The Middlewesterner

The darkness again.
Oh, the darkness.

"He likes to say
it's about the going,

but what he talks about
is the getting there."

*

"Sometimes
when I say he

I mean me."

*

"They laugh at you
for doing

because they're so
afraid to try."

"To write, I
need to move.

To sit still, I
need to die."

*

"Everything
before you

is also
behind you.

Going to
you are also

coming from."

*

"Nothing shines
without some darkness."

Sun given to greyness.
There's nothing but wind

in the trees, whispering
of the night coming on.

Heap of corn on the ground
covered with a white tarp.

Something is done.
Something else is coming.

Sky the color
of frost on the grass -

horizon, our imagining.

A grey day, the kind when
nothing is too much.

"Sometimes
I just

want to
see it

to see
it."

*

"How blind
must a fellow

be
to see?"

*

"Yep, sometimes
I'm the south

end of a north
headed horse."

"The magic
of the poem -

it appears
and disap- "

*

"Heaven won't get me,
the devil don't want me.

I'm not going, and
I'm not coming back."

*

"The poem
doesn't always

know what it
wants.

Sometimes
it makes you

mash
the possibilities,

all of them,
every one,

pulped."

Moon. Cloud. Wind.
Autumn chill.

I am so
far from home.

Here, the tawny
earth.

There, the grey
sky.

I am torn
between.

Frost on the grass,
sun on the frost,

but not for long.

Morning
steams, touching us.

"Name it
whatever you like.

We will call it
what it is."

*

"Lost in familiarity,
that strangeness."

*

"Words are wily
things, turning

and twisting.
The poet is

the last to know."

Corn heaped on the ground,
bright as a blazing fire.

Death of a fly -
not a sudden

snuff, but a struggle
this cold fall day.

Old woman
on a cold day

cleaning leaves
from the gutter,

muttering.

How clearly
it's fall -

the leaves
like small

birds hit
by cars.

"Even
meaning nothing

means something."

*

"Is

what you see
what you say

or is

what you say
what you see?"

*

"As always
the challenge

is not saying
what you have

always said."

"Long way
to go?

Take the
long way."

*

"Sometimes
the long way's

the shortest."

*

"Listen to the vowels,
how they bend,

waiting for the poem
to open."

Earth is
scraping cloud.
A misty

morning, a wet
road, and I am
on my way.

Low-down crow,
swoop of black
against grey sky -

unhappiness
on a wet day,
then silence.

You lift your
cries to the sky.

The wind has
already

blown them away.

Big as a pheasant, the hawk
preening on the powerline.

"You don't always
have to know

what it means.
In fact, sometimes

it's better
not to."

*

"All these years
spent trying

to find the beat.
The beat was always

there
where it should be."

*

"What don't we
understand?

We don't understand
nothing."

"The poem you write,
the gift

you cannot refuse."

*

"Cage of words,
this

trying to say
some-

thing inside of
nothing."

*

"Hold out your cup
and believe

something will fill it."