pine cone woodpecker

the oldest and most familiar stockings mean nothing now and
hold nothing. things like, "we met
in the whale's belly" and 

"i thought that wool cap i loved you guinea hen feather."

now all is pine cone woodpecker,
anger fixed like an arrow toward king
and his country,

find yourself to be an outlaw or
a sweetheart submerged in peat

i do not ask questions because
i have too many questions
and no one loves a nail but
we all love slush

alone i am inside an
ornamental bell

or surveying the stop
and drop of a dam

well i say, well
i have no wish to present

to your plummet

Stranger Things

Stranger thing have happened,
I just can't remember when
I offered such a generous harvest, said
Sea-buckthorn and my calendula,
all to be given to
pouting hands

and distracted hounds.
Liliana and Crow go
to find a tree, and I think
on the freedom of a barren
body, spread bald-eagle

offering nothing, taking
nothing

Love Your Amanita

Love your amanita, live silently. All is not so all-encompassing, say the words you love. Hold the bodies you most appreciate the hearts of. Oh you have a sweet heart, you are a good sort, you want for nothing, the drones don't see you, in your purity you are invisible, and I want what you have to be inside of my bones, a light to blow through my body, outside of law, the free-falling leaf

Nannou

When I care, my body
cringes like a blossom on
rewind, and

"What I Once Knew"
is a two-day
train ride away.

We cannot help it that
love is
love is
love, we simply

reduce the sweeter hours to
a poultice, slap
it on our chests

to release the black stuff,

cough it all up
until we are again

the blue milk of the newly born,
soft with mycelium

and somehow eyes
as shiny as a destination penny,

heads or tails.

One of my favorite directors, Ingmar Bergman, is commonly considered to have been motivated by a crisis of faith. His films often touch on characters grappling with Christianity and its figures (i.e. The Seventh Seal, and later, Fanny and Alexander). Even more frequently, though, we are presented with characters that have lost faith in the notion that our lives are guided by something good and sane, as with Alma in Persona, or Anna, in The Passion of Anna.

I got by for many years thinking that, because I was raised secular, I was not a candidate for a crisis of faith. But I was Very Wrong.

There is a magic that is logical, a magic that is very real. It is painful to the heart to watch people that I love live without this knowledge. People make up their minds. So, I have made up my mind to not make up my mind, not about anything, unless it is what I consider to be fact: that little can be ruled out, that without light it is dark, that there is usually some light to be found. I plan on putting many matchbooks to good use.

I've been writing on my typewriter. It hums, and I'm off and running. Some poems I will transcribe here. Some are only for paper. But I'm writing a new chapbook. I even have a short story almost done. The story is called Ballad of Flynn Farm. The chapbook is called,

Stranger Things Have Happened

I just can't remember when.