seeing/saying: January 2014

Friday, January 31, 2014

Log rolled

Then pulped

Stumpage

Stinks up

The valley's

Page blank

Impossible

Climates

To limp

Ledger booked

And lasting

Choking up

Hollers

These hills

Do stick

In spite of

The saw

To sound down

The mountains

Bared to a sky

Over written

Tom McGlynn

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Careless lee

Global positions

Tracking round

The house

Arrested

Have taken on

Lives

Of their own

Mapping portless

Specterships

Run out

Before

Any storm

Is piled

Driven by

Walking beam

Bore done

And slave

Cylindrics

What trade

Be it ever

Triangle rang

To circle rare

And angled

Chords

Of perfect

Square in

Center fugue

States

Wither wither

Wither we

Whither

Wither we

Whither

We wither

Tom McGlynn

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

What hasn’t widened

Has gone mute

And arch

Ignore the tidy

Arrangements

Will be one

Full

These pockets

Are

To secret

Leave

The night

Without

Your key

Tom McGlynn

Sunday, January 26, 2014

The smell

Of rats

And piss

Brings acrid

Life

To life

No hygiene

Matches

That

Nor spleen

To flush

A vein

Lingering

It wafts

A way

Precarious

But sure

Tom McGlynn

Now when

The clapboards

Creak

And out of plumb

Racks gently

Shall a here

Be taken

Back

Tom McGlynn

Friday, January 24, 2014

A warden

In a common law

Shakes solemn

Common dreams

Of simple

Reasoned schemes

And slacks

To pay

The whip

Pray tell

Your rummaging

Pray tell

A thousand points

Go dimly out

A host

To wash

Your feet

Circling

And circling

The restless host

Goes circling

Honed to gnaw

Eternal grace

Rut to rut

And deepening

Inscribed in earth

A drawn out fear

A worried bone

Examining

No resolve

Is stood

For here

When freedom is

Just days

Away

Tom McGlynn

Thursday, January 23, 2014

They must be

Freshly dead

Whose shapes

Were met

As clotted earth

Were met

As shadows

In the fog

Greeted warmly

Tottering

Their time

Was spent

In puttering

To safe a place

From stuttering

To damp the shock

And run the line

From home to hell

And back again

Quick work

Was made

Of then

They must be

Freshly dead

Again

Tom McGlynn

The cold has dried

The wetting wind

A block of air

Now settles in

A block of air

The perfect form

Unthinkingly

To keep me

Warm

Tom McGlynn

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

To sleep

I'd have

A cipher

To dream

I'd have

A sum

To beat

I'd have

A window

To see

I'd have

To drum

To love

I'd have

A reason

To think

I'd have

A heart

To stay

I'd have

A sound

To hear

I'd have

To part

Tom McGlynn

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Thy fastness

Cleft

Deep sourcey

Last

My riven

Skull

Breaks floatly

Past

A way

A head

A strivers stroke

Can't stem

The waves

Below me

Broke

Tom McGlynn

Monday, January 20, 2014

Get out

Bright spirit

Polished dim

Over mute

Entanglements

Uncalled for tongues

Remit or quit

Your clucking cheek

Poor circling

Arouse arise

Unendingly

Cut and cut

The blackened loop

A running time

A stamping die

Acquitting rumors

Thin of mouth

Of a paucity

Of chin

Empty out infirmaries

Enormities

Of sickened waits

Clenched and lonely

Aftermaths

Counting on

And on and on

Get out

Bright spirit

Polished dim

A moral coil

To slip anew

Tom McGlynn

Sunday, January 19, 2014

The river road

A door

To a bend

In winter sits

Across the bridge

Tom McGlynn

Saturday, January 18, 2014

We who jigged out

Of sacred home

When litanies were young

Sought a simple air

Then disposed

To leaping

(This walk up

May remains

In our possession)

