Elan Mudrow
Smidgens
Street Fair
1. 1. Repeat offender vendors
Who set up to break down
2. The song remains the same
Only the avenue changes.
3. Livingroom rehearsed musicians
Exposing themselves to the elements
Of being ignored
4. Shaky Kombucha addicts
Wait in line for their fix
Of sour fermentation
5. Corporate bakeries pretend
To be small time organic
Moms and pops
6. Petitioners harass people
Who already agree with them
7. Two Goth girls act like it’s the eighties
Even though they were born in the nineties
8. A misting tent at the hostel.
Finally, those stinky street kids
Can get a shower.
9. Fresh locally roasted coffee
Imported from Central America
Stationed in Airstream trailers
Strategically placed at every other intersection
10. Fresh squeezed lemonade
Direct from concentrate
Add sugar — $1.00 extra
11. Weekend hippies with dusty new top hats
Complimented with a crow feather
Pot-leaf t-shirt and Birkenstocks….
They know that computer coding Monday
Is only a sunset away
It’s called “back to virtual reality”.
12. Fortune tellers conjuring narratives
For the fortunate few
“I see a person in your life”
It just so happens, we all do.
13. Beer gardens on both ends
Making sure the stumbling
Hop alongs stay within the fair
14. Local insurance office
Sets up a bounce house
Proving that accidents do happen
15. Smoked ribs and other carcasses
On display
16. New Seasons Market booth
Stocks out-of-season produce.
Hey, it’s in the name
They are making up new seasons
As they go.
17. Hemp totes, hemp ropes
Hemp ladders, hemp matters
Hemp paper, hemp traders
Dopes on hemp, hemp belts on dopes
18. Clown balloon “artists”
Makes swords
For kids to thwack the shit out
Of each another
Americans learn young
19. “Free hot dogs and pop!”
As long as stomachs last
Polyrhythm
Our bodies move between layers
Like leaves, who dance beneath
Aggressive heat….waiting….
For the bite of upcoming chill
Who consumes, as it always will
Our cycle of touch and thought
Bending our tired sinews caught
In ignorance of the ground
Soon to lie upon.
Clinging to a self-definition
Initiated by our budding
That first feast….consummation of light
With dry edges we seek to extend feelings
Of old sparking petals who love stealing
Shafts of pounding earthly bound sun.
We are aware from first dew milk dawn
That we know, all life is sandwiched
Between larger vacuums of cold
And upon completion
When knowledge plays its last card
Our bodies, without consent
Refuse to stop dancing
I see the leaves swirl violently
With their skeletons
More fiercely then they did
When juicy bodies of greenest complexion
Took in all elemental surprise
To drink the sun with the smoothest of hands
Loveliest of faces and shapely skin…Now
Twirling brown, far into new year’s play
When snow melts for the aggressor’s return
Many have been paved into soil.
Beaten into pulp by the very planet
Who supplemented their synthesis
Becoming the very ground they never knew
Awareness isn’t everything
Life doesn’t necessarily use it
All of the time
Neither does love
Even though we think they should
We are dancing now
Within our own selfish lovemaking
Applying our eternalness
To the world
Wondering why no one else
Can feel the strength of our sprout
I choose to lay underneath you
For my body is glistening with
A hope I have no name for
World Wide Word Debt
Word Debt has been published.
Smile Baking
I bake this smile
To a golden brown grin
It’s my choice
How it curls upon my face
I can set the timer
To tender and loving
Or longer
To smug and smartass… you see
I will shape it as I see fit
Perhaps, I will add more
Snappy sugar…and
it’ll be a tender smartass
A lover of smug, or a crispy smirk
I cook this happy crescent cookie
With my own kind of dough
If perchance, my smile
Were to run into your frown
During a cake walk
Don’t get uptight
We’ve all dealt with fallen sweets
Redefine your dough
Maybe you need a pinch
More pompous in the mix
Or a tidbit less sneer
Ask your lover for a bit more butter
Measure the milk
Using your own cup
Don’t let anyone
Put your smile in the oven
Before it has had time
To rise
Seeing
My eyes can only look outward.
They seek, witness, and search
No singular thoughts of their own
Catching movement and color
Concentrating on sound sources
Sorting light and darkness
Outside binary restraints
Transmitting their way
into an inner vision
Processed with thought
Mixed with a wrinkling of the brow
A flutter of lashes, a blink.
These sights compacted
Into image decisions, imagination
Facts and fabrication
An arrangement of details
Strings of incidents
Missed, found and realized
So much have I entrusted
To their capabilities of capturing
Life into a collection of slides
Time squeezed into perception
Frozen cubes of memory
Distorted by the recurring frosts
Floods, and droughts
That have passed before them…yet
I am one with their innate faculty
While I’m aware
They swim in fluidity.
I am dependent upon
A constant act of focusing
I ask if you trust my voice
With such eyes as I have?
Can I tell you of beauty?
For my representations
Can only amount to
An anthology of my own
Seeing
Now, as I have before
Watch your lips move
As the sound of your story
Reaches my eyes
Nacre
I open my laptop
Hoping to find a pearl,
A poem within
The cold metal shell
Warmed by my touch
As the keys move with
Currents, tides, waves
Settling in diverse pools.
But, sometimes poems
Slip out as granules of sand
Nuisances, unfiltered….Having
Their own kind of rough beauty.
I have hope for them
For I believe and must believe
As any parent must believe…that
I have a three chambered heart
Cat Watch
My cat does not pass judgement
Nor does he profile.
If he were to guess wrong
About my sneaky movements in the kitchen,
He has not made an assumption.
He’s acting upon detailed information.
For I have been known to
Pass out a treat or two……three or four.
And If some friend or snackless fool,
A human like me…..
……..Were to be lurking around my kitchen
For no good reason,
Perhaps for a glass of water
Or to eat an innocent chocolate chip cookie,
My cat pays no mind to them.
You see, even though we all
Are enamored with Pokemon Go,
Watch Justin Bieber’s hair with avid interest
And wonder who having sex
On Game Of Thrones,
My cat is smart enough to know
Who passes out treats.
Regardless of how our limbs,
Voices, yawns and wants are placed together—
The trick is that…
He must see an “individual”
Individual
Dig a hand into the treat bag
Dishing out the good stuff
Before he knows for certain
What’s going down
He makes no educated guess
No theory
No scholarly charts of bias are involved
No gathering of tendencies
No cat debates that rhetorically argue
About which kind of human gives out snacks
And which kind of human does not
No, guessing happens
Maybe if my cat were to watch more
“Reality” television.
He would think
Every human is a potential snack thug.
Then….
No move in the kitchen would
Be ignored,
Everyone in the kitchen
Must be scanned
Profiled, suspicious of treat dealing
In the dark, dark corners of the dining room.
He would watch all of us
Very, very, very, very carefully
And cautiously.
He might even rub against a leg
Just to make sure that no tricky movements
Were perpetrated against his food bowl
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