Scotch Blue

The six pack looks like
A bottle of fine Scotch

Denis Streeter   12/29/21

a work pun

 I asked my lumber customer if he wanted a bag, then thought of this:

Q:  What do you call a small bag?

A:   A baguette.

He didn't get it.   Even when I explained how a cigarette is a small cigar.

He was in an all-business mood, so I shrugged my shoulders and let him move on.

 
Denis Streeter     12/22/21

Sarcasm equals

I love it when it's busy and no one gives me useful information.  I was trying to unlock something, and my coworker told me to use the unlocking tool in a way that is wrong.  Another told me to cut the tool open with scissors.  Not a chance.  Then the customer tells me it was a gift for his wife.  Shit.  I tell him he can swap it out.  He says can I get that gift wrapped?  I tell him it's not in the warranty and walk away.  Later I find out there is no way for us to unlock that.  It wouldn't have set off any alarms.  They are supposed to use pliers and a wrench to pry it open.  Happy Holidays.  

Denis Streeter   12/11/21

Work

It's a strange world
What do we become
At the end of the week we want to forget
All the unpleasantness
Watch tv
Like Abbot and Costello Meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Aquaman
It's a waste of time
I could be doing something more productive like reading
But writing seems to do more
Of a chronicle
I'm not sure it makes me feel any better
It just makes me recognize more of what I'm feeling
Why I hate work
When I'm not at work, I think about going back to work
How will I deal with that
It's a matter of withstanding mental blows
From customers who smell blood and dare you to make mistakes
So they can punish you
It's true, most people are fine
Perhaps it's all in my mind, but I don't think so
Ultimately it comes down to yourself
How do you protect yourself
From being constantly watched for mistakes
Authority is basically made of stupid rules
Or demeaning principles
You are an actor
The world is watching
It's wearing you down
You need to recharge
How you recharge is up to you
Where will you go
What will you do
Is there prayer
Or Jesus
Or God
That will make everything better
Or just bearable enough
Perhaps it's observing enough
Where love breathes through
There's safe passage

Denis Streeter   9/11/21

Sawhorse

Customer:  I'm looking for a sawhorse
Me:  How much saw could a sawhorse saw if a sawhorse could cut saw.
Customer:  Laughs, then says "Huh?"
Me:  No answer.  It doesn't make sense and I'm not sure it's funny.
Me:  I direct him to tools.

Denis Streeter   9/2/21

reason for this

daftness barms 
no alarm
of foolishness
a catapult away
drinking wine
a sashay
a trope
wanders sly
inbred with paint
on the horizon
felt a splash
deter a whale
out to sea
in a sieve
leaking a mountain
of grease
gas lit on empty
as you might expect
busy
in that ordinary way
business supplies
weighty
foster in rank
removing itching
from semaphores
dangerous banks
deck and ocean
not all bad
it's a place
where happiness
subsides
dungeons
are fakes
roadmaps
draw doors
let them in
rats on skewers
blistered things
grab my
petit fours
ounce our roundings
blank our ships
more to that
wide enough to go
traffic flow
gets in the way
guidance 
sets you free
i don't know
i'm still here
drinking in me
sophomoric
teaching
turning gravestones
into flies
not sad so
busy overnight
chasing them out
set bed aflame 
or not
wandered toes
fasten doors wide
toothpaste in
flour awry
and it goes
on
knows
on
until
it stops

denis streeter   7/11/21

flight

breath
breathed into silence
a broken wing stripped clean
hollow bone
egg glue creation
an instrument
flewn of ancient 
flute through
true to its
its what
its form
laughing 
bone draws sky
music from hollow
shift ears eyes heart
mind an empty shell waiting to be filled
searching wisdom 
bone waits becoming 
depth fills tiny holes
an ocean gladness
fills mind
flewn ears eyes heart soul
senses one
capture them
bone holes music
you can fly
you can sing
you can know

denis streeter   6/15/21

Inspired by David Almond's book Bone Music

poetry in motion

a kind of learning

i don't know what it is

a kind of transforming

i don't know what it is

leads me to strange places

rooms i wander

circular directions

take me home

to where i am more myself

whatever that is

ever since i was a little boy, i always wanted to be

a philosopher

theologian

thinker not betrayer

no judas in me

i've lived a life not knowing who i am

a teacher of sorts, in the pure sense

i learn from them, they learn from me

just not an automaton 

i want to speak my mind and not muffle it

there's the rub

does it make you employable?

