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