Tidal pull

Written after reading part of Robert Macfarlane's 2012 book The Old Ways:  A Journey on Foot.

Snoring shores shifting sands
Impermeable light water sky
Everything changes rules of sight
Eyes filling silt
Feet baking sinking sand clay
Your feet cast mold
Harden to clay
And the feet keep walking
Senses sharpen and bewilder
Water sand silt sky
Cast in magic
Straightlines curve, curves straightline
Big is small, small big
Imaginings gulls to eagles
Driftwood trees
Nonsense land that slippery silt
Freshmade indestructible feeling
Walking you to sea
Tidally pulling your chest
You hear your sirens, sights unknown and personal
Clamshells speak, crabs scurry echo ear, sanding land water sky
Cracked you laugh, fight to return, wanting to drown
The no-time sense enticing
Feet and head argue, body follows course
That course of safety and regret
Exhilaration
You'll never forget
Timeless made new, imagination
Making tracks in mind and shifting worlds

Denis Streeter  5/6/13

Shard awakening

Wandering deserts wilderness song
Highs too hot, lows too cold
Traveling between mirage and mire
Shadow shocked past of present gone by
Into mist abyss where darkness crawls
Eels of salamanders eat dust light flame
And dust to ash all over again
Dusking dawn's awakening song
In millions of seed budding sand
Mysteries answering cry
Why
Soon as ships lighthouse shores
Mirage our present
Leviathan wake
Sinking depth our thoughts
Dormant bottles our ocean
Doormat truth and lies
Entering rooms as sand slips our tides
Shoring frailties and treasures
Washed plates clamshell spits of time
Over ocean roars our mind
Reaching tidal contradiction
Too much not enough
Jackals our night carrion morning
Mind stretch, snap, sometimes shatters
Dustpan ready removal
And dust to ashes all over again
In seed budding sand
Falter frailty treasures
Seed shard awakening.

Denis Streeter  4/28/13

Normal

the spaniel jibberjabbered its bronx in cardiac silence
fleeing the tippertape from flying carbuncles and fribberfrap
all in the talking of rug fried toothpicks and sadwrap wine
lessons in noodles were all for fishing
the trout was out player piano
got a goosestache instead
just the wax and settled for clear
in dreams of white and orange-gold
black and red tinting in tents
war called for bachelor quarters
in bleaches of wine gone turpenoid
all in a gas with a huff and a steam
the jackass removal a farmhold away
dusting its shirts in distancing shelves
all the corks popped up and sneezed
the baggage too long, the mustard too hide
and the screen before the trash compactor
eating stations of grace in long letter line
a long nose squiggle came unkempt
sniffing rafters shampoo left behind
in court rooms stout and beaverbuilt
ill chords of beef trout and tanner
the little molecules let get away
washed under sewers of severing clay
when tolstois just wanted to be loved, just loved
and kickercounters went splay and hay
done up in doodle racks and onion spring crime
knocking in noodlehead crabs of spray
doneforth fingerfangered
toothspring flaggered
haggard as buggerdeeboo
as lunch snapped the kite sky
seesaw as toodleloo
i gotta go
flingerflangered flish and flush.

Denis Streeter  4/27/13

Gray matter

My favorite cereal bowl broke
When I was attempting to mult-task
I screamed an utter cry of remorse for
The bowl that it had lived
For breakfast and dinner
As long as I can remember...
I swept the remains
Trying to be positive
At least my kitchen floor is cleaner
I wept the remains in the garbage
Placed a smaller bowl
For making my routine spirit cereal
Same as I had made it for 20 years
Routines change
I hate change
The smaller bowl too thin, not high enough
Porridge overflow, and I'm thinking
All the goal oriented people
How I have no goals
Except to be in the flow
Connect better with others
Write better
I put on my red plaid short sleeve shirt
Thinking that will somehow brighten my broken day
Peer out window
Gray...
Change from my black to gray jacket
Outside to car, sky seems gray-white luminescent
I look at jacket
It feels more gray, as if
I've absorbed the sky into my jacket
And the gray is seeping into my skin
That overwhelming...and I pray
For strength for the day
That the gray matter will not seep too far
And somehow I am given enough strength...
A poet friend stops by work and delivers
His handmade card with his illustration and my nonsense verse
I had written impromptu for him earlier
It's a wonderful thing to know that what you can inspire
Goes beyond your knowing
Your gray matter...darkening...lightening...
What's the matter

