S.B.T. 430

wild possums fight

in the middle of the night

dogwood spines tingle and shake

the grasses bend, the stars spin

shrieks splatter the stillness
sharp pellets

and echoing howls

“did you hear them?” my neighbor asks in the morning,

new shadows made in the days sunlight

patch a pattern over his face

 like a melody

in a minor key

the furies subside, leaving
a wordless question

a silent answer

young helen keller 

played by Patty Duke

throwing food screaming

pounding the table

then one day a word

penetrates the dark

giving a form where only

infinite puzzlement came before

natural developments

ferns and fibonaccios

and the skeining of

silk threads

S.B.T. 429

poem off the grid

fie   it says

  scope

and 

lo gong\\\\\ \ \ \

“to heap 31”

diagonal 

lee

yes

vaguely skennedy

sh…fife

no pie

silly con valet 

epic 

market 

figure

love lies 

haute tell in laos

to the left

nothing else 

but a fffew lonely F’s

stranded

and this guy 

lenny rockbotham

whisky autopilot

shiny new jag

S.B.T. 428

Ned Rorem




_________**_________ in a tunnel - a natural state - if i keep walking at least i get onward. it was constructed for empaths to be able to get around town without a barrage. for air there are 3 holes every 3 1/2 feet, arched over the headway. enough natural light comes through to give it a copper glow. chiaroscuro otherwise. walking along from the park to C’est La Vie cafe for french roast thinking this isnt truly a great place even if it’s less dangerous. i mean, you’re walking along the tunnel and some of the random thoughts that find their way through those holes are doozies. i mean they're concentrated, they hitcha like a paint ball. just when i thought, ah finally i’m free. rule: freedom respite required but i’d rather not go on the surface, up there i’d be waiting at the crosswalk, waving down a cab, watching bags swaying. stormy. but i do miss noticing the shapes of things. i mean there is only one shape down here: tubular. it’s big enough for a motor scooter but they have to be electric according to regulation, people do ride bikes but it’s kind of rude the way they do it, sneaking up, zooming past, laughing too much. a walkers nightmare. yes empaths can be rude. it’s natural under the circumstances.

S.B.T. 427

this “young” man, his posture centered around a thick cylindrical neck, which he thrusts forward like a dog would, offering the jugular to one he trusts, is a soul after all, seeing things his, or it’s way (as it is possible that the core has no duplicities) and you can tell by the glint of his eye that he is onto something BIG. that is, he KNOWS it, he FEELS it, it is his THING. bless him in all his savvy coolness. Max Wolf.

S.B.T. 426

cowboy soul

the lasso is His will, the bronco is yours
if the two come together you have a fine horse

     

tom johnson's pigs

S.B.T. 425

Elliott Smith - 
I don't think I'm ever gonna figure it out 


   

S.B.T. 424

character study

he knows something. he went after the objective, completed the tests, got the papers and procured the credentials. then he taught in a handful of community colleges, all the while an outsider, someone who didn’t belong in that arena, by all ordinary accounts he should have been in a liberal left wing east coast high brow university. he was always challenging something, authority mainly, in all it’s endless forms conjured by thinkers over millennia, the field literally littered with ponderable points. it usually took less than a week each semester before he started getting the calls from the main office to appear before the board of directors, to answer charges on one or another kind of inappropriate speech action or appearance. he went willingly, stood before them unabashed, passionately arguing and presenting a line of logic they could not refute, and would walk away precariously victorious, until the next time.

so after a number of years of meaningfully toppling small town mentalities and upsetting status quo, he took a break - he put the doctoral degree in his back pocket, and spent a few seasons hiking the mountain trails with his trusty companions, a cockney-voiced jack russell named Obie, and Lily, the sweet young flower of his love.

who was coughing, and didn’t look right but who was awestruck just the same not having imagined the purple mountain majesties being so real, and inspired out of a long spell of inertia, started writing sci-fi poetry, and just having so much shit to attend to, kept busy. at times his vantage point was towering over her head but her small face looking up, asking him a wide-eyed question, he simply could not resist.

i hadn’t considered the relative depth of conviction each soul possesses when it comes to making life’s tricky decisions. those made on the spot when you don’t own any wisdom or have the benefit of any advance notice. a toss of the dice really made with outlandish faith and innocent ignorance. i give you this: that it is written. characters in a book no one owns up to authoring so it could be that life on earth is actually a pleiadian puppet show

in a velvet-curtained box theatre made of laminated stardust.

degrees do not make experts but they do make a point