Poems for Nic.

The sun is shining around some clouds I have done all my chores I have finished creative projects I feel like I can rest I feel like I have friends I know who they are I have prospects on the horizon I can see the beginnings and the endings of them I have had a good supper My pets are healthy My wife will be home soon It is the summer time I am my summer self I have let go of the shadow I do not remember its name I am not worried I know that people care

There is no moon to drag this tide back Just space now where water waved once What is a synonym for friendship? Is this still poetry?

I live past the end of the world it's not my fantasy if I'm not there Most everyone else is gone but the weather is nice Sometimes that's about as far as I get A cool breeze and a little alone time with nothing to do I don't know why I feel like The world would have to be over To experience those three things

Headlights on a two lane highway Strip mall in the distance While California is out there trying to be more California a possum hisses from the berm at your speeding station wagon A streetlight an airplane Then a star way out there and the quiet the drone of the peepers in the interlude between cars The night bugs still call You do not speak their language but they are not talking about you

Someone once told me A poem I wrote meant something to them They quoted part of it I knew it It was from a long time ago They had read it then Remembered it now Written hastily as a half joke And etched forever between us It could have been any poem It validated every poem I had ever written You can like any part of me It is almost like liking all of me

Car exhaust ghosts and the empty lots they haunt the gravel settled and the engine revving in the expanding distance Little note down there in the broken concrete and the weeds peeking it's a four item shopping list Soap (hand) Peanut m+ms cups for Friday bread essential for one woman just for today and only poetry after that

It was born of a feeling of resentment of media drawn from the collective soup of human emotion A red hot flame held against the bundle of wires to melt away the insulation and scorch the copper inside To rage against the quiet placation of practice and process Like somehow that became a thing that was not the point itself And here I still have a product but with all of the light of all my experience poured into it Do not press randomize on your experience! Do not allow an algorithm to continue to tell you the things you will like because it knows you liked the things it thought you would like Grow not into a single thread but spread Like a tree Branches and roots in all directions but still itself Growing toward the sun and into the earth simultaneously in all its own directions

The car you drive still looks like the car you drive bright and shining in early winter sunlight but it is not the car you drive because of some kind of crack indiscernible from outside but there as you look for it it might go for more miles but you can't know how many until the last moment has come and it would be parked there on the highway in the parking lot far far away so it is the car you drove parked here for now

You looked up to the sky  Light blue but a crisp autumn breeze  Flows through it The trees  Still on fire  in fall's colors A leaf caught in the wind Pried from the branch to float slowly down earthward You open your mouth Some primitive impulse Left from the ancestors You open your mouth and catch it You crunch it It's a mistake

The candle in the pumpkin Lit during the daylight hours almost invisible in the noon sun and known only to the lighter Who has lit it why? For the vibe? And as the day fades So does the candle to wet wax that seeps down into the pumpkin's flesh until the small metal circle appears and the flame dwindles the street lights flick on to relieve the sun the candle gone just before its moment of glory

The ashes of the fire dwindle glowing in time with the wind the soft swish of the air and the crackle of the old ashes blend and the flare of the flame as each cool ranch dorito is tossed in with ceremony but just to watch the chip glow and fold in the heat and fuel the fire for a moment longer before it is burned to nothing the sweet scent of junk food lingers for a moment  in the evening air and then is carried away into the night.

Lost shoe on the highway How did you get there off the foot and onto the shoulder An accidental slip or tossed as a prank And where is your twin is she still kept just in case like they might come back for you or is she a mile down the road discarded too because without the other  what good is one shoe?

Bug on the grass What's she doing down there How big does that grass look When she looks at it Just hanging out on the underside Does she feel the gravity Like we do Or is it all the same She just grips on the blade And then looks straight ahead And if she falls Flaps her wings And flies away

All cars on this road Go the same way They go to to work to home to somewhere into the sky painted these colors by nature's own paintbrush in sea glass and tangerine and mauve Colors that only go together in the chaos of the morning because they are together there in the east to welcome the day

The rain draws out a smell from the earth each drop splashing dust wrested from the surface to float up into the air drawn into us  a reminder  of the normal things  we are just far enough to never notice

Take your sandwich and all the things you fill it with it's layers of flavor if you think about it you just eat it from the side and get a little of all of it in every bite Now take that chop it all up so everything is  just about the same size it's a salad now you just kind of eat it however you want

There are things you get to hold to wrap yourself around You get to keep them They may reach out wrap their delicate tendrils around you and hold you back You may grow together and flourish bloom More than either of you were Individually