I was all empty,
fully transparent;
anything said
immediately materialized
into grammatical objects
on the chain of events

I filled the mug with coffee
at all times and always,
perhaps oiled out
in an old painting
by one of the Dutch masters,
surface cracked,
up for restoration
- or maybe hung out
on the horizon of events,
thinking about myself

All brains are thinking
about themselves

Bare feet feel the floors,
tiptoe down staircases,
morning stars shining
through windows,
reaching into tense houses,
standing erect
with stiff shoulders,
the day forced on the living,
knees half way down their legs,
elbows out on their arms
somewhere,
chimneys smoking,
everything turning

The more imaginative
raise their hands
in front of their faces;
move them around
in fancy motions,
pondering the mechanical
ingenuity
of their intricate patterns

- but these beings hardly reach
some kind of awareness
before they fade,
some of them leaving faint traces
in notebooks;
others just evaporating,
silences echoing
with nothings to say,
words budding
through all kinds of futures
and pasts

Teeth were there to be picked

Skeletons were mechanical playmates;
the long last
was long and lasting

My brother was soldering
something
in an old valve radio,
must've been the late 1950s,
I recall the smell of the iron,
the gray smoke rising
in delicate, thin swirls
between our faces,
the dog lying asleep over on the bed

The barn had not yet burned

Winter was hard;
a farmhand
- his breath rising like smoke -
was heating the spark plug motor
of an old Massey Ferguson tractor
with a blowtorch,
the vehicle shed doors open,
the intense white noise
scorching the barnyard,

caps pulled down,
gloves on in the cold,
the day fresh and dangerous