There are so many ways to find satisfaction!
Today,
the crust end
of a loaf of French bread,
the unwanted remnant of last night’s dinner,
inspired me to pull vinegar and oil
from my imagination,
and make something crusty
delicious.

Saul Nadatas last blog post..Dinner Party

Connie: I feel yours too, in a different way.

Pearl: yours is amazing, “different”, and still reverberating for me. I particularly like the slangy beginning and the last 4 lines.

Riding away on your bike
its motor droning
on and on in the still night
as if that was
the only sound
and you
disappearing you
my single focus
the one point of consciousness into which
that whole hushed night
poured
stopped
hung
just before
it stretched out into
lengthening silence
on the endless road.

When I’m hungry I eat
When I eat I eat what I like
Or what is convenient at least
And that is my undoing
I should be eating what I don’t like
I should eat less
Or I should eat more
Or I should keep a schedule
Whatever the case I should change my life
So that I don’t eat when I want
And I don’t eat what I want
And somehow that will make a difference
Maybe
Which would be fine
If it would end at some point
But it can’t end
You have to keep this up
One day
Next day
Forever
Because the moment you turn your back
Fat walks right through the door and sits down
I’ve seen you thin bastards
Eating whatever you want
Or suffering through a healthy meal
Wondering about my self control
My lack of discipline
Let me tell you something
You judgmental freaks
I drank those shakes for a year
I ate just meat and vegetables for a year
I ate no meat for eighteen months
I watched what I ate
I counted calories
I worked my ass off in the gym
Two meals a day
Three meals a day
Four meals a day
Five meals a day
And it worked
Or it didn’t
But sooner or later I want my life back
And it doesn’t rely on a conscious decision
Just a slip of the tongue
I want my food
I want to eat what I want to eat
And how many years will all this discipline buy me anyway
How many wretched
Food-obsessed years
Before I get my life back
Before I am free
Before I can relax in this damned war
Your diet doesn’t come with an exit strategy
So pardon my fat
Because I am through making myself miserable
Just so you can approve my lifestyle

but it’s faster to read the dead than the living
you can catch up on what the dead have been doing
without them moving on

the decay, slow, think leaf duff
if you must, the pleasant autumn rust scent
there isn’t anything weighted about
gone
passed
crossed over
time spent with them gets a better return
on the investment, only helps you get what needs to be covered
the meniscus bend the reeds

the ripples the silt
like a cement to feeling foot

If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.” – Lin-Chi

no one ever says why that man
has average ears as a distinguishing feature

maybe there’s a double-shot apple to the pineapple
drink up
bring
refreshments to any hour, vision
the depth of field of face blurs distant, well
spumed, artesian to earth core
wonder when the white water
will convert
molt
the stone shell face
having flamed
poured
done
H2O
too deep for that, forget about digging to China
the plates or the country of cartoon people under the toupee drawn earth

we have to get past our imagined smelly chafe of dirt and water
find the veins that run oil in aquefers, lit with
miles away spark
firewall coming in grain and vein of pulp

Connie: Thanks for the heads-up. I can now imagine your poem with lines indented, stepped across the page. Even so, I think it works well as it is.

On Hearing of Her Death this Morning

On hearing of her death
There was at first
silence
With a lower case
The poems would have to wait
The dishes
fermenting in the sink
Would reek in a couple of days
I didn’t care
I didn’t even think of them

piling up in disbelief
like the years that lay between
us, the ugly words spoken
hastily breaking
the lines of communication

Her last grand exit astoundingly precise
leaving us all
breathless
speechless
With wonder at this amazing
Secret, this final dramatic performance
alone and so
absolutely
final

The applause is deafening and

Like the silence
final
with
No encore possible

Only the remnants of a life
executed with the precision
Of Stanislosky at his best
Or worst
As the role might be

She was indeed an amazing woman
And an amazingly tough woman
to know
her son said

There is more
And in time I may
speak of it

But today
I watch forty-years melt down the drain
Of regret, because in the end
There was only this silence
This terrible silence
This silence that
keeps on ringing
In my ear as I pull her pictures from
The scrapbook of our lives and only
want the manuscript returned.