New developments

Block dream luxury

In low wing

Apartments

Woke an idling

Alarm

The tar flats

Of the last roof

Late dawning dark

Comfort

The nighthawks

Wheeling

Under the moon

Evicted

Tom McGlynn

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Where is the book

I half- read

The part

Where the going

Got thick

Half read

And again

Misplaced

My mark

And now

The thing

Itself

Is lost

The cost

Tom McGlynn

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Up on a time

The ceiling

Raised

A space

To allow

A future lit

What permits

Were drawn

Up were

Drawn up

Were drawn

The blue stones

Erupt

With roots

Of no standing

Around

The block

Follows

A mumbling tax

When cornered

It follows

Unevenly

Square

Tom McGlynn

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Present

Not accounted

For who

Says so

Well I ought to

Watch my step

And face

The music

This is turning

Out to be

Another science

Project

Can I have

That

In writing

Thanks

What

Is considered

Customary

To break

My words

Tom McGlynn

Sunday, January 12, 2014

A second story

Man

Made out

To fix

A fall

Founding in

The first

A fence

Refused

To give

Architecture

Has its place

As filler

For the rest

Tom McGlynn

This is the way

We shape the brick

The way the sun

Obeys the mud

Laid down

In rows

Then lived in

This place

Takes

More than

Ordering

Tom McGlynn

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Mute is

As habit does

Keeping up

As speechless

Will

The longer day

Last checked

My wrist

A straggle beat

Is dragging time

Many lives

Have come

At once

Again

To take

Their place

Crowded

Silent

Here

Tom McGlynn

Friday, January 10, 2014

For everything

Unquite

And lout

Would split

Of course

Them that clings

And them that falls

Spirits

Level

Fear

Truss

And brace

For eddy

Sake

Twisted beam

The stronger

Hold

Tom McGlynn

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Tenderly I brushy limn

The dearest claw

And sprouted skin

That pose of stalk

And neck-bent back

The loping walk

The feral lack

Dappled green

And scumbled brown

A prancing scene

A feather crown

A footed hare

Or wooly bear

To lay a way

What's never there

Tom McGlynn

Eyes burnt

Talking

To lids

Twist focus

In slicing

Cold sockets

Worked by

Keeping up

Nerves

In constant

Cross crawling

Swallow heaps

Circle warren

Of years

Cloud stuck

Screen

Whistling

Empty storm

Banking slowly

Losing bolt

Tom McGlynn

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Down from the north

Are we

Called

The people

Up from the south

Are we

Called

The people

Out of the east

Are we

Called

The people

In from the west

Are we

Called

The people

Tom McGlynn

Over an endless step

Counting all the way

Ten

His son

Did say and say

Well was primed

The anxious lark

The udder full

The spotted sheep

All or none

These moving

Heard

The billowed flock

The dreaming bird

Ten

His son

Did add it up

Until the nine

Had had enough

Tom McGlynn

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

I saw the letters

Four on fire

Past they flew

Across a glaze

Then freeze

Beyond

A missing pane

Their square magic

To profane

Tom McGlynn

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Set up

On end

Your plank

Ply it

Between rising

And fallen

Find the open

Skull of ground

Divine

Or work

A steady plane

Approximate

This rangey root

To sheer caress

Its plumb

Too much this way

Or that

A misshapen peg

Becoming man

The forest idle

Sprigs a trade

Itinerate

Pulling its keep

This way or that

Tom McGlynn

Friday, January 3, 2014

One walnut

On a blue plate

Will stay

Unopened

The night

Tom McGlynn

Thursday, January 2, 2014

To touch

The canyon sides

To race the moon

Below its rim

Or to bear

A heart so carved

To beat the rapids

Rushing

An alluvial suspension

Of the painted desert

That was to come

Is a cause

Way remembered

But too picturesque

For laddered sands

To hold

A drinking gourd

Can mimic a well

Until its sound

Is empty

Then it becomes

A drum

Calling forth

A lizard thirst

Tom McGlynn

When that Yankee boy

Last cried mama

He lay helpless

Illuminated by fire

Her frosted charge

In winter

Souvenir hunters

Scrounge their histories

Soon after

Blood runs cold

Cheap knockoffs

Molded- felt kepis

Stacked in battlefield parks

A summer amusement

False allegiance

And phony wars
Are

Like TV

Offensive

The glory of blood

Frozen in ditches

Remains the earth's

Farmed out

To dumb tourists

Turning over sons

Tom McGlynn

The tenacity

Of winter leaves

Is a sorry song

For leaving

Since when

Do the trees

Care for ornament

It takes more

Than a wandering liar

To root an oak

Which braves

The winter

Singing

Tom McGlynn

Dancing ghosts

Wizard- trapped
In a tar box

Aimed at the sun

Then gilded

Relieved the miner's

Loneliness

Stuck then

In bottomless cups

Those nickel parlors

Newly made

For leisure

Never failed

To entertain

A distance

Over and over

Strove the blackened face

His tipple- head creaking

Shafts of daylight

Burnt into dreams

This dance of veils

Was hand- colored

Wavering

In its charm

When the light

Became made by

Industry known

To poison wells

The miner's pail

Claimed a trophy

Released from inside

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

The small herd

Kept

Stamping and steaming

In the thawing field

Oblique slabs

Subdued

By the sun grimly greeted

Gave no regard

For feedless me

And ignored

The killdeer's cries

Throw from hoof print

To hoof print

Between earth-stained turfs

Attempting an illusion

Of omniscience

Far from the sea's idea

Of a home

Which rang

In the sand

Of my hollowed ears

A desperate art

This misplaced dedication

To heritage

In the afternoon

Receding

Tom McGlynn

A distant form at first

Bear- backed

In the snow

Breathed in the musk

Of a hunter's unwashed

Whiskey sleep

Then raised up

It's tail

The scent that led

Beneath the house

Had been erased

By naphthalene

Abhorrent to

A nesting stink

The skunk in winter

Was far afield

Of its nose

An embarrassment

In daytime

Pushed closer

By decorum

To black and white

Tom McGlynn