A type of dualism

We can understand now how there are two things
like the voice that speaks and the voice that is heard
like my body as it was and as it is.

The difference from real
to real is like the strange
excess flesh of former bodybuilders.
we had built a great body of firm flesh together,
the fading strength leaves me wading like capillaries through this wilderness,
and you like the last artery billowing from the former
massy bicep that would have wrapped around our terra
like mythic oceanus.


We dream of this superhero strength;
We must be
made for another world.
what world?

Ecclesiastes 3a

The service is about to begin in the small church
hidden among the pines, swamp, and stones
of northern Minnesota.

Two elderly farmers, dressed in coveralls
and canvas coats banter, one reaching the door
holds it open, calls back, "come on, Marty,
I'll wait for you
like one hog waits for another."

this expression is well-loved and well-used by these two,
worn smooth as a pitchfork's hickory,
and the laughter lifts course and sweet as hay
thrown from thin steel tines.

like a barn full of cattle, we are together this morning
warm with the first touch of spring,
and we receive the alms of the season.
the only purpose of our toil to be glad of good
to laugh for all our labors.

Company Lunch

The pizza has arrived
wrapped in the room's flourescent ambiance
and the smell of warm, greasy cardboard

And those of us this lunch is for
celebrate the flow of foodstuffs
like emanations from management's absolute being
while we gather to grumble over all other of these emanations

and those who walk by glance in through the half-open door
while we sit in the awkward sound of our oral digestive processes
and cardboard cutout of conversation

I reach out with two fingers
casually
for the jalapeno.

To those who scrawled the crude blue spray-painted letters on the neighbors' garage door

People say this is gang-work
coded territory marking
like the piss of a great blue cat
who stalks the night with latexed fingerprints
pawing at our thresholds

Look, I've seen the street art
I've seen the mural on the high buildings
like a flowing flag planted by Sir Hilary
worked by those who will climb in the dark

but this is sick, stick lines
like a cave drawing
lines like those of a child

how old are you?
I wonder as I watch the neighbors paint
the white that doesn't quite match
the last coat why it is that I scrawl these letters now
as garish, quick, and simple,
though touching no one's door nor causing comment

your code says to me
"this is our territory, we make it so
from not our own," you and I together
will recognize it with our foolish deeds
with these good houses no more to us than signposts
for our mighty solipsy.