Dull-Head

Last night a few falling leaves;
We sat outside watching the wind whip around and
blow everything apart.

I noticed that night fell early now.
Darkness found its way home, like sailors lost at sea
finally finding the land they longed for. It pulls its ship
into port and cries “Thank Ye God, I am home."

The light is gone now.

We wailed with the wind and hoped for a downpour of rain to wash our sins away.

What is in our blood and what is our blood on?
What came first the chicken or the DNA strand?

What sounds slipped in as we prayed?

What sounds, silent as pickpockets slipping trained hands
into our jeans and whisking away our identity?

What silent sounds never heard
hurried in our heads then flew away?

In distance, a group of men stand before us.
They stare down with stern faces that never laugh.
In their hands they hold heavy books, the covers caked with dust.

They write our names in their leather bound
books and close the covers.

The case is closed and we don't even know
what the son of bitches wrote.

Was it the banker or the
baker that first saw right through us?

Who was it that bought us pound by pound,
ounce by ounce?

We find a bottle of brandy and toast the afternoon bowel movement;
the mundane now a case for celebration.

Elliot was wrong, it is June that is cruel,
the warm sun, lovers in bloom.

God bring winter and cover us all in a
cold blanket.

They will find us a hundred years from now
captured in ice, our faces frozen
in a dull gaze.

Now shut the hell up
and turn the T.V. on.

Update on my first book

I have been asked for an update on my book. Okay. I set a goal of a 50,000 word novel by May, 2006. (first draft) Assuming that is by the end of may 2006 that makes the final day May 31, 2006. Okay. From Jan first to may 31 is: 151 days. That works out to 331.12582 words a day. I will round up and call it 332 words a day (so that is 50,132 words. Whoop! Big difference).


Therefore, by today, January. 24, 2006 I should have around 7,968 words.

How close am I?

So far I am on word one. So I am -7,967 words so far. Way to go! (unless you count the poetry I wrote and there is the serious possibility that my novel may actually end up as a poetry chapbook.)

In any case I have been WAY lagging!
Man, I should have lied and said “oh, it is coming along nicely!” Or maybe I should have said “A muffin. What I really need is a muffin.”

Happy birthday to me!

Jigsaw Pie

Tumbling out, warm oven,
cold linoleum floor.
Steam softly leaps out.
Pulled out of the comfortable
heated oven into the cold kitchen

Jigsaw Pie

Father and sister at the table, wait
to tear in, eyes filled with hunger.
Sick of banana nut cream, key lime,
cherry. Something new to devour.

Jigsaw Pie

Mother’s mittens comfort the freshnew pie,
float it past sterile white
sink, secure and snug in her
soft blue safety net.

Jigsaw Pie

Flying past kitchen, Mother’s arms unfold,
dinning-room leers, artificial,unknown.
Bright cold steel slices
piece by piece until its gone.

Jigsaw Pie

Out of the kitchen, life with the border pieces
missing. Fragmented, incomplete, scattered.
You lay bleeding sweetly on the plate,
waiting for the last bite, the last nibble.

Jigsaw Pie

Outside the window
rain washes away the mud
while you are washed away
with a glass of nonfat milk.

We all Float down here

Full of liar's hot breath,
I swell up, fly away.
You stab me with the truth
I crash back to the ground.

I cannot fly again
Truth logged inside of me
I cannot fly again
Too heavy to take off.

“keep your mind on the road,”
You always would say.
“Heaven's for pretenders,
And hell's beneath your shoes”

I dreamed your head
popped like a leaky
balloon spraying out all
over the stony ground.

Full of liar's hot breath,
I swell up, fly away.
You stab me with the truth,
I crash back to the ground.

Hazed

We listened to records all night long
scratching the needle back so fast
they started to skip after two spins.

We smoked pot and drank beer;
lounged on our couches
all weekend long.

We chuckled at each others jokes,
predicated politics. We'd hate the war
if it was still going on.
We knew it all, seen it all.
Never saw the falling sky
Until it crashed in our heads.

We awoke in the ninety's as if from
Comas. Wondered how we had gotten
here. Whose damn Mini-Van is this?

Late to pick up our sons from football practice
we race across town. Later that night we catch our kids
hiding in the basement with friends,
getting high. We hear “American Idiot” scream through
the stereo and we pray for real music.

We tell them “Drugs are junk,” “Just say 'No' “
We ground them for weeks at time.
If we can't float through a night of Zeppelin or open
the doors of our minds with Jim,
then to hell with them. We ain't going to let
these slackers slide.

We make them do math homework while we
fill in our Dockers with a third slice of cake and listen to
“machine head” to ease the pain.
We pop some Valiums to help us sleep,
couple of beers to calm us down.
Damn kids.

1-02-05

For the new year I have set the goal of writting a book. I have set a time line of four months from now to finish the first draft. I am not saying I will write the Great American Novel (whatever that is). I am not even saying it is going to be a good book. Hell, it maybe unreadable! All I am saying is it will be a book. I have goal for the book's length at 50,000 words. How did I come up with that length? I pulled it outta my butt. Well. The first draft will be done in May. I figured that I have to start somewhere and that although my first book is bound to be crap I cannot move onto the next book until I have completed the first one.

Genre? Haven't decided. Plot? Yeah, right. Plan? Only to write at least two pages a day. Characters? HA!

Let the madnes begin!

Mike