Sunday, May 15, 2011

good evening captain... good evening son... just another muleskinner blues...

So the snow peas are ripening on the vine, sweet and juicy freshly harvested
the zucchini are coming up as are my carrots
as for myself, these things are slipping out of my mind as fast as I can.
I'll take the easy way out tonight and post another poem.
Some Muskrat ramblings and other goodies to come soon I promise...

Here are two new ones from my new house and giving due to my garden.
Chasing away the lonelys with poems and digging in the dirt...



There is an almost full moon
Stuck in the dead limbs above the backyard
Chuck Berry’s singing rock and roll music
Baking powder biscuits warming in the oven
There’s a whiskey sour on the kitchen table
Nothing has grown out the back screen door
That doesn’t exist in small patches and
Different shades of tan and light browns

The almost full moon is staring down at my watered garden
In a backyard where nothing green has grown in years
Fresh tilled dirt, turned with a pick ax
Mixed with coffee grounds and bat guano
Freshly watered
The smell of life and soil and fertilizer on three-year-old blue jeans

There is a goat head stuck in my ring finger
Marrying me to the back yard and an unspoken lease
An agreement signed with toil between me and dirt
A lease signed in harvests and metallic watering cans
Obligations to roots and worms and wilting brussell sprouts.



untitled  (with apologies to ann struthers who always said that untitled poems were a sign of laziness; sorry i'm feeling lazy these days)

I wake early now
to wash other people’s dishes
from last night’s midnight dinner
leave the drying rack to be emptied
later in the afternoon and another
load of dishes to fill their place.
Needs listed in scraps of paper on the refrigerator-
potting soil
Larger gloves,
row separators for snow peas
More orange juice,
sweet and sour
And for someone to crawl into bed with
Or out from in the morning
before I wash the dishes
Thirty and alone and working a coffee shop job
I guess they are right when they say
Men grow up later in life, I guess I never got the memo
And forgot how to grow old gracefully
Or in the arms of any one else
So I button my shirt, click off the bedroom light
Think about the morning crossword
And wake alone early with the sun
Accepting of my lot in life.


once again these are rough drafts... They'll get better as time goes on


dig your fingers in the dirt in the morning when the soil is cold and damp and human like...  
Touch me make me feel human


Solidarity Forever... Work hard... Be safe... Ride Free... 

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