Prose


homecoming

    "he broke my head and cracked my heart...
      i felt he left me there to die...
      my only man, my one and only man.." 
                                (wendy v. kino/uph june 2010)

A dream 

so screaming 
as it came alive

drowns the deaf with sound

shadows the blind with light

shakes poison drop by drop

out of the sick children 
and old folk on the sofas

but relaxes, the gift of sleep-

no need to refocus 

or recall itself.

Some blessings
blow in across grasses
opining the open meadows
sleeping by the streams
just across from 
the older cottonwoods
until once again awake
they come to rest
on a lonely 
runaway girl's
now limp shoulder.

Most curses 
slam headlong 
into the pinto
carom into a custom deluxe
knock a wealthy old lady
straight out into the intersection
her heart split 
melon in the moonlight
floating into the 
mind of that man, that time

there cradling his mother 

so brightly striking

this image- a rattler

right between the eyes.

The ones I've known, to no end
the stars in my sky, athletic
poetic scholastic wood skilled
builders riders and fisherman
the coarse in my life, beautific  
in other words, of different form
will follow to that point in
an immediate long distance
where my vortex, and all 
that that implies goes a-drifting
again and away
to something else entirely.
                                                                                                              

My given blessings
My awkward curses
My unwavering dreams
somehow only guaranteeing 
the golden paved road
that became my life
time after time
again. 

Who would-a thunk?
The youngest son of a warrior
having known numerous champions
a mentor to angelic dancers...
Never the first one to dive 
those long ago morns
into the chill of Lake Arrowhead- 
standing today, as a man...


No man in particular
just a man, with a chin,
two ears, and a forehead,
still seeing the top of Styx
in early February 
or Baker ditch in summer 
or girlfriends with their dogs
somewhere ahead on a trail
all sky as wide as any heaven 
just overhead.   


I would bet my favorite 
pair of socks and shoes
that by this time 
in the next moment
it will all take shape again, 
as though a first
and the seasons 
will still be just that
while the clocks move 
at about the same pace
and the ones in the wrong 
move just that much closer
to the things they've had coming.



These are things older than text
not as old as stars 
simpler than pain 
but less honest, 
and more unavoidable 
than shame.


All gifts 
to the evil
to the tormentors
to the sadists
to the boneheads
and peculiarly unclear bastards
whose two pronged hoof tracks
still make my head throb,
are nothing more confounding
than as I have said all along:
    You are writing shit on the wall
    You know it, and I don't think you 
    Will get away with it, 
    Not anymore, for

"All time thus served
to date;
the pain contained 
therein 
have earned their stake:
The worthiness of the better."










(self pjreed 2011-12)


                                             notes:
  -words wendy v. (tucson 2010) 
  -photo becky's kid (nyc 1998)
  -photo self (bayou pierre 2012)
  -photo self (shreveport la 2012)
  -quote from: h. miller "the oranges 
             of hieronymus bosch" (1957)






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