boiled meat

Fear Is

There are no more stories, not like we used to hear.
No beginnings, middles, ends. There is always
A chair made of sticks from the forest out back
And someone telling us to not sit
for fear of it cracking under our weight;
a father who whistles nothing in particular
as he mows the lawn; a teenager rooftop and naked
crystallizing his hope into one long scream;
always a child pointing a finger into the dark
Saying “scary, scary”. August, 5, 1994—

Light. Airy. Apathetic
Might be a better word. The cow dung had been sifted
For fertilizer. Significant in only it was another day
Of sifting shit and nothing of true significance had happened.
A man who loaded his S10 up with said fertilizer recounted
How his son had died of cancer. Reheating macaroni
The day he found out, he watched
The digital numbers on his microwave
Pass into nothing
And he said it was the first time he was ever
truly aware of every moment.
He lost his appetite quickly like a single note
Pressing into an empty room, a syllable
Of hollowness in his midsection. Fear

Is not disease, nor darkness, nor the cracking of sticks
When a voice trumpets the air jolting a man
From his chair; fear sieves stories into oblivion,
Into a place where they cannot rise up, clog the nostrils,
Clump in the lungs, satisfy the slightest need
For music. Fear is lack of meaning.

Back in the 50’s Miles played something new; it still is.