I Saw a Hawk With a Broken Wing and Everyone Was Staring (another draft (pending review))

I’ve read the things you’ve written,

not to say I don’t like them,

just not what I usually read.

I ate 3 eggs for breakfast,

pie,

potatoes,

green beans,

12 oz steak twice in 12 hours.

and not to say I know what I’m doing,

but I’m finding I’m capable at quite a few things.

Gonna try and make it to San Diego in two years,

get on that house boat and float around a while.

Some say money is trouble,

do things to help others –

I only think of myself.

Save another hundred,

pay some loans ,

do what I want.

I use to read these poems.

I use to when I was 14,

give or take,

short syllables,

lots of punctuation,

real emotion.

I use to think someday things would just go as planned,

I use to plan,

I use to plan to much.

I use to write everyday,

Now I’m not even writing.

Just thinking,

penning,

prose,

improper,

Unimportant.

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The Church Bell Hit The Wrong Note

I woke up and laid in bed,

writing in my head.

Sentences explaining love made and love lost,

girls who I knew and have forgotten and

explanations for the reasons I do the things I do,

(and the things I do not do anymore).

I woke and walked downstairs to get coffee and

to further expand the ideas in my head.

I had a smoke and the writings began to leave my head.

The ideas explaining my generation –

what I at least thought I knew of my generation.

I thought harder.

I remembered a girl who had thin lips and another who

had dark hair and thin hips.

I remember a kid who lit my shoes on fire and

a kid who’s eye I hit with a black walnut.

I showered and forgot more.

I grabbed my pad and headed to the library to try and

get these ideas out before they left.

and the church bell rang,

and the church bell hit the wrong note.

and I forgot.

Tiger

prose or poems.

o’holy find love!

move toward a goal.

what was that she said?

stop now.

maybe not.

continue.

rejoice.

drugs. drugs. drugs.

stop now.

what did I say to you?

I miss the mother and son who sat behind me, my seatmate, the comfort.

No one makes noise from Roc to Cuse. The Lady who took my seat eats

crackers quietly and rubs her finger tips in the aisle. She flips vanity fair reading

the ads and plows another cracker into her beaked face.

15 minutes till noon, when I’ll allow myself to start drinking the booze I brought along in my bag.

9-10 more hours until Boston. I bought the ticket, I’ll take the ride.

she refuses to

hold conversation. I hope

they sell bottled wine.

All stops went quick, hoping to get into Boston early. Slept from Albany to  Schenectady.

Too many hits of tequila in the bathroom. Just left Springfield, headed toward Wooster.

Had noodles and coffee to burn off some liquor. Both were terrible.

Dinner lady, forty something, black and from Chicago.

Hope to find a sandwich shop in Portsmouth and a good coffee and maybe flowers.

I want time to sit and enjoy a Marlboro.

Drive North on 95, Over the Merrimack, Leaving Newburyport. Watch All The Steel Ships Float.

I’m not exceptionally old,

but I feel like I’ve met all the types

of people there are to meet.

I sit in this training room and

look around at all these faces

I’ve seen before. There’s the loud Italian

girl, she has so much to say, the young wanna-be druggie boy

(oh he’s just so mysterious), a mother beyond

her prime, an elder who should just retire,

a man roaring about his joyous divorce,

two gossipers at my table – trying to figure out

why I didn’t talk for the first week but now choose to

ask and prod at topics less discussed (I might be at this job

longer than I hoped), a girl with a pinched nose whose mother

never yelled at her, another with tattoos and opinions because

she “sometimes goes out for drinks with friends” and other times

makes comments just to look out the corner of her eye to see if

anyone still cares, and of course someone gives her that attention she craves,

there’s a man with a bald head, quite but pretentious, another with military boots

who drives his motorcycle into work and talks about

how he was a barber, one trainer loud and old and

counting the minutes until her smoke break,

another loud and young, who “hates having the serious talks,

but they have to be had,” and a little queer human resources

man who doesn’t come around much, an old mail room man,

who I’ve never heard spoke, a security guard who focused too much on what

you see above the desk line, and all

their doubles and triples, and me – watching and biding my time.

—————————————-

Old trees and iron,

Take me where you took them all,

I’ll breathe in and love.

I’ll sleep tonight and wake to her serious morning face of deep, blonde haired concentration

“dropping words like bombs,” that’s a classic cliche,

no, we’re tying meaning to verbs and forgetting

structure.

 

prose works best in conversation,

spontaneous if under the right influence.

the last thing on my to-do list was “write”,

the five things above it were “find a job”.

 

He’d say things like “groovy” and make me tell him what I’ve been up to

when all I wanted to know was the things he’d done in his life.

I saw him once in a suit, and he told me it would be the only time.

about 6’2″, or so, dark short hair, quick on the go but carefully slow,

I think of stopping over every time I pass his home.

 

I left for a day but came back the next morning,

a futon wasn’t going to cut it.

 

one step at a time, bud.

 

I know a girl who’ll travel 400 miles to see me,

and I’ve done the same. who told me I was her best friend,

and I’m beginning to think the same. She said to me once,

“you can stay home and write all day and I’ll go to work, that’ll

work just fine.” But I guess that’s the thing

with myth – you never know when it’s true.

 

I started this bit two years ago,

I’ll try again in another two.

Excerpt from journal – Ending trip from Newark to Buffalo

Seeing a clouds shadow from the ground compared to a clouds shadow from the sky are two vastly different things.

I wonder if Kerouac would have flown more if he had the chance.

Probably not,

McCandless didn’t.

Everyone needs to love something,

or at least be loved.

 

I meant to write this before –

I have trouble writing when asked to write,

or even when I want to write.

It’s something that just comes,

like rain,

when the  day before I had planned for sun.

o’holy (a work in progress, of which there are many (continued/continuing))

———-

11/07/12

———-

Days to come, of which are many

I have seen your lies, of which are many.

I have smelt your desserts,

temping on the sill,

and have seen your thighs,

tempting and soft.

and Americas heart was wept with the loss of your s0ns, of which are many.

and everyone I know, their heart weeps with the ever growing emptiness of their bag,

once full and now balled up and placed aside, and of which there are many.

I climbed the hills of small towns and found the left overs of past lives,

walked the streets of the cities and stepped over the left overs of past lives,

swam the waters of the East and had the dreams of the West,

of which there were many.

———-

———-

and if I’ve seen hate, it was of many

and although it may not have outweighed love,

it was easier.

I’ve walked the road less traveled,

hand in hand with those who

look for roads less traveled.

and travel roads less traveled.

and I decided it was not the road less traveled.

and in fact there is no road less traveled.

there are only roads which we travel.

Kerouac wasn’t wanting to be a bum, of which there were many,

hand in hand, being bums with us all,

not being.

Exposing short truths and long lies,

expecting to find Eden,

all gated and pretty.

With Eve,

all gated and pretty.

Expecting our good might outweigh our wrong,

of which there is so many.

Truthfully.

Soulfully.

Sullenly.

Screaming.

We’ll never understand why He forgave us,

but only that his forgiveness came at no small price,

but as:

“Buy now,

limited time only.”

Yet we were all forgiven,

and equally forgotten.

as everyone moves on and tries to remember what they have forgotten.