)

The far corner of it, drenched in a lightbulb's warm kiss

like the ones you stamped on my cheeks.

My mouth, though out of the question

(for that would be breaking every rule)

frames the intelligence of words coming and going,

lost and found, like the treasured jacket

lounging on the top of the heap,

Prince of lost and never found.

My crinkly blue jacket

is the third grade soccer player screaming

"Out-of-bounds!" every time a blade of grass is

swayed by black and white or a dirty sneaker.

It desperately wishes to wake your mother

But it's cries go unheard, as it is peeled to the carpet

For we are lost and found

in a huddled, quilted embrace.

Sometimes I'm Afraid To Say (Too Terrified To Speak)

These are the same murky swamps
that you hesitantly snatched up
in a crustaceous, red rock euphoria
And when you slipped on a bed of wet moss, ankle deep
You couldn't help but wade into
The brown water now lovingly pooling about your waist
then deeper, your face buried in my neck.

It's Dark and Lovely Outside and My Hair is Combed

It's dark and lovely outside
And my hair is combed.
Two-thirds races right and back, over the scalp
While the complacent third
sprints past my ear
(a few of the athletes stumble on the crest)
running from the sunny, mid-day voices
of visitors, visiting, dying alone
trying to get through to the brain.

I don't know why I took the time
to feel the bristles of my brother's greasy comb
Tickle my scalp and soothe me to sophistication
I didn't even plan to meet a handsome woman from a party
or a bearded ruffian
looking for a counterpart

I just went to work
and bathed in the
sickly deafening applause
Of a proud ladle, (blood-red gummy flecks on his chin)
and sauce and flour.
"Your hair looks good", she said
And they screamed.