Imaginary ordinary

january

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:54:00 +0000

the sun in january
angles of decrease skyscrapers
across the darkening sky
with purple glass

lights of jets for stars
high clouds breaking
to pink yolks
the city in light snow
it's sizzling sound

and streets with their chop of slush
they beg
to be left alone

scenes full of the fast forgetting
of every place your gut would go
every hand whose tendon lines
you've traced
each face whose bones you know.

absurd, the moon, by parking lot

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 05:35:00 +0000

the sky may

be where the absurd night

mounts, the moon with

bald placidity

functions by the laws of

the substance of her body

great milky dust of

countless generalities

gusting

into the space

past where her orbit runs

in this empty parking lot

i could almost trace

the seams of her light.

the ultrasound

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 05:58:00 +0000

in the lobby as i help you unwrap
from the cold, your abdomen
almost bursting from the black of your coat,
i am so happy for the life in you
and the life in you
turned inside out

becomes a girl, the tech
explains, as she pins the little butterflies
of heartbeats across the screen

Song for Summer

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:01:00 +0000

One road trip with the wife=theme of the the open road in everything for months. Here's one.

The rock and roll

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Gave the piano a try a while back.
College memories...
Save it for the rock and roll.

ubi sunt

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 05:06:00 +0000

the morning has a new
cloth, the clouds are the blush
of winter
the skyline is old and brushed
by jet exhaust, curling
grey and
gone
by the time I park my car

how they made her up for her casket
with her skin stretched tight
newborn
in every aged person
the shade of sunrise on november

does everyone slide by these tall places
wonder how the world would ever
be built again less
one soul, solid rock?
how 90 years
will have you?

halloween, portland ave.

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 03:29:00 +0000

the living grey squirrel
stops on portland ave
at a lump of grey smeared
on the middle lane

her tail shakes three or four times
rapidly, like a kind of warning

kids
dressed as kinds
of animal are coming out
of the masks of houses

some October
a long time ago
we felt
able
to make this game of
the winterlong fear of starving

the squirrel crosses Portland
raises more burial mounds of nuts.
I have never heard
any mourning in its chatter.

the nameplate leigh

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:21:00 +0000

the nameplate leigh

when the leaves fell

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 03:33:00 +0000

1
it was by rain at night
under the gas station light
the wind picked up, the rusty
conversion van dropped a slab of red
crusted trim from the base of the door

the bucket seats showed electric blue
velour, the backrests in track
pants balanced some strip of blonde
lacquered wood

the leaves will always fall
but wind is the best way
keep the nozzle nestled in the trap
door, right hip
eyes idle on the guage

the rain starts from sky
takes the van from the underside.

2
She had lung problems
and believed in miracles
that's why we never moved out of the molding
trailer
and he took to following religion
he would stand by the television
and look out the forward window like this ship
still took a captain

the hitch prowed out the bottom lip
of the single wide, we looked under once
to find the wheels. they were
rotting and split but we still thought
they might roll and imagined
the might to push off this slab and down the road

3
when the leaves fell on a rainy autumn
night it was the last
the roof could hold off the thin red pool
that formed over the master bedroom
it was the night
the rain ran in her chest
and she could not cough it out

we left. i think we had in mind
a hospital but the tank was almost empty
and dad stopped at the exxon.
the trees are not the same when it gets late.
they get spiritual, she said. she asked to walk
around the station lot and we stopped at the sidewalk
where one old maple across the street
shook sheets of gold down
blowing across the awning lights
the place got spiritual, sure, i can't
really tell it, like two places, but one
there are no more words for there
they pull back like sap from slender branches
when the leaves fall

Song for the road

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:13:00 +0000

Let's go roving.

