ALL RESPONSES |
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It’s the autumnal equinox.
Berserker runs amok in fields looking for his lover.
She’s flown off again with raven in her search for heaven.
He has the stench of battle on his breath, a little lust on his shoulder
and wants what he can’t have. He’s obsessed, lost in the maize like
a tattooed raccoon. --Where’s my sword? He screams --My honor,
my cold beer? There are medals pinned on his chest, for running
away from versifying scholars, for squeezing the final drop out
of a keg at dawn. He runs through the stalks to a hill of stones.
Exhausted, he kneels and prays to the Corn Goddess.
It begins to rain. |
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There’s something primitive
yet necessary about eating
hot peppers and touching
certain parts of your body
afterwards. Makes me want
to tear off my shirt, run naked
through rows of October corn
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Neat rows march the countryside
leaving narrow room for roads.
Last days turn green to brown,
dreams of cereal, ethanol,
fade to stubble.
We regain our bearings,
race through intersections. |
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A message from the interior:
If while walking, say in a cornfield,
between tall rows, unsheathed leaves,
their simple life of grow and green,
do not be alarmed
if you run into your opposite,
a half naked man, an ear hunter,
raccoon spotter, crow stalker,
cast out from the garden
of round-headed sunflowers
to make his way alone
undiscovered until harvest time.
He’s looking for himself
as we would look in a field
for a little brother who was
last seen heading off the road
toward a shining mass of green.
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I did not know you were here
So hidden, well, below the soil of green
The tassels proud as youth still stinging
To race between the rows in hide and seek
To rip raw ears and eat and eat
I could hide here forever
Just outside of you |
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Beserker let’s face it, we are never going to last.
You are chiseled. And to be sure, I love that in a man.
When we shower, I love the way the water runs between the ridges in your chest and down your stomach muscles. Ooh la la. I love the slippery wetness of your embrace. I love it when you hold me close and I feel the spray on my face and look upon Frankenstein’s goofy smile. Poor Goofy Frankenstein and his misguide attempts at love. And I look up at you, all smiles and appreciation. Good natured affection and true devotion. Poor darling. Because my eyes return to the water running across your physique, and I eventually look down.
The place to where water runs... leaves me cold.
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I didn't do what they wanted,
couldn't live by their rules,
and so to the cornfields I fled,
persecuted no longer, accepted
by the stalks, sucking life from
the marrow of the cobs, my empire
is here now. I rule the fieldmice
and crows, direct the soil to be
fertile. I stand tall and watch
the horizon for my queen, who
promised to join me before the
carnage of fall harvest, the
long, cold winter on fields of
stubble and sorrow. |
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| The man lays his white t-shirt over the back of a lawn chair. He whispers into his wife’s ear, “I’m going after Carmen, huh?” and stretches before disappearing into the cornfield. Somewhere his princess is tucked in with the stalks. He remembers how much easier it was to find her before she learned not to ruffle the corn, signaling her whereabouts. Then his arm drew aside a curtain of cornstalks and he saw his daughter in her yellow dress. “Carmen!” he delighted aloud, and the girl, so startled, burst like popped corn. The man emerged from the field, wearing his white t-shirt. “Have you seen Carmen?” he asked his wife, who pointed to the field. “I’m going after Carmen, huh?” he whispered into her ear. |
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Walk until the sweat dries
on your brow, until your skin
wears the sun and the wind, until
you feel each step, each stone
in your bones, in your belly.
Walk on.
The sun will leave you, the wind
will shift. Even the birds
won't think twice
about you. Let the sky
bruise and the clouds
thin. Let the sorrow in you breathe.
Do not think
about your hungers or your losses.
Do not pray
or question. Let the day go
the way of night,
let the colors fade and
the crickets sing.
There will be a wind, eventually.
The purple of the fields
will not betray
you, nor the blood of the soil,
all the imaginings
hidden in the shapes of leaves.
And somewhere, something
will burn.
Know that it is up to you:
River, wind, fire, or love--
You can choose what will
consume you.
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after the drum circle has broken
I like to walk the rows of corn.
When the wind is right
poems peel from the silk,
lay against my arms,
sink into my ink.
