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An adult male

Soiled and knowing it

Incapable of this life

For now or for good

If I offer no cup of cold water

What is the cost?

Don't look

Down my throat

A dangerous alleyway

Dark with greasy walls

Dripping

Oozing tar

Beats something

Unsavory

If I offer from a chest like this

What is the cost?

Rich

We ought to need

As the poor overflow

Fat

We slowly starve

But the gaunt will feast

Snug

We will shiver

When the naked are clothed

Sheltered

We best fear

For the vulnerable will know True rest

Yet nothing is moved that suffers no touch

So until this distance be bested

All remains unmoved

Unsavory

where sound dies

you will find me there
always at the boundary
right where sound dies

the voice reaches out for me
the tendrils of timbre attempting to call me back
not with words but with tone and pitch

i will feign oblivion and think,
"you don't exist without me"
and then i will shake with fear
knowing that my audaciousness
condemns me

i want to believe it's romantic

No one needs to plant the weeds.

This is a guest post from my friend Kathy Wilson. I enjoyed it so much that I decided you should all read it too. Enjoy.

Grace and I picked raspberries and blueberries at a friends recently. Grace lost interest pretty quickly, more interested in feeding the chicken clover heads and talking to our friend, Casey, who was weeding some of the nearby vegetable gardens. I was a couple gardens over and could hear snippets of Grace's continuous questions and Casey's patient answers.

One of her answers that has stuck with me,

rattling around my mind,

"No one needs to plant the weeds."

I'm sure there is a magical far-away land where the zucchini is weighing down the plants with no one to pick them, juicy tomatoes run amok, various herbs gone wild and fields of carrots feeding herds of rabbit, to say nothing of azaleas, rhododendron, dusty miller and mums. But not here.

Here, we thoughtfully pick seeds from the store while ignoring the half empty seed packet at the back of the junk drawer, carefully cultivate seedlings indoors in April and May as it's still to cold to plant outdoors, prepare fertilized, tilled beds for the fragile growth, covering them at the slightest frost warning, and weed the garden.

Always weeding the garden. Because the weeds will come.

"No one needs to plant the weeds."

And if you want the good stuff, the pretty stuff, the tasty stuff, you have to weed the garden.Unless you like a yard full of Creeping Charlie with some grass thrown in, a flower garden filled with thistle, or a vegetable garden choked with weeds, you have to remove the undesirable, remove the chaff, separate the wheat from the tares.

You can't garden through omission.

"No one needs to plant the weeds,"

but they'll keep showing up anyway.

If you don't' choose to be proactive

the weeds will begin to choke out the growth so carefully cultivated.

"No one needs to plant the weeds."

It's a warning, a charge to be careful,

be diligent, pay attention.

It's a lot like life.

Don't mind me - I'm just weeding out loud.

A Dream of Great Aunt Rae

Last night I had one of those dreams that even after you've been awake for a while you are sure really happened.

I was somewhere dreamish, and I was with my Grandpa, and my Great Aunt Rae. Aunt Rae died years ago, but in my dream she was there. We used to call her the Jelly Bean lady because she always had a bowl of those delicious things ready for my young hands. In the dream she was sick and could barely talk, and I put my hands on her and prayed for peace and comfort. As I prayed she laid her head down face first and peacefully died. My Grandpa and I then began to weep, and I felt connected to him more than I ever have.

I awoke sobbing, and my face was wet with tears.

division minor

I guess things aren't as bad as they used to be,
but now they scare me more.
Things could be a lot worse, but now I understand the how.
I don't see a way out of this. I don't know which way is up.
Down is pretty clear.
It makes him cry. She just sits there and eats a hotdog.
Now they are lining up shoes on the window sill,
like invisible people who go naked but refuse to uncover their feet.
They are lined up and ready to jump.

Cancer Ward

I just finished reading Cancer Ward by AleksandrSolzhenitsyn, and it has moved solidly into my my all time top 5 novels. It blew my socks right off.

Every subject that Alex touches on left me feeling like I understand that subject and humanity a little better. Every page is engaging, and the story is raw and real. I believed this story. I believed all of the characters. I've met some of these characters! He writes about love, lust, politics, socialism, medicine, relationships, death, work, joy, despair, betrayal, luck, fate, and the general sexiness of nurses (ok, that last one is a stretch), and he pulls you into each and every one like a master painter pulls you into the subjects on the canvass. Cancer is a metaphor for death, fate, mortality, and parts of Soviet society, but it is also a metaphor for those intangible seemingly random things that draw people together and force them into close and intimate proximity.

My top five is now, in no particular order:

Cancer Ward - AleksandrSolzhenitsyn,

Peace Like A River - Leif Enger,

My Name is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok,

Till We Have Faces - C.S. Lewis,

The Storm - Frederick Buechner.

I've now read this, Ivan Denesovich, and Gulag by AleksandrSolzhenitsyn. I can't wait to start reading everything else. 9.8/10

The Rush of the Sucker River

My substance is such
That I cannot bear much
Save this short summer rush,
Save this reach down and touch.
Found no worse for the wear,
Though no better; no care.
Cost, the fear of my fare:
Lost, the deer slipping snare.
My new sister and friend,
Forgive, untake my hand.
Let's start walking again
Lest our talking should end.