the end of knowledge

oh the ache of an 11-year-old imagining his life at 12 the
body bigger but the mind somehow the same.

this is the start of something, yes, but i'm not sure where it goes tonight (survivor in the background and a laying dog on the couch slowly falling asleep to the sound of these keys tacking). i am stuck on the word on which word follows and how words make something new. can i put words in a new order and discover something about us. about the chat robot writing essays for people and ending the possibilities for new knowledge. about the known world being all we can.  the man on the show is 71. the man on the shows wins food for throwing bags.

oh the ache of an 11-year-old imagining his life at 12 the
body bigger but the mind somehow the same.

Sap

Digging through a box of old files, I found this poem I wrote during my first year of teaching. Despite the obvious ripping off of John K. Samson, I still like it. Revisions made today are in italics.

Let's fold up our bad days and shove them in the backs of textbooks,
Hide our fears in the bottoms of lockers, and throw anxiety away in the blue bin by the door.
Let's embrace "how are you's" and recognize how much we really mean them.
Let's hold hands with tomorrow, and let's realize how cheesy that last line was.

Let's forget the things we find in textbooks:
Forget the theorems and Pythagoras,
Forget the scraps of paper,
Forget the meaning of this poem.
Let's forget everything we know except that we know each other.
Let's learn instead that there's so much to learn and that we should be students for the rest of our lives.
Let's be students for the rest of our lives.
Let's learn from each other.
Better yet, let's learn that we've been learning from each other all along.

Let's realize that every breath we breathe ins the most important

In the car in the Northeast, we owned one tape and we listened to it end on end. Now

They say losing love is like a window to your heart: everybody sees you're blown apart. Everybody feels the wind blow and we

Better Off Dead

Most people

They protect what is theirs

Superbowl

There are no metaphors on this field:
The plasticine grass simply is, res ipsa loquitur.
This small victory of a yard, 
this pain, these contorted limbs
are nothing more than the thing itself.

The fight is fruitless, the decisions have no impact,
The crippling analysis
beyond the show.

 it is golden in the fire

it is sparkin

aplace

a place

             is a seed you

 hold: a

     live but frozen. I thought I

 held it 

   close enough to keep it warm but it became something

    else. I s

hould have kept it closer. But know it is a tree I do not know. 

I did hold it this time

I held it for
less
       than
              a
second      before
i screamed and anna came
to see the swelling on my hand, a blister already red and bubbling. and

now, hours later a sting
remains reminds 

me of its
place in my palm.

I cannot hold anything now without the pain of holding on.

it lives there

it lives there in the patched grass
field near the car wash
if you look out the passenger window you 

can see it, sticking it's 

head out from the hole where it hides
the wind 

blows and grass dances like the inflated tube man back in front on the road and
it looks

left

like
its the field that's the center

summer

all of these words are set in summer with a sun beating down
a sun set words set
set in the relief of light and shadow where oppressive and managable depend on perspective
set here in the heat here in blazing awareness of the moment
but over there it's a little bit cooler
it's over there it's i can handle this dry

dry heat of 

and yet another thing

 at some point someone will be the last person left and it will be hard for that person to conceive of coincidence. why me they will ask. why was i chosen 

haiku plus 2

I write these words
to mark the unrelenting speed

at which life takes a

way life