My Return to Poems

Thanks for all the encouragement about recent stuff. Things are looking up and I'm happy with the new work I'm producing. Jon Peter's show is getting some good press like it was featured in TV Guide and that means maybe money would come out of it eventually? Who knows? But I've been writing some new poetry, same themes generally, but that doesn't bother me. I'm just excited how it's turning out. Here's the first new thing I've written.

Burials

In the midst of our family shakeup, I began to bury,
to time capsule the year of eleven.

I would drag old toys, an unwound cassette,

cellophaned birthday cards, my first and broken fishing rod—

to junk fill our paddleboat and glide out to the lilypads.

And like some addled scavenger, I’d swim my treasure down

deep into the sift, the shift ground grave of the murk.

The real trick to it was not to rile the lake floor

with impatience, kicks, expulsive breathing

or it’d smoke you in, eclipse your escape.

Because you needed calm to stare down the anomie,

to reach your hand down as far as you could,

the swirl of unglued clay, disintegrating beers,

through the guts of earth, past the skeletons of leaves,

fish eggs forgotten and looking for a berth,

and chittering, unscienced things.

And when I just about couldn’t leave,

when the muck hands clasped at my throat,

I’d spin and rise, the thing of me I’d brought

dropping and me, back, back to the air I needed.