Another very short song

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 03:41:00 +0000

Little folk song.

we should read more essay

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:36:00 +0000

certain things like
david foster wallace on john
updike and the way
you realize the peculiarity of the american
brand of loneliness and how ugly
solitude looks from outside
the narrative you catch yourself whispering
to your internal protagonist

and here in another world
lewis describes a beam of sunlight
in an old shed
and then the stepping up and looking
right through the old roof to trees and sun and sky
and also
how it is for God
who has to live with each one of us
outside and in
and still to find us lovable
and i want to set down the book
and run to each person i care for
and some i don't but would like to give another try

and i would be shy to
give understanding a go, now
but i believe it may be that
there is a reason God is invisible
but with his presence free

today, when we left the city

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 04:33:00 +0000

you were commenting
on the little pieces of life that we see
of the people we pass
while on the overpass
that overlooks the Minneapolis skyline
an obese child was skipping
with ungainly joy
and i don't want to mention the obesity
but it made the gladness of her jumps
so pure

we were leaving
out on the open road
headed west toward the crops
of corn and soy
and soy and corn and corn
the wind had the first coolness of autumn
and the last dampness of summer
it made the skin of my arm
feel like a very soft rubber

when we stopped to hike
we took the overlook trail
the trail that nobody wants
because of the two trails you can take
it is the one that goes on, dead-ending
further up the hill

and it doesn't show
its blooming prairie flowers
until you come out into the sun
and the tall grass and the glacial rocks
the bluestem, the prairie turnip, the worn
out coneflowers and the locust
washed against us like a course dry tongue
where we lay at the top facing straight into sky
and i think it wondered
about this little piece of life that was us
and it seemed glad
to see our joy.

why they brought the extra microphone

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 03:42:00 +0000

it was just to have a simple oooh
a sort of note
that is so very expressive
it requires
a sideways slant and swing
it holds the place of words
we don't quite know

what are the things
one doesn't know how to put
where do they reside?

they seem to be attracted to your hair
lost thoughts and ones
i finally gave up on
they like to sing
the backing parts of countless pop songs
at the slightest breeze
shoo bop
na na na

after the rain, in his favorite time of night

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 03:39:00 +0000

my son
has crept down the stairs
and sidled
beside me

how well he already understands
as he says
looking at the night
through the open window
screen beaded with the remains
of the rain

as he says
of the crickets and the hush
hush of the passing tires
that it is
his favorite time of night

how well he understands
this buys him
several moments before
i can stand to send him back to bed.

and calm the placid afternoon. the house you grew up in. peter, paul, and mary.

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:16:00 +0000

it is the painting

of a sailing ship with sails

distended above the sea

frothy as a coca-cola

santa claus

it is the classic way

the sun shines across

roads that head toward the corn

and the way you will sometimes

realize or not realize

the love you bear

when the air smells like green and pollen

yes i do understand

how this all seems

so placidly bourgeois
placed in matte-board
of the color mauve
and a frame of sandy oak
comment on tannins and other things
we do not understand
you can feel for yourself how it puckers

you can feel for yourself how sunlight
sometimes is not real sunlight
like peter, paul, and mary
how can any day be as beautiful as this when
measured in the angle of your eyes
toward a spot how many hours away?

it is the painting
above distended couch fabric
it is the way that nice things go
the way that florals make no scenery
and the patterns feature ribbons or
figures of people at windows where
sunlight could not be threaded
and little clocks of blue and lampposts and things
are papered down the walls.

anthony, saint of lost things

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 04:38:00 +0000

picture this

it is the mississippi

below the falls of st. anthony

like a lady descends the stair

she is old fashioned, she

pulls at her dark skirts

white ruffles of her petticoats flow delicate

and dangerous

and there is a certain spot

that may catch your eye

where the water dips impossibly down

like a spot where a thing

may be lost

and it seems impossible

new water without a new course

and even the undulations

the perturbations of her descending

are like mathematical equations where you carry

long decimals until they repeat and the answer

is made up of differences that are very small

like the amount of knowing

that makes a thing turn found.

Waltz

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 04:33:00 +0000

If you can't think of something to sing, just do another whoa oh oh oh.

Waltzing

then, just as quickly as it started

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 03:57:00 +0000

we are all

save me from

the fatalist pronouncements

and then the little raindrops

fell like bells

upon the steeple of our umbrella

and under it the catch of the wind

the belief in flying

a temporary height and the ground seemed

so soft it could only be painted in little daubs

very quickly

and these could be our steps

the way we quickened and laughed

and in that first rain

there is a smell of the air of anything

anything at all at any moment

my pocketed hand

fingering a little scrap of something

some quotidian paper laundered once

or twice, the edge of it

fascinating my fingertips

and then

we were at the door and we flung it open

when you were in I stopped on the threshold

holding the collapsed

black umbrella

I shook it like an old dog.

chanson de roland

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 03:52:00 +0000

hi, i'm roland.

there's beer

in the fridge.

mike a hot pocket.

have a seat.

this is a fight

to keep

things safe.

don't bother

about the walls

watch your gates.

the horns

can wait

and wait and wait and wait.

