Distortion

Distortion

It rained last night,

perforating all my

concentration

on anything except

the drip-patter

calling from the dark windows under

wood shingles.

Outside, through the screen door

and tangle

of tree branches propagating across

the street,

the parking lot at night

sieves shapes through itself

with the bright distortion

of neon strips.

The restaurant that

serves reflection

blurs its bricks

into the black wet

asphalt under yellow streetlamp glow.

Schoolbuses

I saw it built,

the cowboys splicing the corral's

gray wooden fence posts into the landscape,

grunting in the ecstatic

grit of labor.

They forced milling cows through

the ramp

one

by

one

to be branded,

all of them in the same place

with the same pain.

I saw the corral razed.

In its place they built red brick houses.

At the entrance to the old ramp,

where the cows blew and blustered in some small

suggestion of agony,

a yellow schoolbus stopped,

paint slightly rusted off.

And I saw children

pack themselves in,

taken

to the same place

with the same purpose.

Writing Late, No Coffee

Writing late, no coffee

Scatter thoughts around you,

plucking them out of the air

into your mind.

Scatter the notebooks,

textbooks,

pages of half-eaten ideas

and bare words.

Strike a match,

then

sieve through the ashes,

but blow them back

in the face of Fate,

transient and ineffable

as decay;

slim bursts of inspiration

meeting death best foot forward

again

and again.

Break everything.

Scatter your life,

blow it in the air in words,

Erasure never saves,

so re-create, unjumble

if you dare

where words wore thin

before, and

don't despair.