on some days. just not today.

by Paul Octavius via thiscitycalledearth

CHICKEN STORM by Jeremy Radin

Musta been like a thousand chickens come flyin’ up from the other side’a 

that hill. I spent my whole life knowin’ them chickens couldn’t fly & then 

here they come, a sunrise’a crazy brown feathers, up from the other side’a 

that hill. Ain’t no explanation for it, I know that. My wife, well, she stood 

next t’me, squeezed my hand & said oh kinda soft, as the chickens p’kew-

wwwed into the clouds. They disappeared in them clouds. Then the next 

thing, there’s eggs everywhere, fallin’ from the sky. & each time them 

eggs hit the ground & burst like watermelons, there’d be more chickens. 

Tiny chickens – but not chicks, y’see,  grown-up adult chickens, but ti-

ny like yer fist or yer knee or a cup’a coffee, that’d go zoomin’ up after 

them original chickens & droppin’ eggs’a their own & then tinier chick-

ens came from them eggs & so on & so forth til there’s chickens the 

size’a houseflies & dust mites & most likely chickens ya can’t even see 

& we’re standin’ baffled in a hurricane’a chickens or dust cloud’a chick-

ens or like a flashflood’a chickens. & in the barn the horses are screamin’ 

like they got necks full’a devils. Just stampin’ their hooves & screamin’, 

like maybe scared out their damn minds. Or maybe like us.  Me & this

woman, my wife, whose ticker’s a good onion, who’s pressin’ her lips 

t’my lips in the middle’a this chicken storm like maybe we always been 

this young.

from his upcoming book Slow Dance With Sasquatch. It’s pretty awesome.

The family my wife nannies for just had twins and unfortunately the twins are having a rough go of it. So we’re doing the March of Dimes’ March for Babies on this upcoming May 5th. Amazingly we already met our initial small goal and it would be great to be able to raise even more for the thousands of children in need. Anyone who is able to sponsor our team please do consider it and visit our page here. Thank you so much for those who have already helped and to those considering it!

The shadows of the trees click 
keeping time on the highway.
Nothing ever on the radio.
Different city
same afternoon sun
sparkling heavy
like costume jewelry.
Poetry
what a dirty river.
But I will bathe in it
bathe here
in the place 
where my hair 
became gold horns
where the enamel of my teeth
found honey and became that.
Where the camels carried
the swaths of silk
under the bored 
and naked sun, the desert 
only something to cross,
jewelers cave,
the genie in a tea cup
erupting in fire and soot
riding a black tree of smoke
his fingers holding 
his toes to the sky
giggling out wishes.
50 pounds of poems
in the trunk of a car
I do not own.
Tonight I will sleep
on a couch
near a beach.
A bay of water 
north of the warm Atlantic.
The lighthouse in me
is sometimes a lighthouse.
Sometimes a ball of gasoline.
Sometimes a sack 
of quarters sometimes
a sack of pennies
sometimes a sack.
Flapping in the wind
of an open car
or on the floor
or waiting to be 
filled and emptied
again and again.
Mountains poured
all over the carpet.

Peter was in the other room with his thing in a girl.
Oscar was passed out on the piano, spilling his brain.
There was a bright chandelier in the big room hanging 
like a painting made of light and everyone at the party 
was passing their molecules between paper cups, trying 
to walk through walls with words but not doing it very well 
I had on a pair of old school Reeboks I had found–the Pump.
Like the ones that came out in middle school I’d never owned. 
I looked fresh, my pockets full of mercury, Jupiter was retrograde 
in the house of crestfallen that my hair was crisper than his was,
sharper than his was, my little songs tuned in the key of swag
but my future was just as precariously perched in the present
as everyone else in the house. All our firecrackers were busy
eyeing everybody else’s fireworks up wondering if our sparks 
were colorful enough, our bang as loud as others, our fuses 
the longest or the shortest, some -est to stand out in a crowd.
When Peter walked out of the bedroom just off of the kitchen
I was in the library, reading Moby Dick upside down, hoping 
nobody would notice I had forgotten my shoelaces at home.
Peter had blood coming out of his nose and he was laughing 
like a coyote too skinny to catch a rabbit. The girl he was with–
her name was Maria–she had on gold shoes. I knew the caves 
that both of them were living inside of, had cut my name deep
into the same walls. All of us here had. In the dark we kept on 
trying to light something that we could call fire, call warmth,
but we were too scared by what its light might reveal.

I love my moons better than myself
I love my Dr John better than  myself
the girls dressed in jeans and teeth better than myself
the sunlight pouring through the cracks of the afternoon
falling between the slats

I love the music more than myself
love the leaves twisting their thin bodies in an orange chorus
the tongue of my wife’s heart
the electric fence of its touch
how it puts the palms of God burning over my eyes
I see the shadows of gunslingers 
the ghost towns they come from
the silhouettes of what they walked out of
lit in reverse inside my skin
I love the New Orleans
the ancient and current New Orleans
the rag of its musical barbershop
the bloody pole on the wall
painting its hot and sharp notes across
I love my belly opened 
and quivering a bowl of raccoons 
plotting under the crescent and full plate
how the bugle of my heart announces a flag rising
how the clarinet is a river of darkness that floats out of my love’s fingers

how even in the cold wind of the Providence 
the poem pulls itself out of my skeleton
how thin the skin is
how thin the coat
how tin of sound it rings under the clatter the battle the barrage of fingerbone
o Louis
O Louis
your dixie rose
burning in the red light
the coal wiped lips of your mother lost under the bridge
how I love the blanket of your grin
the forest of your black skin
this I love more than myself

the astronomy of the Lord
the observatory in faces
how the stranger is a telescope into some new definition of self
how the closet door slammed and then opened
can tumble forth constellations
tripping over their shins to lust over us
to claim our memories as their lungs
I love the science the biology of the brain 
the atoms of the soul
the mountainous mountain 
rising out of the land to get a better look at its brother sea
and the sun the glorious sun punching its armless fists 
out of the complacent clouds
to find my hands 

Walking past the manor
a light in a third floor dormer window on
with music coming out of it
singing out to find me below
like a serenade in reverse
a slight draw over the violin strings
like a thin knife across the metal hands of the moon
a slow pull of the bucket out of the well
with some other collection of strings
perhaps a harp
perhaps a cello
perhaps another violin
being plucked 
like drops of gold 
moving out of water