Hapax Legomena

The world is flat and brown and simple.

I get caught up in would have and has beens
Teaching speed to the cars on the interstate
Intricacies and intimacies of human understanding
Hurtling by at break-neck pace
Like a table-top model of the universe.
The world is flat and brown and simple.

Meaning is written in the webs of spiders
Hidden in the mailbox,
Spelled out in cane trails,
Planted, grown and harvested in a cyclical monotony
Of children and age and green tomatoes.
The world is flat and brown and simple.

I have seen secrets in an unending sky
Reduced to an interpretation
Of bright blue and clouds
Hanging above the land like a tormenting god of cotton.
The world is flat and brown and simple.

This road winds but does not end
Turns and twists, morphs and evolves,
But is the same.
The world is flat and brown and simple.

my mind,
it thinks in rhythms and double times.
there is a beat in my head
beyond my heart.
soft and easy doubt.
such silence in this residence.
I grow sloppy for want of reason.
how is it that uncertainties
so mellow at first
can creep upon us in
a universe with no want of distraction?
when I know there is no echo
that can reflect back to me
what I want to hear most from my own lips.
at the edge again of a vast and empty chasm.
where my head will wonder, I know not.

on family.

when all around me is without form,
there is a jaded peak on which to toil.
when honor and respect seem long dead virtues,
I may always find a society
where they are demanded.
when the weak are easy to leave behind
and I begin to feel more than merely capable,
there is a constant on which to dash my hopes.

all else seems strange,
like stepping into a cave and seeing only
the prehistoric animals which haunt those places.
when words have abandoned and failures mount
like snowflakes on a drift.
love stomps giantly,
stumps gallantly.
I am uncertain but content.

Motion

lithe and graceful.
soft and comforting.
move like a woman,
always the top priority.

pressing decisions flood my mind.
when
when every thought seems cloudy,
what do I know except
move like a woman?

there are cosmic problems.
physics. mathematics.
millions of questions I can't answer,
but the best,
the only strategy I can account for,
is the ideas,
the presence of a woman.

always perfection.
always knowledge.
how can I solve the orbit of the planets,
when I know nothing of motion but to
move like a woman?

Campus

Tingling, heart-racing feeling
A newborn calf unfurling its legs
Wobbling, rocking from side-to-side
Jolting forward still covered in
Birthing slime and straw

I am alone
Knees skinned, car dinged, pocket empty
This is deep space
Thick wilderness untamed by my people

Home is a distant memory
Of sweltering midwives' rooms
And deep mountain wombs

My legs are long puppy spindles
My hands soft lamb skin
My brain is full of mush
My ear of lullabies

The surface of the world is paved and icy
All that fills me is green
Tree and leaf and stagnate brook
I am alone, and the silence brings fear.

create.

there are evenings, soft and smooth
that speak to a will inside
create. build. think. prosper.
these are half-truths
cushioned in soft encouragement
what you are will bloom to the surface
if only you allow nothing but spring
to seed in your mind

then there are glorious nights
coarse and vulgar. rough and ready.
nights of darkness and fear
where there is a raw and bubbling urge to
procrastinate. lie. destroy. fail.
perfect and real failure.

my father told me once
once, when speaking was in season,
that I was a far cry from failure,
yet I have been living on its front stoop

recession has hit dreams the hardest.
I think, we feel, you know.
create.

Dirt

I don't know God personally
Let me quantify, qualify, categorize
That statement

There are times
Seconds, minutes, years flying by
When a bird, imagine a bird
Any bird
Flutters its feathers
Ruffles its wings
Now pause and zoom
There is a John Hancock there
A beautiful artist's signature
In the corner

Imagine now that bird captured
Cage, photograph
Tradition, institution
Who cares what the bars are?
Recreation, falsification
A pathetic forgery of the signature
We all know is hidden somewhere
Somewhere we have forgotten
No map, No "x,"
No dirt brown tour guide with papaya and machete

A bird is flying in the jungle
The answer tied to its smallest feather

If
If that feather, that answer
Is hastily scribbled
Is luxuriously scrawled
Across both souls and dirt
Mind and matter

And I know dirt and its alter egos
Grime, dust, sin
Then, I must know the soul

The whole universe pulses
As we slowly try to
Thaw
Our brains in truth
Like stepping from a cold room
Into sunlight

I have fallen in love with the
Mysterious signer

Hot Tamales

There were two tamales
boiling in the pot on the stove.
Leathery brown hands had
carefully wrapped
their grainy skin
in pure white paper
and tied them about the waist.

I remember slow pleasure
bubbling beneath my surface,
a simmer,
an hourglass form
being cooked to perfection.

There are some things
a lady must not do.

My grandmother hated
those sultry summer days.

I remember young nights
of devouring the morsels
made just for me,
staining their bodies with
sinful chili.

There are times
when all the world is divided
by that piece of twine
my grandmother tied about
their waists
split cleanly down
crown and foot,
parted around the middle.

I remember the soft
murmuring of the water
as it caressed-
the lunch to readiness.
Carefully, carefully.
So often it is easy
to separate the fragile exterior
from its core
and ruin the whole.

There is no regret.