know your strengths

know others

then you can know yourself

but does that ever happen?

this introversion not good for me

i must dance

i hear music that moves my soul

and in the dance i forget myself

there is nothing but perfect motion

bluegrass

deeper livelier than anything i know

poetry in motion

and with that poetry comes wit

is it?

or song

singing connectedness to each situation

through my bones

that feels eternal

universal

completely myself

denis streeter   6/8/21

A kind of respect

 

Worms may be savvy 

Their burrowing ways

Moles for reflection

Turning upward

Is it religion

Is that the right thing to say

Heaven opens

Is that a sunrise

Interpretation

Seems like such a flat word

Intellectuals use to put you down

But not under

Worms search metaphors

Find them flavorless

We are not worms

They reside in us

Take samples of us

Destroy us 

In our eden

Is worm the snake

Choose your context

Bury or cremation

For mother i chose cremation

Twice

One for her body

The other for burning pictures of her dead body

Sis took the pictures

A sort of proof of her death

Burning pictures a kind of respectful ceremony

Backyard by the old garage

A letting go

Although

She dreams inside my head

Denis Streeter.   5/25/21

not haiku

under sunshine corridors

bees are singing

doors  are clinging

set them aside

jazz plays on

jangled rhythm

settles into groove

disappears

sharp notes listen

minor keys

cleft it out

wander gardens

sneeze

disappear

nothing but vapor

hinted tracks

heckled hens

pay the piper

a logjam or two

disappears

under sunshine corridors

bees are singing

cleft it out

a salvo or two

keeps it interesting

not exceptional

not haiku

denis streeter    5/27/21

where i'm going

in the afterlife

a shade slow

beams forward

testing for angles

sharp edges

filing rasps 

drink tea in bed

cushion testing

matter-o-fact

warming cooling

dusting for bees

rabbits for collars

wrench forward
in the afterlife

dogs wait

cats wander

a wrench of time

wrinkles yawns passes

where pools go

other side

dreaming 

other things

indistinct

a comfortable way of dying
in the afterlife

waves  branches and snores

walks away

a wrench 

a water vein

happy

smiling

denis streeter    5/21/21

Another Mayneism

 

One of my favorite children's writers.

Been collecting his books for years.

He saw the horizon waiting to be set on paper and be seen forever, and went down again for paper and paint box, into the empty camp [school boys from the city camping in the country], where the wind moved tent- flaps and the smoke, one speaking like a thought in the night, and the other silent like the moment before sleep.  Michael knew about both, because thoughts sometimes shouted at him when he was alone, and the sound of Northumberland Road would go away just before sleep came, though if he noticed they were gone he woke again.  The camp was as lonely as a skeleton in a desert.

William Mayne, Summer Visitors, Oxford University Press, 1961, page 182

lost in mind

discarded messages
read and disappear
it's not about folly, it's about reason
those sentences in between
reach out like barren altars
subsidized minds
turn the page
it's not here nor there
it's everywhere
fossil institutions
hidden floors
undercover dens
it's not scratch and sniff
it's scratch and disappear
turn the page
all those tongue twisters
all those drug altars
simmer for a minute
disappear
turn the page
for a nightstand and beer
taking lovely by its side
a fortune cookie
a magic oven
a dusty hide
turning pages set aside
by noon they are gone
tongue twisters hide
set to motion
dirty bins hot cross buns lefty lunch
it's as the badger says
drinks and goodbye
washes down his beer
starts over again
has a snort, leaves us behind
those pages keep turning
wondering learning
keeps going on
until it's gone
disappear

