So many Disney movies

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

I am a corpse already. Still possessed by the courtesy to carry myself around. You’re welcome.
I am a democrat. Of course I’ve never affiliated with the party.
I am conservative. I’d rather not explain. You see?
I am an animal rights activist. But I also eat breakfast.
I am Christmas decorations and Thanksgiving mishistories and so many Disney movies it’s dizzying. My eyes. Two things I own that still regularly possess me. My only ways to see are not all that concerned with me. Aimed out the other way.

Vision isn’t for the beholder. Unlike eyes, that gets clearer as we get older.

The Pulse

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

I left her with the baby.
I left her with the bed.
And climbed down creaking stairs to pour coffee into my head.

To smell wet air off the pond.
And sugar off of trees.
Hear birds sing.
And thick dew plop like rain against star shaped sweet gum leaves.

I made coffee in the dark.
Found my book and the pen I like.
I took the shy dog out to be good.
We peed together at the edge of the woods.

Woke up at six in the morning for no good reason.
So I sat down, pen in hand.

Intent on writing one.

A Thousand Lakes

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

The grass comes up so green. No thing here wants for water.
The mud goes down for feet. They’ll drink all summer.
Their roots will run deep. Scorched earth in black cattle trails
washed all around and throughout the trees. Seriously.
Ground as black as coal. Framed by fields of emerald.
Horse and buggy hugging the shoulder and the driver must be getting wet.
Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cup out front just barely see their breath
join the fog in the air. They were once newborns. Foal legs unfold and tremble.
They’ll grow old and get winded and these good Amish will relinquish
their ancient technology into the earth. Not today though.
Ninety seven minutes from home. And the barn.
The familiar stall. The straw. And the dusty pile of hay.
That good sweet oat mule grain. Seed of something green.
Drinking deep. In the land of a thousand lakes
and short tempered rivers.

Where the grass doesn’t want for anything.

Revisiting Victory #1

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

You’re not needed, little one.
Buzzing in my ear from too much sugar over the years.
Pick-pocketing pink petals and violet ones alike.
And white heads with yellow daylight eyes on straight green stems
moving in whatever wind. But we tolerate one another, for the moment.

That is how it goes, when you’re in a place you do not own.
Like that bald spot on top of Hump Mountain.
Like Doll Flats, burned a year or so ago.

A trail of rotten earth beaten beneath so many ignorant feet.
Counting miles.
Counting calories.
Counting pounds.
Cutting down.

You’re not needed little one.
You can not come along.

I say this to all of the world not already stuffed inside my backpack.

I can not carry you.

From the sore-hand bow-saw days #oldjournals

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

Up until a few months ago I had no chainsaw.
I still cut wood though. Sawed posts
and beams split into rails
with a rusted, red-painted bow saw
and small arsenal of ax heads on cracked handles.

I even cut down a couple trees that were huge to me.
Literally towering.
Others might call them midsize, or small.

No heavy machinery whatsoever.
Usually alone.

I sought out shorter, easier obstacles to level.
Seeking trees growing right on top of one another
trunks wilting bark with huge gaping rotted out spots
to cut first.
I like to think these trees needed it.
Destined in short time all ready to fall.
But that thinking is flawed.

Every living-dying is fated demise
not being drug from its forest
nailed into your structure
cut to length and piled for your fire
to break apart
disappear
in a location of your desire
not the forest floor
upright where it dug
and drank
in every day of its existence
and I have to be okay with taking it.
Though I am.

A different.

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

A different time of night.

Smelly dog mouth yawning beside my nose.

Her head lays down closed.

I can’t go wrong. Do not worry.

Blue dog orange knife laid forgotten, or maybe misplaced.

There is a carved wood case holder, a sheath,
a vagina, a portal, shaped, etched, cut to fit
that shape and that shape and that shape.

She enjoyed herself in those caloric, ceramic, educational years.

We all participate tonight, and tomorrow, renew interest in tears,
while where did the hours go becomes what happened to all these years?

A poem about longing. And I forgot I asked a question,
so I take time to write out the words, out loud, on paper, out.
No saying no this evening. Or yes. No saying goes either.

But writing is a loophole. A carved wood case holder,
a sheath, a vagina, a portal, shaped, etched, cut to fit that shape.

The alphabet is misleading. But necessary.
Like a yardstick. In taking measurement.
But my mama also whooped me with it.