Farms--- 2nd draft---- another start-----

Seems....
I'm always leaving
farms,
barns,
silos,
and rusty farm implements,
buried in tall grass,
chicory,
field bindweed, and poison ivy.
Forbidden places to a child:
Rotten rafters in barn caverns,
quicksand silage,
tetanus iron teeth.

Crops cry out their memories:
brazen wheat, bronze weapons in copper fields,
pink laced with pesticides,
Winter tears/tares
give green hope
on sullen days in Febraury.
Milo wrapped in sandburs
on a wooden trailer
pulled by the dust blue Ford pickup;
a triceratops of a tractor ....

Facebook

I use Facebook to tell if you are alive...

Am I alive in Facebook to you?

Farms- First Draft

Seems ....
I'm always leaving....
farms.....
(track of land)
house,
(fossilized limestone and white clapboard)
green ranch frosted with a cedar deck,
barn,
( weathered wood top, set on stone, , metal roofs on Douglas fir, lodge pole pine.)
silos,
( death in fermented silage, forbidden to a child's foot...
the black kitten, crying death on wood islands we threw her way...)
told of quick sand silage death.
crops,
(Winter wheat, green- topped in frozen Februaries,
golden June summer wheat plays
with death in milo, tangled in sand burrs
our bodies found as we burrowed for warmth,
feeding Herefords in hibernating buffalo grass pastures.
buffalo wallows give way to Chisholm trail ruts and wild cedar Christmas trees.
Woodland Resource for wintering black tail deer, China town flumes, sugar pines and Christ tree firs. Pussy willows hidden in Manzanita brush, elderberry and sage.)

II.

From Sylvan Grove to Abilene.
From Kansas to Oregon.
From Sterling Creek to Medford.
From Denver to Nebraska.

I've been planted- sown-
on so many farms....
uprooted to grow again.
When life is finally yanked,
like foxtails in an asparagus bed,
I'll wake
in my Savior's arms.

III.
Here.

Kansas loam, rich
in composted prairie roots,
Nebraska lowlands- sand from ancient seas...
Water drains southward...
Oregon volcanic clay...
tree roots pierce the mountains -
river valleys, top soil heavy.

Here:

Adiophera:
altar, liturgy, crosses....

a little yank
a little death
wheels crank West,
leaving bits,
behind,
clumps cling to spokes,
fall discarded,
littering the trail.

I sometimes sneak
earthy backward peeks
to see if I should retrieve,
hold,
abandon?
What will survive the Continental Divide?

IV.

It's the Earthly Divide
I strain to meet...
understand.
To the East drains my life through sandy soil.
To the West
death percolates
in pyroclastic soil.

It's embedded in my fingernails....
ground into my skin....
foot dust fro lowland hills that meets the riverbeds.
I drown myself daily,
River wise in my Savior.

V.
I rise past mountain highs
and earthly atmosphere,
dead in dirt/earth farms.

I know Heaven is where I leave the farm behind...
I'll cease behind tractor plows, cutting combines,
and chainsaw blades chewing through cambium rings....

Eyes closed in death-
I'll be glad to leave the farm behind-
My eyes will open in my Savior....

Fractions

"Represent your thinking with a model and some numbers. Watch for things that happen over and over.

What happens when 4 kids share 3 pancakes? How much pancake will each kid get?

4 pancakes?

5 pancakes?

6 pancakes?

Write at least one observation about the relationship between kids and pancakes.

What is happening over and over?

What conjectures can you make about what you are noticing?"

The math words
march militantly
across
the paper.
brain parts freeze.
only algorithms
are roaming from cell to cell.
It was the regularity of patterns
that gave the answer.
It took 1 1/2 to get 3/4.


All I wanted was one.

I observe:

I can't draw you.
Dividing you leaves decimals
in my heart.
Synapses
sputter, zap, fizzle, and burn.
The chasms in my basal ganglia
collapse,
bridges
that go nowhere.

The silent words
benumb the hemispheres
in my mind.
Equal parts,
a fair share,
matter dished up
as cevelle de veau,
a side of sweetbreads.
consume
consumate,
conceal,
congeal.

If I am the numerator
and you the denominator,
and we are a mixed fraction,
what do we know?
That it is improper?
That we must make it common?

Do we divide?
Add?


Let the fractions roar!
Howl in their division.

I could cut the fourths to twelfths,
but what I really want
is two halves
to be one.

to model the fraction,
to make sense,
to conjecture,
and justify.

for less
to become more...

the freedom of the brain
to think
feel,
a whole.

Writing

Joan Didion perhaps said it better in this way, "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/college-readiness-writing-to-learn-ben-johnson?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=writetolearn

Back to Corinth

We are back to Corinth,
the macellum, marketplace,
Pre-Christian paganism-
gods worshiped on street
signs
and Doctor's offices.
Sacrifices of baby blood,
flaying or wrinkled skin- sin?
free range,
organic,
grass fed beef,
charred on backyard altars.

Death appeases death.
Natural causes beget natural events.
Materialistic Naturalism.
All to keep the Creator out of Creation.

Death is not natural,
right or good....
It is not a law of relativity,
a spider web
spun on Creation's legs.
a gravity of dew
dragging silk
to dirt.
Earth,composting its shame.

It is not an intent
of God.
A mandate of man or woman
nor pearly white bite of razor teeth
against a sheltered neck
of woods that hides
a snake
in pursuit
of...
... the sneeze, fever ache,
rolling stomach.
Cancer in veins of fat,
Adipocere,

river creases tunneling skin,
are not naturally from God,
but from Eve's ravishing bite
and Adam's acquiescence.

I am stalked
from office to lab
from test to pharmacy....
little resurrection of pills.

A disorder of God's creation:
the cough a sign of death-
a blackened death
mirrored
in our humanity
our father's death-
Adam
slave of soiled sin,
dead in dust in a puff of wind.

Death mirrors rebellion
in our making gods of ourselves-
a wicked queen
in an evil gilded mirror.

The illness a sign of our death.
Healings a little resurrection.
....

Stubborn poems!

I've been working on a couple of poems and I just don't like how they are turning out. I like some of the lines but not the rest. So I will preserve until it comes to me or not.

Endings , again....

I may be thrown away.
I may be grieving and in mourning,
but I know at least I got some great poetry out of it.
I am alive.
I hurt.
I bleed tears...
I love...
I hate...
I am....