playin' hooky?

sort of playing hooky from work today - well, it's a scheduled/approved hooky ... but it gives me a chance to update the blog another day ... back to the work-grind tomorrow, so probably no new updates until the end of the week, unless somehow i get an easy day - like that's going to happen.

here's another poem published in a small press 'zine. This one in a Japanese magazine called The Plaza. the poem was written in June of 1994. support small presses by buying copies if you can, but at least by reading and passing the names (of the magazine, editors and poets) and links and copies onto others.


THINGS BREAK TOO EASILY

1: things break too easily in my hands now.
toys. records. VCRs.
love.
i am the king of oafs, large hands that crumple
never caress.

grey rain in late june sky & dwarfs
sing
horrible songs
silk banners proclaiming peace & prosperity

i cannot embrace them even
if i wished
their little bones
break so easily
in these rough hands.

king of oafs proclaims thursdays a day of weeping
the tears saved in vials of gold: holy waters
of the eternally clumsy.
king of oafs will bless the faithful.

2: yes, you sleep with sugar plum fairies
but the king of oafs sleeps only in the crystals of someone elses dreams
never knowing the purpose of ghosts but certain of their existence
off the left side of his smile forgotten in the closet of desperation
as night is filled with smoke of fires - wet wood & damp skies
- the king of oaf dancing in thick puddles because it is the lightest thing he can dream
no Icarus in his veins, not even Wilbur Wright
only crumpled feathers.