Denis Streeter  4/26/13

No vowel left behind

Saturday I watered the post and let them in
Stuck as angels caught in the wiring
Listening to the flat footed songs
Lessen by evening thoughtlessly thrown
Loosen by cavities storefront left behind
Clay vessels with claws detached
Wanting to wash my hands but I won't
Pouring warm porridge
Reach for a towel, read insanity clause
Warm cold dripping from heart
Let the south-west in
It's not a direction but a thought
Piece by piece piles come together
As they ought
Written in glass the arm cut off
And the parsing games began
A noun a vowel slowly drops out
Sitting on the toilet, flush behind
Round and round it goes
Down and down it goes
That old black magic.

Denis Streeter  3/23/13

the the

sometimes things work
sometimes they do
i was wandering my mind
thinking of spring clues
not there yet...
living the laughing zoo
captivating the cardboard kind
that mingling the the
shingling in zoos
comfortably fine
if not divine
then what...
the the gained power
the knots got broken and the fish went free
the powders pounded me sideways
i laught until the shoes went splinter
hofo in the afternoon where the eggs lay
littered in the the of the chime splintered grass
looking optimistic at the wings of dawn
the the climbed from its hiding place
placing shingles in the two bys
looking up i could see the the disappear
but only for a line or two
then it appeared with an n at the end
and the castles shingled the timbuktus
watching the antelope in eye drop pews
washing the wishing wells wait for temples
to open wire and shingle the plains
nothing to do but open the catshoe doors
drink the bumblebee stew
laugh the elements in two by twos
in posts and clues
the the disappeared
the shindig belly up
the adventure between the lines
the paper over and out
and the lunches split with the dinners
still looking for the then.

Denis Streeter   3/11/13

Kendal mints

I am a sugarholic.  I'm pretty frugal, but I've saved and scrimped to buy Romney Kendal mints from Cumbria, UK.  It's named after Kendal portrait painter George Romney...so let's leave politics out.  They were a favorite from my childhood.  It's like a hard mint slab that tastes a bit like a York Peppermint Patty...but SO much better.  It's pretty much pure glucose and peppermint oil.  Every year I would ask for some for Christmas and you could only get it at the REI.  Then they stopped carrying it...some ten or twenty years ago.  I finally got my sugar source.  The website for ordering is Kendal Corner.  Check it out.  The mint and fudge is the best...and it's fresher.  Try the Rum & Butter bar...it will grow on you.   I've share them all with my co-workers.  Some like the Rum & Butter bar best.  You end up paying twice the price with shipping, but it will arrive in about four days.  I tracked it.  It went from Cumbria, UK, to Carlisle, UK, to Castle Donnington, UK, to Philadelphia, PA, to Louisville, KY, to Seattle, to my front door.  This time it was five kilograms of candy...or eleven pounds...just under one hundred dollars.  It's so intoxicating delicious it's worth paying the shipping price...and per ounce it's not much more than any regular candy bar in the U.S.  I've made four shipments in the past three month...so yes...I'm addicted.  I mostly like the Kendal mint cake...for which they are famous...particularly on climbing expeditions.   I just ordered the extra strong mint cake this time...I could feel the taste shooting right through my eyeballs.  I think they're still glowing an hour later...but it's probably all the glucose.  It's an interesting website.  They also have a monthly quiz you can buy for one pound...thirty questions...with answers to last month's quiz.  I don't know the questions, but the answers were interesting and informative.  The money they collect for the quiz benefits a local Cumbria Catholic School.  I'll buy the quiz on my next order. Denis Streeter