Easy Misses (27/30)

down the gravelway
the bus passes two seconds too early
and late for a meetup in Fremont (phinney, really,
I always make that distinction now) before
a show that starts late, thankfully
but the meet and greet is canceled
and that's the most important part.

this is all just throughout the course of the day.
there are also the submission deadlines, respond-to-dates,
job-postings, flirtation windows, the time
when you linger just longer over a friendly goodbye.

sometimes, you hit. sometimes, I just make the last
train. but the arbitrarity of it all makes it feel
like throwing darts, blindfolded, at a spinning target.
the detonators next to the bullseye. don't miss.

The Hard Life of the Calloused Fingers

the seventies-style lampshade, dented in three
ascending spots is the thin shield between his life
as a teacher and life as a writer. starting a poem he
swivels to the deepest dent, almost, almost a rip
and takes a swig from the engraved flask he received
post-graduating, a ritual more than anything, this
is the same rum from two weeks ago. but he considers
"poets are thirsty creatures" for the next title
of a book, essay, something. trolls the new medias
for new medium, reads a story about depreciating
values of degrees and vice versa.

circle-paces his porch, perking ears for neighborhood gunshots.
haven't been in years. one of students asked him
what life was like in the olden days, squeezing childish
truth-telling into teenage dickishness, but professionalism
forbids one from getting feelings hurt.

back inside. the rum remains stubbornly in the flask,
he doesn't reach for it. tosses a stress ball
at the ceiling; it only ever when things are breaking,
what happened to the last lamp, but he saved the shade.
forty minutes later, a finished product on his screen,
exhausted but not sleepy, sober but fuzzy-visioned,
the slow trot of some forgotten reference winces
through his backbrain--

as long as standards keep dropping. . .it says,
but doesn't finish the sentence.

3 Stabs at Something Devotional

3 Stabs at Something Devotional

1.
Easter best, spilling out of aisles into standing room,
arm-raising room, huge hugs and decorative hats.

The pastor looks extra sharp. The choir has extra soul.
The sun affirms our open curtains, congregation swelling

in warmth, enthusiasm, ties. All the common distractions remain,
when special music performs an original song in starched

whites, the repetitive end-rhymes with "Jesus"
get really silly really quickly, at least in my head.

2.
Clouds break over Camano, Eagles wingspanning
through inspirational-poster sunscapes. If you could see these
trees, these-- the evergreens' warm stoicism, the cliffsedge chapel,
the quiet, the quiet
the quiet.

3.
It takes so long to get to work.
Between the morning's panic,
arrival's realization that all attempts
at buttoned proffessionalism
are futile,

is the cold trot up to the corner
breathing in my street, scuffing
gravel, taking my place to wait

between book-clutching kids
off to school and old men in
red-trimmed fedoras, tsking at their
watches but relaxed;

it'll come.

Our Favorite Radio Station (22/30)

By bits and pieces the bendy bus chunked and disintegrated down
into a small, two-door enter-and-exit bus, the whole back
passengership darting backwards down the highway, like cereal falling
back into the box, but we kept driving. The winds tore the roof off
the bus and the doors, too, so we turned up the radio so we could
hear the song. It was a favorite. I was driving and prefer music
to conversation with most humans and now we were in a mini van;
probably some schrapnel that stuck, and all the seats with
the last of the passengers had bounced down the road
like soccer balls down a hill and the sound was loud and bright
but the song wasn't quite as good.

"I can't believe what--"

"Man. That wasn't a party, that was a--"

"Lets stop for a milkshake. The whole thing has made me hungry for rasberry."

We rolled, bits of wet slapping our faces through the windshield-craters and I have to keep shaking bits of what seems like milk? cream? cottage cheese? out of my eyes, steady the wheel with both hands so the wind doesn't take us and we pass it, overturned Dairigold truck spewing it's wares like pressurized gas.

"It's disturbing how quick that's coming out."

We roll over a deer and with two quick jolts we're in a station wagon. We've passed through two bale-wire strip mall towns and now the clouds are purple. The mini-van, the bus and the party? was it? seem so far back. The radio screes like rubbing styrofoam and soon fuzzes out.

"This far north, our favorite station is no longer an option."

"This far north, most things are no longer options."

A Passionate Tome of Perpetually Increasing Relevance

or Arguably the Third Best Thing is Sunday Dresses

In the end, it doesn't really matter what Earl Sweatshirt is doing.
What matters is the idea of Earl Sweatshirt, and that he's done something so
awesome, so subversive, that at sixteen he is a martyr for a cause, like
the West Memphis Three-in-one, a derangedly real manifestation of outsider art, that
he is someone to "Free." This is kind of a healthy rallying point, I suppose,
that get-free urge, no matter, almost whom (give us barabbas!) you're opting to free;
most other high volume chants start with "fuck" or "destroy" or at least "give us". .
see above.
but probably what matters (whether or not Young Master Sweatshirt will ever
find justice) is that, in some small way, there is an Earl Sweatshirt inside all of us,
a young, smart, idiot being lectured at a youth camp in Samoa about why making
hit singles about raping people or eating their sandwiches or whatever
isn't cool.
In this sort of climate, calling you baby, a term I've always thought was sorta creepy
or at least weird, seems not so bad. Almost Heroic, even. There is a baby inside
everyone, not in a cannibal way, but in the way that potentially, we are all someone's
baby, or could be, if we could only lose weight or get muscles or knew how
to dance dances from tropical climate. It is this thought that makes
this other thought-- that when he returns Sweatshirt will be born-again and they'll change
their name to God Future (skaleluia!)like so many of us, but
ultimately (baby)
there is a war going on, which is like saying that there is a sky above
and a ground below in terms of novelty but why not be reminded
and baby, I guess what I'm really trying to say
is that the best thing about mainstream church culture
is the food, obviously
but the second best thing
clearly are the puns.

Just More Victims of Seattle's Crisi-Proportion Budget Shortfall

the roadside raccoon is starting to stink.
the sidewalk grass unmowed on
this southend arterial, at first
passersby nodded or shook their
heads or took pictures of the
perfectly preserved, taxidermy-ready
fur, just half a block from the corner store
and you don't see that everyday.

now the bits of bone, orange
and black and flies and oh, geez
has something been eating it?

a block and a half down the new
bus stop with clean seats and
black and white photography
is dented and mangled and
shattered by a a swerving
night truck that also took
out most of the fence by the
mexican food store.

a quick repair or replacement
seems unlikely.

Lynnwood Transit Center (17/30)

here, under the shelter, as dusk takes the evergreen tops

framing the confrence center and the edge of a strip mall

serving to define this sprawltown, incorporated 50 years ago,

borders, naming, everything arbitrary, necessitating later

incorporations of further sprawl, farther out, but this is

Snohomish County's first great thumbprint.

Why this sunset, post-hail, post-blood-draw, post-job-interview,

dropping down over moist pavement, seems to drag me with it,

I'm not sure. They happen all the time, sunsets, but the uninvited

reminiscences--

six years old, losing my family in the alderwood mall,

making the journey from Sears to JC Penny near-tears

and the salesgirl giving me a Snickers while i waited

for my dad to trek the distance of the mall--

make for cold company at a transit center in the town my best friend and I,

fifteen years ago searched for case-split abandoned Megadeth CDs on racks

between fishing rods and belt sanders. The town keeps growing, but

never gets any bigger. A man with an excellent mustache whistles,

seemingly knowing something I don't. Another Community Transit

passes, third in a row marked Out of Service.