A thought experiment

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:13:00 +0000

Here's what you do. You need to find a topic that is controversial but that you don't care or have strong opinion about. If that isn't possible for you, you will have to find another experiment to do, sorry.

Then, you find a web article about it. You can read this or not as you choose.

Then, go to the comments portion. Read a lot of them. If the comments to not divide into about 3 or 4 perspective with increasing levels of restatement for emphasis, test conditions are not right, and you will have to bide your time for another environment.

Now, you must analyze the feelings you have in response. If that consists of revulsion at these vulgar folks who have nothing better to do with their time, you need to lighten up and open up and also probably come down a peg or two. But, the idea here is that you are testing to measure the sway. We will assume that you can be swayed many ways here, and that there are at least some comments from each perspective that are sufficiently well-put to have effect on you.

However, my results indicate this:

1. This is a good experiment on the nature of the interplay between underlying convictions and the role of logic or argument or expression in the formulation of one's outlook at any given time.

1a. You will find that you can be swayed in multiple directions if you haven't already developed a perspective.

1b. You will find that you will be very unlikely to be swayed sufficiently at this point to develop a conviction, simply by the arguments, but may begin to develop a tendency that could be further developed if you became interested enough in this topic. (Conviction as a function of interest...hmmm, that suddenly is striking to me for some reason).

1c. You may find two types of intelligence: a "brute" intelligence that is forceful and unrefined, and a "refined" intelligence that is more anemic and self-referential but probably easier to read.

1c1. Brute intelligence represents thoughts that are effective, but language that employs fewer transformative rules.

1c2 Refined intelligence may represent weak thoughts that employ language that allows them to be expressed quite complexly via transformative rules.

2. If done carefully, this experiment may help you to understand your own process for creation of "persuasive" or "argumentative" statements, which can be valuable in the way it reveals to you an underlying structure to your thought you may not have fully noticed before, particularly if you are one who employs more complex syntactic structures in general.

amateur ukulele night

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:07:00 +0000

dispatch

former hippie

we started a song about a sad woman

the story was just too much to chew

and on and on

the office merged with psychedelic

management with zen

and any direction you take man

long enough

ministry of silly walks all full of fife and sousaphone and drum

but the ukulele comes around again

every time it is the curve of your cheekbones

and the pluck of your tongue

and it is a dancing song

a close your eyes and swaying song

there are waves

you went to cali to catch

and there are waves you didn't know

they crash and crash and crash

to the curious each day throws its gauntlet down

the gift of love

how i am so curious for you

and the song so long

when a coffee shop was hip and hot

and the night was long and jazz and the snip of snapped fingers

at each pause

so this is how it feels to be lonely

and it is all a remembering

without any of you being here to make it sweet

and one day life is a place that is far away and the ukulele

comes back around

pick a way and the waves

wherever they are crash all the way to there

the things you can escape any old day

are the things that wait and never go away

mojo wifi and the battery strength

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 03:37:00 +0000

you can take it

seriously

to a point. then the funky pastels

and the pointy shoes get jarring.

look, we didn't

understand some things. the way

when you arrive

you don't want to anymore. the way

it's more than a hymn to the lake district

and the hand shading the eyes.

your skin starts to wrinkle

there's a leak somewhere

around the middle I think

life is like

things found down by the river

I found a fishing hook and lure

I was so scared of that rusty prick.

you know when you go into the stores

with the video of you coming in on the screen

ah, that copy of me always catches my eye

life cracks down the windshield

let the grass mosaic this road

let sentiment leak down acquaduct eyes

let us guess about tomorrow

uncork your ventricles and brandish that stone thing

you picked up back there

these are all things that were thought by them

in an airport on their wifi with all the people everywhere walking

with their signals weak. every grammar leaks. you've

spoke since you were two and I love you for that

whoever you are and however you speak.

We shall be delivered

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:10:00 +0000

deliverance will come

simple little song

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:56:00 +0000

My thing is you.