you have aged
you must start looking up


Brad Elterman, Gene Simmons and Brooke Shields, 1979

Oh Yes
-- by Charles Bukowski

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.


Brothers on Sunday Night
-- by Frank Stanford

We'd been dreaming
Or at least I had
About peanuts that grow in the river
And oozed sap
When you bit them

A woman bootlegger shook her dustmop
That was the moon

In the fields
Something barren like a journey
And echoes of salt
Sprinkled deep on the table

Where they said the young mother
Walked into the water

With her dress full of rocks
I laid down
And ate a peck of bruised peaches

A fisherman went to sleep on his mule
Riding to the store
For a roll of wax paper
Then we heard
Shouting that tore out the light.


Happiness
-- by Mike White

fills
half a room

no one around
to lift the thing

all those parts

after a while
you give up

even dusting