I can hear the insects walking on my grave

(Sounds like some old Beatnik thing to say)

Any line that meter will start a poem

Like any old crank cause a Model A to

Cough & wheeze & ready-go.

(Honk honk, rattle rattle rattle, crash!, beep-beep)

I ramble thru the ages living other stories

Moving left to right but mostly straight on.

It’s just that everything now looks familiar:

Is there no home I have not occupied?

No wonder at no need to wander

Perhaps it is all in my backyard.

I am, after said is done,

An Alchemist.

Remember that part about history

Belonging to the writers?

I do.

………………………………………..

How far back would I need to go for a role model?

Back to the Chesters, I guess, the couple who ran

Our local public school, Margaret Mace

J. Elwood & Marie Chester.

I have no one else to share this story with, so bear with me.

Mr. Chester was the Principal & Mrs. Chester my home room & English teacher. Mr. Chester was of a larger than life mold & shared that with me – he would pull me out of class (thus actually conferring the status on me  of being pulled out of the room by the Principal. ) He would bring me to his office & recite Rudyard Kipling or a parody of some long piece of tintinnabulation. It still uplifts me to think on it.

Quiet, black-haired Mrs. Chester wore English like a suit of armor. I learned all the finer points of jousting the language with her.

I think the Chesters were the reason Mom sent me to the public school after Brother Joe lost to the Monsignor. They were involved with Mom financially, I believe, having co-signed a note.

………………………

SUNOCO

My favorite restaurant here has an old gas station bell at their drive-up window. I was awaiting my order outside & the bell rang with a car passing over. My friend with me remarked on the notice & in a rush I remembered I grew up NEXT to a gas station that had a bell system like that over both lanes.

My whole life must have been filled with that sound…

Hot summer nights

Bitter-bite seashore cold

I did not know I had memorized it so well

A friend would have to point it out to me

Waiting for lunch one day.

……………………

Someone said practice art

My art is wordsmithing

Wrangling words that ride me over cliffs sometimes

So I cannot get back to the mesa above

Doomed to canyons

Yet appreciating the shade.

……………………..

For a long time I said my life appeared in vignettes of my vision

I got pulses which pulled me back to that time as an immediate environ

Now I think that even the ones of the future appear at times

I want more to do with earth now, than tech

I take two steps back from seeing the future

For the holiness (simplicity) of yesterday

Holds my heart harmless

…………………

I can see now that I put myself into impossible situations

This lifetime. I made demands upon heaven, tugged on many angel wings to get what I needed. I moved mountains but with nowhere to put them, my backyard just got full.

I cut people off cold if I cannot get along with them. I assume. The word “err” comes up in my crosswords a lot & I always take it personally.

I wonder if it’s correct to say I get in my own way.

Just when I’m getting into the good thoughts

I come forward from the back of the room to say

Time to leave, gotta go … what we  doin’ here?

Like photobombing my own life movie.

…………………………………..

As I watch, the World of the Impossible slides next into the stereopticon

I do not remember buying [into] this slide

It is as real as any other & each life I unbury is similar to the one just before.

I can’t even remember who handed me this shovel!

Somewhere in a city is a diner in white enamel

With lights reflecting white uniforms with long black aprons.

Red/silver jukebox modules hang over the tables

Collecting quarters in exchange for memories

Fainting-lucky

If it had “our song”

Somewhere like B 15.

………………………..

The familiar grows shadows so long

Over my shoulder, I get cold in my last lifetime.

……………………….

There were horses & hounds, sir

Thundering & howling through the dream

More than that I cannot say

More than that would be confession

But there are no more priests

People today don’t remember horses

In a hunt, laboring by

I do.

The pack of red/brown dogs silken–

Eared & snarling

A “snap!” at me tho I was ne’er their fox.

…………………………..

The conservatives have left

Only madmen remain to rule

All the sanitoria are open

While the churches are closed.

I missed somewhat of the egress,

Deciding to hunker down, stock up,

Obey the impulse to just be still

To flatten the curve.

The curve gone cursive in my case

I might have once thought

Other than I do now

Like I said, I don’t remember.

Is it ok to stand up yet?

………………………….

Where do your thoughts go when you’re not thinking?

Everyone has those blank moments on arrival:

   Shrugging: “Um, how’d I get here?”

The cloud knows not its landing,

Nor my soul

Tho Higher Self pokes a head in regular-like

To test progress.

(The same way I click videos to see how much longer they’ll run.)

She shows up, takes a peek from my eyes.

My Higher Scout checking in

To see if she recognizes the terrain.)

………………………