i hear a train it is far away / you can tell by the sound of the whistle

i hear a train it is far away
you can tell by the sound of the whistle

as it gets closer the rain falls harder
the train blows the horn again and again

i wonder if the train is the rain
as the rain falls harder and the train gets closer

as the train recedes from the horn
the rain starts to slacken off

when i can't hear it at all
the rain stops and the sun comes out

so it might be so
rain train


----


St Louis Park

The clown and I are in a cafe, not a very nice cafe, a Caribou Coffee.

The clown and I are in a cafe, not a very nice cafe, a Caribou Coffee.

The clown is looking at one of my short stories.

"Is it genuine feeling? Or is it just a kind of base sentimentality?" I implore to the clown.

The clown keeps reading the story.

"Does it have rhythm? Is it surprising?"

The clown jumps up and runs out, knocking over things. He returns with a goat in a party hat.

"What!"

The clown rubs his belly and indicates we have reached the promised land. The goat is eating my story.


****

It is about 4 pm on a afternoon turning to rain. He's handing poems printed out on seed packets to most people who don't care at all

It is about 4 pm on a afternoon turning to rain. He's handing poems printed out on seed packets to most people who don't care at all. They'd be the last person who would ever want to look a a poem or consider a story about love or longing. It was his idea of being heroic and reaffirming innocent. He's a little buzzed, but not feeling the darkness that overpowers him towards midnight after he's climbed the hill to a decaying Victorian he lives in with huge damp roses that lean down like sleeping heads towards the filth of the small dirt spaces by the guarded bars of the basement windows where he loved a girl and she moved to Japan.

Later he's recovered his mind by about one AM in his silk bathrobe, landing softly back into a life with heaps of papers, a pipe, and a crazy quilt stacked bed with Japanese haiku circling overhead. He sees Mark Twain in the mirror with a hat that an Indian wore once, a calm sure reinforcement that boosts morale in the gentlest siege of the soul. The gentlest siege through eyes and mind that begs for beauty in a world of gasoline, progress, mashed bottle-caps, boiled food, and disconnected telephones. A few of his seed packets here are at hand, and having no witness there is the joy of scattering joy nonetheless and believing it would kindle a few more who will go deep into their own forests and cities and find then give back.


***

Richard Brautigan would write different short stories, each one would be like a leaf from the most interesting tree you ever did see.

Richard Brautigan would write different short stories, each one would be like a leaf from the most interesting tree you ever did see. He wrote novels that were collections of these leaves, a whole heap and a basket of them with little bits of twigs and scruff and bark bits from his mind. A reader could spill out the bushel of them and rake the stories into whatever piles they liked, all on the living room floor or wherever they were and enjoy the way the writing scrunched. Brautigan would have been happy to know some bugs or worms got in there, the flecks and damp on these leaves endless illuminated space of imagination, leaves staining the vaults of longing, and leaves curling in caves of interconnected green stained-glass telephone booths.


***

September 18
At a nice place to pause in your mind

Lazarus of Bethany

Now, I'm Lazarus, and I'm old. I'm going to be dying a second time. It might next week, or next month, or anytime, though I hope it will be after my great grandkid Ishmael comes here for the summer. My daughter's husband owes me a lot of money, because he's good-for-nothing. Ishmael will work in the vineyards to make up for some of it. The family thinks I'll be a terrible taskmaster for Ishmael, and I pretend it will be a long difficult summer for him. But really he's my favorite great grandson and we sneak off and sit by the river and fish and we take turns telling stories and having a nice time not doing anything.


****

This story will make no sense at all. I saw a clown on the side of the road.

This story will make no sense at all. I saw a clown on the side of the road. I was about 20 minutes from home, and the clown looked like he was dead. I waited for a car to pass, but no cars drove down the country road.

It took me about ten minutes to decide to see if the clown was really dead. I carefully walked up, half averting my eyes, dreading what I might see. I was trembling head to foot.

The clown was fine. He honked his horn at me.



***

Napa
Foster Road

i have none of the right mindfulness

i have none of the right mindfulness
i have lazarus in my mind waiting the be resurrected
i have a hawk on a chai tea cup with a candle stub
i have plasticated flummoxes with buttons that twirl clockwise

i have arrived finally
here i am no artifice
i confess please help me

when i sit i become more angry
the architect of my own hell

i'll never give up breathing
watching my breath

the only thing i seem to do
that works



***

have you seen the new lego pineapple?

have you seen the new lego pineapple?

the new lego lazarus is holding it,
staring at you accusingly.


***

the streets isolated neat and boring

on vacation
we will fit in though just visiting
walk through the gated community

lacking the stuff so we make do
become mimes with a mime dog we are walking

cold like the fog
the streets isolated neat and boring

if only a ship would wreck
and we could go over the bones


----

Bodega Bay
2015

under a vast lake measured in spoons

it is raining
just like when i woke up
at 3.30 am and heard the rain
and the sound of a clogged gutter
like a miniature waterfall on the deck

at 7.30 i grab a ladder
i clean out the sticks and leaves
everything looks properly wet

we are a reverie
home a gentle genie
under a vast lake measured in spoons





***

entirely strange

you were brilliant
i am still blinded by how bright you shone
how fortunate i am to have known you

you inspired me to tell the truth
taught me how to communicate feelings
i never saw you afraid of anything

still thinking about conversations
laughing at some of the jokes
remembering the musical discoveries

the contradictions
the quirks
force of personality

you had deep flaws that i couldn't see
did anyone know what was deep inside you
i'm sorry if you could never tell us

because of you i sensed larger rooms
bigger moments and deeper relationships
all through deciding to have it and the courage to go

some sprint and others double-down
the marathon of life or stages in the highest climb

you are both in the past and above me in some place
to meet again when it will be like a new day

just like the first day we met not so long ago
you bright happy confident and entirely strange



----

for
r

fall
2019

every star is like a hole

every star is like a hole
pushed through black paper
thoughts made each one



*

locked out of the cabinet of my mind

locked out of the cabinet of my mind
thank you that i have such caution
to be caught this way



*

The captain of the flight says his name is "Cheesy Love Guacamole"

The captain of the flight says his name is "Cheesy Love Guacamole". Other than the name, it is a ordinary flight. We land in Minneapolis 25 minutes early, because of some favorable tail winds.



***

splendid heaven will undress all our statements

splendid heaven will undress all our statements
revealing cloistered grandmothers or miraculous vision




**

it said BILLIONS and LOVE

he lived a small life
like an enchanting dot

but if you looked close
it said BILLIONS and LOVE


***

i'm working hard to stay out/ of the same old thoughts and same old day

i'm working hard to stay out
of the same old thoughts and same old day
because a series of thoughts like that or this regular day
the thoughts and day that keep getting blander and more tired
boring thoughts on a uneventful day
so life starts to curl up and suck a thumb
with an empty type of daydream wholess and vague
why would i want that

even if working hard at it is just the opposite
i'm going to do something


*

the shade was like a jail

the shade was like a jail
grass in the backyard erect

yellow steel sided house
overwrought we do not lose hope

we ask for connections
what is so blue or so green

in fall our pants will be cold
frost like a mouth



***

industrious well-to-do imported pigs are plotting

industrious well-to-do imported pigs are plotting
mean to outdo our local grey squirrels


***