morning,
made shy by
window coverings.
Author Archives: Zak
i watched a 13 year old girl of less than 100 pounds kick the face clean off another, terrified, i have been scrabbling like a duck ever since
thank you
for your wishes
of kindness.
seams split, fabric fades and comes back vividly
walk through a parking
lot, mountains in
the distance ahead
of me, mountains
under unfathomable gallons
of ocean behind me.
it looks very inviting
a man, walking by
with coffee in his warm hands,
stops into the small shop
i am in, saying,
“the window looks
more open and bright,
it looks very inviting”.
i worked in a wine shop with an Italian man who would say with a shrug, “for me, it is good”
make it
more
palatable.
the girl i don’t know at all is here and she is my nemesis and wouldn’t you know it but she has that golden down snap neck coat just like i’ve always coveted
i think i’m manic
again, i think i think
i think i think
too much
and i think i’m
manic again.
most of my friends don’t have time to talk so instead i talk to dreams
people in positions
of traditional leadership
rarely lead in
any meaningful way.
my friend Rick in Washington who i have never met and do not know at all was supposed to send me an email confirming the reality of a 10 pound box of tart red cherries, dried.
we have
very specific preferences in how
we communicate;
give me eyes, give me
pupils.
people walk by on the dock, looking into my windows. mostly, when we see each other, they quickly avert their swimming pool’d eyes
i do not know
how this plumbing
works, in a floating
home made of plastic.
odd electronic music from Japan, black coffee from Guatemala, beguiling human body from a confused planet
even dread
has its excitement.
the theme of the week is “hot” and the theme of the month is “pride” and the theme of the day is “neither cold nor shameful, but mild and fatigued”
in the parking lot
with the 12 portly black rubber
dumpsters, a man
pulls up in his beaten gray
gas wheezing vehicle.
emptying a tube of silicone onto the toe rail of a sailboat in an effort to stop a chronic leak ahead of an impending rain storm
every day is a nice day
mostly i write so i can titularly quote Denis Johnson, and mostly i wake to ocean so as to know how to breathe
i know a man, know that he
exists, though know little else
of him
if i drink a cup of coffee at 1030am well surely i’ll be fucked but since when have i ever lacked courage for bad decision?
we do not praise
the lord, no,
not the lord.
this State contains mountain and coastline and rainforest and desert and city and village and homestead and condo and boat and plane and many method of wheel and right now my roof is covered in rain
why have you made,
why do you make,
the choices you did,
you do?
i bought a milk foamer from a company in Singapore but was unhappy with the cheap plastic materials and lack of provided batteries so i wrote an email to them and complained
hello!
human being?
yes,
human being,
hello!
betony, betony, wood betony to calm down, down there in the moon’s mud, where there is only creation, never “good” nor “bad”
i have not
disabused myself of
the habit
of making myself
monstrous.
“i’ll probably never leave. is this strange? yes, wonderful and strange. the blades of the pasture stopped in the sun have had all the life cooked out of them by the drought–all the hope, the strength to grow, to suffer–and now”
i cannot wake up
so i can; drink
coffee until i can’t
see and burn
incense until i am
blind.
it isn’t really safe to touch people and i don’t much participate in casual physical contact and there is a dog on the dock just a few boats down from mine and i can still get a little shooting star of oxytocin if i pet this dog as i go trundling by
i lurch and shudder
as i walk.
my man Mike judges himself against a backdrop of slaughter; you catch one, he catches infinity
“You talk to Everyone!”
“There’s nothing left of the sky. Nothing. Why is that so beautiful?”
wake to anger, wake to pain
wake to blue skies ripened to rain
whitewater rafting in eastern Tennessee, well, that’s just something i have not done
today’s table is four
confident sea otters
on a dock borrowed from
morning.
“purple thang, gold hammers, yeah you clean as hell fool”
it is only May
in Alaska
so dusk comes
at a time of
dusk.
coffee is poured into a glass jar that once contained ghee in an effort to liquify the remnants of its solidity
early morning
in the harbor
and the fog hasn’t yet
burnt off.
inappropriate emails formed from formica and wood and eternities of water
the fresh water pump
leaks.
zakschafer.com 