The Definition of Simple

Flat winds rattle doors and whistle hum outside the window. In fact, about ten or so windows. These Carolina room layouts. Traced along ridge lines just across the river. Bought for the view. Built for it too. The grass crunched like summertime this afternoon. The air only cooled around four o’clock and even then, not much. High of seventy five. What a time to be alive.

There are not enough words to describe the universe.
There aren’t even enough to describe us.

I want to be a writer.
And I am telling you to be wary of words.
Not of any one in particular.
But just feeling like there are already enough.

And that if words fail to describe something, it isn’t in existence.
Which is an irrational and divisive and intentionally manipulative position.

This whole mess is clay, right up until we cook it.

And it will become anything we make. So long as we keep cooking.

It has been raining for just about a billion years. But dirt still behaves as if it never saw it coming. Now that is love. Or at the very least. That’s something. Mud sliding down mountainsides and rocks choking valleys and water swallowing high school gymnasiums.

How has it all not settled down by now?
After all of this time, how is the definition of simple
still changing?

#2017

He is on the floor in the bedroom, crying after
realizing his father lost his father years ago.
Bringing in new years like groceries from the car.
Leaving them out on the counter too long.
Not real until the plastic they came in are gone.
Two thousand and seventeen in brown paper bags
on the stove.

He is spilling four shots of moonshine at one time
and letting strangers in cigar shops
offend him in the name of Christ.

Hearing story’s full weight and his knees
are unbuckling. He is standing up
to grandfather fears and millennial tears
and new God damned years.