denis streeter    5/9/21

may day

most days are not as bad as this

it's just a cashier job
stones you couldn't look up
barcodes you couldn't read
customer who asked my name after i couldn't understand him
asked how long i worked there
i said three weeks
he said they need to train you better
it's just a cashier job
credit card reader didn't work in garden
three transactions in a row
customers paid cash
incredibly busy
i called the manager and he came about five minutes later
people kept moving out of my line and no one would help
it's just a cashier job
customers were good about helping me out
got to remember to have them take picture of scan code
my glasses steamed up in garden so i couldn't read numbers
kept taking them off to clean and put back
i forgot to give back a customer their $50 back
i thought i'd given it back
she went to my supervisor and complained about me
she gave the customer her $50
after all she is a regular
it's just a cashier job
messed up a cash increase
manager had to void it out and start over
and more i can't remember
'cause i don't want to remember
i tried so hard to get everything right
not forget
all i could think of is
i got to get out of here
makes me feel bad
it's just a cashier job

denis streeter    5/1/21

Before work

Rudder or not 

Here I come

Denis Streeter    4/29/21

where i go

sharp pillow in the back written in pine
not much left to shine
pillow the moon
muffle the dream
catch the cow
moo the moon
needle in pine
what's left for you
this new direction
snores my pillow awake
don't that take the cake
knowing the rhyme is wrong
just for the sake of a so
so i've been told
but it's so easy and automatic
a computer could create it
if a computer was my brain
mapped out poorly
if not creatively
however that may be defined
these directions shift
like a caved in iron
an interrupted knee
a cavernous tree
a ruptured bee
it could go on
it might go on
it won't go on
i'll let it bee
go to sleep my little baby
the moon is nigh 
the sound is nount 
the ocean green

denis streeter   4/17/21

it's in the ways

when they disappear
they're all gone
gone with the wind
fledgling in a bowl
when the gift catches fire
there is no more
laughter in abundance
the news gone blind
blind with nothing left to do
gone around the campfire
watching what to do
a blind mess walking through
a surgeon's hat a messy coffin
trap doors open and shut
wandering what to do
a tree hides a ghost shivers
blind see deaf hear
wandering what to do
a grassy hat a toad a steer
passing over
what's wrong right between
a featherbed catches the worm
the rest are watching and praying
the bed looks comfortable
hiding a peculiar way
sun shines moon gathers dust
it's not in the telling
it's in the ways

denis streeter    2/25/21

where it goes

what is needed no more
a cast an olive an altar
state of being coincide
a beef a mule a fool
hiding behind the jester
open wide follow inside
jackrabbit lantern stew
follow inside you
open the door and follow some more
it's not that it will.  it will
falter your horizons
testing doors that bathroom you
giving no asides
a pauper a pen a fool
live beside you
living on you
no flea for portable
just living on time
an order for living
spinner snap order that
a paper comes handy
merry go round 
as luck would have it
in jester form
roundabout the floor rides
is it beer or booze
float the paper cake
cut from magazines
pulp for filling
sawdust for your mind
it's not so easy when you're joking
the joke disappears
what did you say
don't say that.  it's not funny
that's okay, it's out of my mind
until some trick becomes fey
try another word will you
but words are hard to come by
most often misunderstood
and on the way down it's sleep
sometimes better that way
and then there's dreaming

denis streeter    2/6/21

transform

there are times
when I can look out on deck
and think that I am the luckiest man on the face of this planet
it's 10pm.  i turn the deck light on
in the distance is rain streaked with light
words can't capture the magic
light and water comes closest
energy equals mass times the speed of light squared
this view from my deck
you can not see
you can not feel
is a moment of time
a moment of quiet elation
magic to bring the dark times light

denis streeter   1/31/21