THE COUNT
THE COUNT
How many leaves are on that tree?
No seriously I’m not being poetic.
A million?
Is that what a million leaves looks like?
I have no idea.
Dallas Clayton
CROWD
CROWD
I can’t stand here and watch your band anymore.
I’m sorry.
We’re both just kidding ourselves.
I need to sit.
Or you need to play faster.
No two ways about it.
LAND
LAND
When renting an apartment
a landlord should just say
“Walt Disney used to live here,
when he was a kid, working his way through college.”
Who wouldn’t want to rent that apartment?
And how could you ever prove it?
METHOD
METHOD
We fix
to climb the highest
most terrifiying structure
plant a flag
with our name on it
and sit around drinking
and telling stories
about how hard it was
and how long it took
to get there.
I’D MAKE A TERRIBLE BLUES MUSICIAN
I’D MAKE A TERRIBLE BLUES MUSICIAN
I just realized
I don’t write about “women”
because I think of them
as people.
PEP TALK
PEP TALK
There’s an old gnarled football coach
who hangs around in people’s dreams
even though they never played football a day in their lives.
He chews on the rotten stump of a cigar
and says things like
“You can’t build a house outta poems!”
PIT
PIT
When I see you
walking a dog
that is obviously too big for you to control
I wonder
what you are thinking.
how much faith you must have
in things never going South.
A real optimist
with a tiger by the tail.
NEIGHBORS
NEIGHBORS
I’m going to go next door and borrow a cup of sugar.
I don’t need a cup of sugar
I just need to know that still happens
because once it stops
we’re lost.
TO PLACE
TO PLACE
Went to watch a horse race.
Happens in the worst part of the city
where people are still living
well into the past.
For better or worse?
I can’t say.
I bet on the horse with the dumbest name
“Bad Boy.”
Won $85.
How many other people
used the same logic
and came up short.
INFLUENCE
INFLUENCE
Is it because of television
or magazines
or nature
or parents good intentions
that a child
stands at a foggy bathroom mirror
between class periods
practicing what it will feel like
to tell someone he doesn’t know very well
“I love you.”
CLAMORING
CLAMORING
Small irregular moles
on the fleshy backs
of large men
with no concern
are doing more damage
to our way of life
than you have ever done
with all your kicking and screaming.
RUINED BY THE GUINNESS BOOK
RUINED BY THE GUINNESS BOOK
“How many?”
“How much?”
Is that all you want to know?
To talk about?
To read?
“How often?”
“How big?”
“How fast?”
“How loud?”
What about “Why?”
“To what end?”
What about
“How did it make you feel?”
I HEARD YOU WERE SET ON FIRE
I HEARD YOU WERE SET ON FIRE
For twenty dollars
you can buy all the food it would ever take
to fill even a large man’s stomach
and lay in the sun beside the ocean
and sleep.
We live well
compared to others we do not see.
Well enough to not think about them
but once or twice a month at best,
on the off occasion
that they stray onto a path
obstructing our momentum.
We see them then
but in all the wrong ways
and with all the wrong thoughts -
as the king sees the angry masses,
as the newly sober sees his tipping point,
as the uncertain see all the awful possibilities.
A reminder,
not of what we could do to become better
but of what we shouldn’t do to become worse.