Christopher Gale

Acting like yourself is like

A great horned owl

You’re only gonna see it

      twice in your life

Unless you pay attention

  to the loving of owls

How pillowy soft their

oooo oooo oooo  

         is

How you learned in elementary 

       they can hear 

    mice under snow

Maybe from miles away?

How that “mice under snow” fact

          kind of smells

               like bullshit

How truly big and beatuiful and rare and precious such a thing as 

An owl or 

Seeing yourself in bloom

Is

Either way

Ode to a squirrel #6

We’re not so different

Two bags of blood and guts and bone

Wondering why there’s a road here

       Forever altering our path

Dictating our fear

       Preying on our limited imagination

Sure I can do one differential equation

We’ll still die here

Only difference is

One of us will die through it

Jax Cafe poem #2

If not for one

I might have unlocked the fight

Save nine

Depreciate

Your instincts are not so sharp

For me they take the cake

I have not been blessed

Neither have you

If not for some

“What we have here is a failure to communicate”

My friend Ross used to say

Or maybe it was Luke

Either way

I learned to fly today

Landing poem #65

Setting up an IKEA bed is the

Best kind of chore

First

You go to work, get paid

Legal tender in exchange for your

Time and hopefully skillset

Then

You make sure you have that tender

In some usable form

           Cash

   A debit card

          A couple of very pretty box turtles to barter with

Then

You convert to Mormonism

Your opinion was changed at a

Financial investment advisor conference you

Stumbled into after getting lost

In a parking ramp

This guy in a two-hundred-and-11 dollar

Suit was very nice and helpful

And you were pretty sure he

    Was Mormon

So you decided to convert

Plus 

Your three favorite things are 

America, plates, and Marisa Tomei

And the LDS church has two of these

Or three?

Is Marisa Tomei Mormon?

Don’t worry about it

Then

You watch My Cousin Vinny on

TBS in the nicest Motel 6 you’ve

Ever been in Naperville, IL

Then

You borrow your friend Jake’s

White truck

Then

You go buy a bed at IKEA

And put it together at home

In a harrowing three-part pointillist drama

Ascension

Go to the hardware store for a new hammer

Redemption

Cool, a bed!

Resurrection

Passenger poem #61

Hath alas

Naught but wicked stine be bled

With what but a clearing of the head

Through the wheels and whiskey glass

Must you spy a spry young lass

Whose motions echo days gone by

When you looked upon a nimble sprite

Who seemed to set the forest alight

Yet, you, oak tree, stood tall and right

Through the seasons of bloom and unbloom

The placid sky, the wily mushroom

The layers of sod, the holy night

The creep of moss, the nesting kite

The lowly worm, the diseased moth

The chickadee held firm aloft

The roaming owl, the naked screed

All of them will stop and heed

A single word from you, tall oak tree

So stand tall and pure

Through day and night

Wild and demure

Hidden from sight

More depends on you

Than you can see

So when you sing

Dark plane poem #61

When the first God made flesh

What did they want?

I don’t know if they started with ours

Or their own

But what was that first touch?

One of satisfaction?

The sense that spongy reality

Was catching up to the macabre

Chaos of their Divine vision?

Perhaps flesh was the first thing

Before steel, before vaporized gases

Before pulsars, before elm trees

Before Rock ‘Em, Sock “em Robots

Thought

Flesh

Being

That was the order of release

Without thought there was no flesh

Without flesh there was no being

Without being we could not enjoy the flesh

Or its rollercoaster ride

Mind is numb poem #3

Andante

         I meander through Target

Like a little lost vole

Whatever that is

Allegro

In a mad dash

I grab the wicking socks

I grab the half and half

I grab the Nate Berkus hourglass

I am so busy and important

Lento

I’m so depressed

How come I have to feed

This withered body week

After week

After fucking week

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