the art of not giving a shit

You would be something to me, maybe,
(you would be the world)
if I gave a shit
i would weave you into me
like a priceless
thread of gold across the
tapestry of my history
you'd be
the happy twist,
the thin wisp of a subplot
winding through my narrative like
a thirsty stream
only to explode suddenly, gloriously, unexpectedly into the
ocean vast and deep
or maybe you'd just be
my heart's deepest wish
murmured in half-sleeps.
maybe i would love you
more than words could hope
to explain, from a place
limitless in me. maybe I would
love you 'til it hurt. if i could love.
if i could hurt.
you would be something
(you might be everything) 
if i cared at all.
Thankfully,
i don't.
you're nothing
but a pronoun
in a careless poem.

Today's poem will be a journey to the heart of the hollow earth

travel the arid surface of a 
page until your pen finds just 
the place; then
drill!!
take no caution! take no care!
dust don't
dig or
not dig - it's breathless,
deathless - dig? so dig!
break those pores apart
exclaim, what a work of art!!
inject ink jets in lifeways
call it an effortless play in the sandbox
with baby pails and shovels
search and abandon the search
abandon the
humanity. Who needs it? What an artist!!!
oohaahoohaahooahhooahh
oooh wait! what?! oohaahoohaah
muscle?! blood! oohaahoohahh
heart??!
WE THOUGHT IT WAS HOLLOW DAMNIT THE EARTH'S CORE IS ON 
FIRE WHAT NOW

Madame Popova

**Based on the life of Madame Alexe Popova, a serial killer for hire whose sympathies lay with wives of brutes. She committed some 300 murders of husbands in the span of 30 years, until she was reported by a repentant wife to the police, to whom she remorselessly confessed her crimes, claiming that she'd freed "unhappy wives from their tyrants." She was executed in 1909.**


Madame Popova heard, 
with heart breaking 
beneath a rigid-faced guise,
the woman before her who spoke
through tears, aching 
of bruises and swollen black eyes.

When her tale was all told, Madame Popova rose;
with pity and fury she said,
"No more will you hurt. Take courage, dear lady!
Your troubles will lie with the dead!"

Madame Popova invited the lady
and her "troubles" to an afternoon tea,
and into the cup of the latter 
she slipped 
several drops 
of arsenic.
Then the lady thanked god to be free!

Three hundred such incidents, three decades later,
blindfolded, face turned to the sky,
said Madame Popova, "I do not regret
the liberty of any tyrannized wife."


Thus, guiltless she passed from waking to rest.
The firing squad put a hole in her breast
and she breathed
not again; that was
the end
of the Madame Popova's life. 

the game (II) -- God stuffs me in his pants before I can figure it out

A poem is a risk, and a temptation.
It begins with God
(a thought has tickled his palm) groping with eager hands
in his pocket for a coin. Then suddenly

Off I go! I find myself spinning rapidly, flicked
on like a light switch, revealing my faces: agony and elation -
oh the torture! oh the ecstasy! I'm a loonie

in this pocket of the universe
wondering where I will fall between
obscurity and triteness

hoping today for the latter like "my love is beyond words."
I would like to be as sincere as my
heart beating
silently,
certainly,

but I settle with a
vague little "flump!" in God's lined palm.
I lay myself out like an X
in some corner of your mind,
and hope you'll find me out 
from the text where I hide 
from the risk and the temptation of
whatever I write.

wisdom of trees

A man who was broken came upon an ancient tree,
and begged, "Great grandfather oak, teach me how to be
stable, for I lack the strength to face this life."
The tree replied, "Climb these limbs of mine, child, and see
whence my strength derives." The man did so. When
his face met open sky, he saw the
leaves dancing like careless children. The oak explained,
"Mid-summer noons, angry autumn winds, jealous frosts, prideful showers
weather me, each as each will. I don't resist,
but move when I am moved, sway when
there is music. In that concurrent movement
is stability." The man, for he saw, leant against that aged tree
and set his heart free, as his roots grew
deep, deep, toward his quiet home.

on a summer evening

on days I love being alive,
i worry i'll get carried away with the wind,
rise from my toenails where
i hang around like fungus ironically
commenting on the smell,
move through my intestines,
wind upwards through the ribs
and get to know my heart
a little. Then I'll float right through
this skull of mine and fly

like a strand of hair, twirled between
the fingers of some ancient, loving spirit,

on a head of 7 billion hairs
that've all felt the wind
and thought poetry of it. 

So i resist beauty.

i don't comment on the stars
although they still my buzzing brain; i try not to mention clouds
though I would like to dangle my feet off one and 
wonder at the world spinning and blinking; i think, but never say,
that we are all notes of the sweetest song played
upon the strings that hold humanity
together like a gift from the universe; and i would never, ever, ever,  tell you that
my love for you is as deep as the ocean,
though it is true. Poets are supposed to be new,
poignant like a death adder strike (so i've heard)

and i worry it's just not very edgy or new
to say "i'm glad to be sharing a wonderful world with you."