without a true admission of guilt.

that strange feeling that comes along this time
haunting with the white and dark meats of things that fill a room
with many good smells as they roast closer to god and a
ceramic or decorative plate.

and they wait.

to be introduced to the mashed potatoes that alex made
with so much butter and kale and garlic
and the cranberries that have bubbled into paste
and want to bond it all to the looser, more lovely and
candied sweet
innocent potato. these have clementine sections in them.


later on i am sick.
my insides have decided they will bleed and bleed
and rasputin is no where to telegram a cure
so i take to the bed. hello bed and warmth. hello
relapse into eye flutters and the shutter of programming to
commercial.

no.no. leave this on. i say. it does not matter and is
easy to sleep to and wake up into
because it is eventually plotless and circularly structured for the
other overstuffed turkey brains.

except i am nauseous. if you know anything about anything
you know i kept it down until i slept with someone holding my hand.

better feeling the next day. until i felt the obligations coat my throat.
i've only just recovered from spitting up blood.
i can sit all night in the dark with a bunch of people and say things
that we won't remember. why is this what people want? there is no
other way to do things i guess.

i am sick of my job but not really
and sick of forced learning but not completely
and sick of you saying
here is where i live
here is where i live

because we all live right here

and as long as you don't get what is allowing you to breathe out such
slender sentences
i will remain going back to the bed with the hand to hold.

i don't think that selfishness is routine. i think it is the disrespecting of anothers' as inferior.
we are all so guilty
guilty.

sometimes there is not enough substance to fill us and the gruel
can never educate the palate of one who has tasted.

i am so happy when some of my senses stop and only and couple work in hyper-drive.
i am so happy when i can just see
or feel warm on my knees.
really i just always want to simplify everthing and
it's fucking impossible.

Who knows.

I'm convinced that my words are sign language and that what I'm hearing is really the wind
and the waves are actually a hurricane of communication.
Who knew?

Steinbeck. (Kino knew.)
Thoreau. He knew the gentle solace that lead to divinity.
Melville knew. He is buried close by.
E.B. White knew. He watched sparrows carry ribbons in their beaks.
Walt Whitman knew. He knew for himself and for us. He knew us.
Elizabeth Bishop knew. The blue eye of that fish.
Donna Tartt knew. She doesn't even live in New England.

I don't know about D.H. Lawrence. That's grey.

O'keefe knew. Her insides were outside and everything flowered once she met the desert and got out of the green that plagues the northeast.
Paul Muldoon knows.
Sherman Alexie knows.
They know themselves and what they are supposed to feel and their sense of heritage. Their respected and respective lands that have tore them apart and built them up.

Bukowski didn't know shit. I think we enjoy (?) his dry rot and wisdom teeth that were never pulled.

Billy Collins knows.
Stanley Kunitz did too.
Marie Howe felt it some.
Sharon Olds didn't know there was anything to know.

Galway Kinnell knew. I never knew about him until recently.
Thanks be to bear.

(Read it: The Bear: http://staff.psc.edu/schneide/Kinnell-TheBear.html)