Conifer-covered hillside
in the hinterlands
of this sleepy town
on a warm day
in this mid-June

The unspoilt soil
neither grieves
nor revels
and there's no revelation in that-
just what you see.

It's just what you see.

The quivering quakeys
can't hack it even when they cackle-
an attempt to unravel the shackles of
their incomplete alchemy-
cause it's never enough

one laugh is never enough.

The high's always flanked
by a sunrise so rank
as to wrinkle the brows
of the loudest and proudest-
the laughers and criers, or livers and die-rs

Just give me the bliss of the birds
and a big lidless urn to retire my fire
when the work week expires
when I finally can see even truth holds some lies
and when the sun sets too low to appraise the horizon,
I'll fly.

I'll just fly.

The rain hammers on the whistlepigs outside
like an organic xylophone
they fiddle with bits of grass in the dark

It's night and the chorus frogs
back it all up,
the humming of the refridgerator
the whistlepigs
the water in the pipes,
the rain.

I've been in this cabin in the woods
**** near a month already
and the incessant buzz of electricity trying hopelessly
to ground through the faulty wiring
in ten million appliances
still cannot be escaped.

Better to be a whistlepig
living beneath the floorboards in the damp
than a mouse in the walls-

but I guess I've never
been either.

She's leaving in the morning
and she knows this
and I know this
and there's little-to-nothing she can do about it
and there's little-to-nothing I can do about it

and she knows this
and I know this.

She walks into the room
with her hair in a towel
and nothing else on
her ******* sway a little as she looks for the ***** shirt
she wears to bed

I'm lying on that bed
in my underwear
by the window listening
to the frogs chirp outside
and I watch her
move around out of the corner
of my eye
so she doesn't notice how
I watch her move.

Don't get all sentimental, I think,
it's too late for that now.

There's little-to-nothing she can do
and there's little-to-nothing I can do

and we know this-

Don't get all sentimental, ******* you,
I think,

but she's there now,
where I can see her
and my idle mind gets rolling

and there's little-to-nothing I can do.

The night closes in
and we're naked
to each other in the dark in that bed.
Close.
There's a storm raging outside
and she's leaving in the morning

and that's the end of it.

I've tried portaiture,
but for some old reason
I find it hard
to eulogize the living.

And when I do try,
the details just never seem
to fit right,
it's too much
or not enough
or just plain inaccurate,
from a few steps back.

I'll paint your actions, alright
'cause I can watch those happen
start to finish,
but I wouldn't pretend to be good enough
to encapsulate a whole person
-all that transient multicolor light under your halo-
with my petty vain jabber,
my incomplete vocabulary
of unflattering grunts-

take it as a compliment.

Wet slush on serrated mountain crest
glimmers like a pearlescent gemstone
untouched by even the brave ones-
sword-wavers, chest-beaters, ski-maniacs,
gemhounds and bloodhounds
and even father sun
has stayed his hand
to drag a finger through that heavenly
mirror-tile's topcoat
for its unmarked face, streakless
and unpocked by avalanche
reveals no disturbance.

They say these are the steepest mountains on earth,
and it would be hard to disagree while looking at them
their upper edge against the equally spotless sky
is a perfect, continuous line
and the slopes, appearing near-vertical
create the illusion
that this miles-long ridge could split hairs like a hand-sharpened razor-
like a colossal, snowy
bowie knife.

Sunday afternoon under sleepy film of cloudcover
in this, the most well-policed
(safe, they say)
town in these Unitedly Individuist States of
Solitude-
cry out for something to do,
give me something to DO,
i say
but even the bars and singular coffee shop are closed on the lord's day
here
and so a lazy afternoon on the back porch with the weekend wine leftovers in glass, in hand
watching the cats dream,
themselves even too lazy to chase the busy squirrels
who alone are energized
and chat their politics of nut-gathering
to the bluejays who nod kindly,
(nobility obliges)
but silently know all the tricks
'cause they're expert buriers of peanuts
themselves and have got nothin' to learn,
but nothing to do either,
'cept listen.

I hear the music of their conversation
and assure you, friends,
that this poem is garbage
by comparison.

splayed
with a deathmask as gaunt
as in life

metacarpals and phalanges,
liberated (in vain) of rubbery
connective tissues

ribs and spine,
so surprisingly human,
sunbleached

bones that may as well have been mine
but weren’t for whatever reason
(or no reason at all)

what karmic debt
could this poor specimen have possibly incurred
to be pinned, naked and fleshless, in a glass-paned box for all to see for all foreseeable eternity?

mayhap beauty is, itself
criminal
when it goes without a price tag.