Tranquility in solitude, my mother used to say.
Hum of the cicadas, a distant drone
itself drowned out by stalk and leaf flailing
against my weight, passing at medium pace.
This time next year, the furrows will be smoothed over,
the corn will be gone. As will I.
As three story homes are planted to block the wind |
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For centuries they named me Green Man.
Children screamed at my footprints in the forest
frightened by leaves curling from my head,
branches waving from my body.
No matter that I slept winter away
turned emerald in spring.
I tired of the magic
grew bored with the circle I couldn’t escape
the cycle of life they called it.
So I tweezed out each leaf,
yanked each branch from its root.
It’s Autumn and I am naked and awake
in a cornfield that will wisp away in wind,
standing as everything goes to sleep.
Naked and not knowing how to be this man.
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I use it and use it again
like a canvas
brush strokes over it
first layer for the father
second for my son;
my skin is my life
carelessly designed
yet seasoned perfectly
by the sun; the marks
of sharp leaves
left wondering
under the moon.
This shell is my wall
to tag, to voice
the softness
I grew too old to hold,
the hardness my heart can
no longer carry. |
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The monster went looking for his keeper
among the corn stalks under the sultry
sun but then got franken feet. |
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now that is one good looking man, she thought,
but why does he have a portrait
of Dwight from The Office
tattooed on his chest? |
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The man with the ugly tattoos
wandered the stalks, sans shoes.
He was hurt and misled
and wished he was dead
but wouldn't admit to the blues. |
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After the photo op
goes awry and
I get lost
for days
I sneak
towards you
my blond (uhh huuh)
run my hands
through your windswept
hair and whisper
in your ear
“I like em’
Husky...”
I think you whisper
“Get away
From me you creep!”
But I know, baby,
It’s just the wind
maybe.
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She had a vision of wheat and chaff,
wind-tossed fields the color of honey
and twice as rich, threshers banging out
a separation rhythm: piles to keep
and to burn, cut from the same fields,
undistinguishable, to virgin eyes, at least --
the millimeter between husk and flower,
the distance from sin to salvation,
from slut to saint --
in prayer or fellatio, knees blister
on wicker-tough carpet regardless. |
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if you look closely you will see
that this man isn't lost
any more than his shirt
is missing,
that his right hand by necessity
tugs his beltless britches back to a
"safe" position, weighed down
as they are by blackberry & keys
we should all care so much,
someday. |
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I can't count the nights we've spent, Dear,
lights off, awake, in bed together.
Cold nights, we'd push the bed up against the radiator,
pile every stitch in the house on top of us.
Hot nights, we'd drag the mattress downstairs,
lie on top of the covers, and we couldn't be naked enough.
Lights off, awake, in bed together,
Dear, I can't count the nights we've spent. |
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He claims to not have been sired,
but sown:
from a volunteer kernel in the field
where he grew and formed
cozy in an ear until
an old farm hand spotted
the bulge of his limbs
and husked him into being.
He was raised by those who
owned the farm, but was
never really theirs. That’s why
they fought all the time.
That’s why,
at 15 human years,
he ran away,
and started a life in the city.
He learned the city’s
weaknesses and power,
became a part of each for a time.
But he’ll let you know that corn
is a prairie grass, resilient;
so is he.
He mastered the city
he says,
but the dirt there was
all the wrong kind.
So he came back to the farm,
not to his people
but to his corn.
He roams it night and day,
chasing deer and crow lest
his family be harmed.
The farmer and his wife say the boy
just came back to shame them.
The boy states this as further proof
they are clearly not his kind. |
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you
can run
but cannot
hide She
will seek
find and
take |
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I peel a quiet fruit
while walking into a mean southern wind.
I pretend I am a traveling massif:
grassy, but strangely human.
Moist and sensational,
the fruit tendrils
adhere to my thumbs
like ridiculous little tails.
Amplifying its particles self,
the wind shoves the fruit from my hand
and asks me where I was
before God put on my bones. |
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if he couldn’t have her
no one else would
he drove by
a hundred times
he watched
her movements
day in and day out
from the corn
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