Derm

Derm looked tired today
Walking around his plot
In sandals and basketball shorts

"I'm gonna pull up some onions"

"Alright, Derm
They look pretty good."

"They should be"

Vietnam was still messing with him
His wife was dead too

At least he had all the hippies
Squatting on his land
Trendies in their trendy tinies
Tiny little homes
Planting and staying sober all day

He thought I was "a badass"
He knew I wasn't nearly as
sober as the trendies,
though probably still pretty trendy

Shooting at sparrows with
a .22 he looked over at me and said
"I'd prefer politicians"

I laughed for him
Damn he looked tired

The day Dennis Leary called me a pussy

Watching some stupid television show
on Netflix
Making a sandwich

Dennis Leary looked
right at me
and called me a pussy
"You're a pussy aren't you"

I was shocked
Stood there
and just stared at him
Like an asshole
Holding a sandwich

"I know you're a pussy"

He had called me a pussy twice now

That stupid fucking show
had created a premise so that
Dennis Leary could call Bryan Diehl
a pussy two times

I thought about that goddamned show
for the rest of the day

Thanks Old Peg

Sitting quietly with Peggy Seeger.
The magic of the folktime,
drifting around the middle of the Atlantic

(The coughing luster of the States,
the dark majesty of the crown.)

Old Peggy's the voice of a grandmother god
Our poor mortal grandmothers
are too often choked of personality
The violence of time and men
Turning them strong and insane

But Old Peg sings it nicely
What the fuck are you talking about
with the "long-tailed nanny-o", Old Peg?

Either way, thank you for making sense out
of the silence and rain.

Made to suffer

"Some people are just made
to suffer
They are made to suffer
in a beautiful way,"

she said
the morning sun falling
through a space in the blinds

She could see it all around her

Then she looked at me
and smiled and cried

Essay ideas

• #BusLife and #VanLife during Trump times
• Romance, Buddhism, and Anger
• Smart slacker (Use it or lose it)
• Controlling your life
• Freeing your life 

Rubber metaphor

I'm starting to feel twisted up
Like there's a rubber stretching

The more you pull it apart
the more you can see the little grooves
the insides through the cracks

The feeling that
maybe it will snap

Bringing energy to a little thing
by pulling it apart

What's true

There's a woman from
my past
who continues to step in and out of my life.
More often than not she's
my one.
She's the woman I'm afraid to think about
afraid to talk about, lest she
stick like a bur in the front of my mind
and longing for her
dulls my senses to the rest of the world.

She's the standard
the perfect woman
and she always has been.

Bottle rocket romances
bursting in the evening sky roar
and fizzle
and when the ashes fall down
to the evening grass she is standing there
in the moonlight
smiling.

She is me running,
my wishing well.

She's the buzz in the morning alone.
She's the letter in the mailbox,
the call I still wait on.

Yet everything else is heartbreaking
as if she sits patiently
through the twists of other women's turns with me,
knowing what will come.

She's the woman every woman
of mine has known and feared.
If they've loved me,
they've hated her.

She is different in life than in my head.
She is unassuming
and sweet and tough.
In my mind she is knowing, calm,
and righteous.

She knows if I deserve her.
But I don't

She is lodged in there.
Wired into the web of my mind.
Entire rooms in my head are hers,
though sometimes avoided.

The quick cup of coffee,
the three sentence correspondence,
the picture flash on the screen
burst the doors of the rooms and
the sound of her laugh,
the bite of her wit
blares through the recesses.

She is the longing in my heart that is permanent.