Heart of the Continent

 So many centers
So many lights

                                        Where do you think you are?

Where do you think you should be?

We used to unfold maps
                                            Crease by crease
And there we were
At the heart
                        Of the Continent

Folding them back 
                                Was impossible

Never right

                    Always crumpled and scrunched

The Heart of the Continent

                            Never back where it should be

Where you should be

Where you think you should be

So many centers so many lights

So many dots

So so many lines

Heart of the Continent

What if I Prefer to Sell My Property

 There are a lot of different options being considered

No, that doesn't have 

I will stand my ground no matter what

I am more hopeful than worried

There are solutions that we don't even know they exist

Maxine Kumin died

She of the plane with her mother holding a package

Died

Dies

Died

Simple letter

She dies and it is still this year

It is still this shit

It is still this same

A package, you hold as the plane dives

And suddenly 

            Suddenly

Survies

Cremate this

For over forty years
We have been simply
Updating our
Files

Why aren't you dead
Yet?  Why can't we
Simply burn you
Yet

We don't use wood
Oh no no oH
That's not ergonomically
Environmental

Simply simply simply
As we go on some light
Fantastic

Toe

But burn, we do.  Burn
And you'll just be scritchy
Puff bone and a lot of
Blow

We're just updating our
Files

Year 55

I was born in the eleventh hour
Fifty minutes and some odd seconds
My mother took the gas
Why wouldn't you, she would say
Later

I was born in the eleventh hour
Umbilical cord wrapped around my
Neck, jaundiced, kept in the hospital
Birthmarked

I was supposed to be dead
Choked by that which was
Supposed to sustain me

Well I'm alive.

I was born in the eleventh hour
Of some Aquarian dream

I used to like to keep fish
Until my twin Angel fish
Barbara

Died

That's what I got
Born in the eleventh hour
One January

My birthmark is hardly
Visible

(These Days)

I got other marks more visible
More diseases that puss up
On a regular basis

I was born in the eleventh hour

Day 30: I write stuff

I write seeds into germination
I write blowhards into consternation
I write the crush of modern flight
I write the drink that does bite
I write the music that swells
I write the glove that compels

I write the city I love
I write memory dreamed of
I write words into trees
I write snow up to your knees
I write the life of a man
I write wandering with a plan

I write my sister's strife
I write a slow cumbria of life
I write dawn's mandate
I write violence and hate
I write watching confusion
I write gooselike delusion

I write drowning in fright
I write darkness into light
I write how sense transcends
I write how much depends
I write familial reality
I write she who made me

I write five and twenty
I write love lost aplenty
I write the universe outright
I write a small boy's blight
I write phrases and fluff
I write stuff

Day 29: phrases heard from three television announcers while watching the final three minutes of a basketball game

Costly turnover there

Don't tell me you want to win, show me

Willing to get his jersey dirty

Straight and true at the free throw line

I see what you did there

That rattles home

Fought tooth and nail all series long

If they are fortunate enough to succeed

If you want to move on, you're going to have to be better

Rejected!

This is how you say 'put me in coach'

Its a difference-maker

There was a lot of contact all over the place

They're coming alive here in the second half

Strong side cover, weak side cover: it doesn't matter

There goes that man

We have to have discussion

I just don't think they are that good

Matching up against an iconic player

Forget about it coach, I was healthy and read and you didn't play me

But he steped up

And its on to the second round

The kind of respect you expect from this hard fought

Series

Day 28: Reverence

When my mother made me go to church
They called sitting still "being reverent."
"Be reverent!" snapped the lady with big
Hair big glasses and big pattern on her shiny
Dress

"Be reverent, children!" she said again,
Adding children to the command as if
We didn't know we were children and
She was the adult who was allowed to
Glare

"Be reverent!" and the children around
Me folded their arms across their chest
Wiggling their hips in their all too tiny
Seats. But I didn't, since I didn't know
Reverence

"What do we do when we show reverence,
Children?" big lady asked glaring at me
"We fold our arms and sit still!" children
Yelled their response, all turning to look at
Me

Now that the eyes of God or Jesus or
Just the entire Primary class were glaring
at me, I folded my arms and bowed my
Head, not realizing that is what you do to
Pray