There’s so much
going on here
it’s always worth
getting out of the car,
and if you listen
really quietly,
you can hear
the stream flowing
and these people
who survived
by eating weeds
and even talk
proudly about it.
Howie Good is on the pavement, thinking about the government.
It’s heartbreaking
and difficult
to hear about,
but beached whales
attract sharks,
and that’s when
she called the cops,
the three worst things
you can do.
Howie Good is still on the pavement, still thinking about the government.
There are many places
where a person can get lost
and not even realize it
until they are lost for good,
but maybe you did find
hints along the way,
seeing things that weren’t there,
the occasional escalator
going up into a vagina,
and if so, it would have been
like a Persian astronomer
from the 13th century
came to you in your sleep
and showed you the blue-
black smoke of stars,
and then, except for his dead voice,
everything would have burned
ten thousand times darker.
Howie Good is on the pavement, thinking about the government.
Little, very little,
almost nothing in fact,
just the blind howls
of a barren woman
giving birth to something
unexplainable
in a dark corner
of the attic.
One of Howie Good‘s latest books is Hitchhiking Through the Apocalypse (Grey Book Press).
The emptiness is real,
the starting point,
how it all feels,
the mother of all things,
a mule, the amoeba,
an expanse of trees
in the distance,
what the shade is like
under there,
only a few colors,
the only thing left,
a piece of music so familiar
I could play it
over again in my head.
Howie Good is on the pavement, thinking about the government.
A zillion raucous crows
in a bare, black tree
all the unread emails in an inbox
Howie Good is on the pavement, thinking about the government.
You closed your eyes to it,
and closed your mind to it,
ignored what was grabbing
for them with big, meaty hands,
and they ended up in the ovens,
but that’s why we need beauty,
fields that shimmer in the wind
and do it like it means everything.
Howie Good is on the pavement, thinking about the government.
The way all of it was dancing in the wind,
I thought was just so beautiful,
like some buried turbulence stirred up
by the back wash of a giant RV
hurtling down the highway
with a vodka-crazed angel at the wheel.
Howie Good is the author of The Loser’s Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize and forthcoming from Thoughtcrime Press.