[Not what you’re saying-saying, but the spirit of what’s said, the spirit saying,
freedoming neo combos emancipating body/soul from fiefdumbs of dualisms,
reductions, pursed-lip, low-fruit, law-abiding compunctions, make-work injunctions]

Keep

     kept Looking

inner & under the Light

Inside every lightning

Is an oak tree and

     A Pine cone

Different growings, growlings, trowlings in different stages of growth, body of tree,
soul of tree, differing visual permutations of green fuse driving the flower, temporal
and parallax, situated in, situating in time’s flow.

until and unless

   tip of the Pencil

pointedly Typewriter

Please look back

Over your left shoulder

Top of the point to you

       pretty Trains

orange as a Railroad

Olden times Religion

I’ll have Every Idea inventually

   even your Unventions

     who are above the lawn

Question your own authority

Gravid trees and cones and rods and cones attached to word conveyances and so
farflung, appleseed pencil, appleseed typewriters at once striking and marking,
magicing like tossed salt to apogees’-worth, smiles-high vantage wherefrom eyes
train to peekaboo’d choo-choos coloring sky off the rails, recoloring the fixates and
finites of earthbound one-track sky god addiction spurned per unlearning, confident
of defragging toward uploading preconceiveds to new conceptions, virtual and
inevitable reinvention eventually, what one thinks one knows as floating question
marks in fog above fallow fields in layers as near as we can configure, a weatherman’s
inversion, weathervane spinning for true north on the top, badges of pomp and snot
on the bottom, upside downsize, bottoms-up top-down resized contextualize.

As Herein, So Thereafter

       as Hereafter

a head held Astray

       held Askew

holding Slippery

jester of Diamonds

              kilter Doff

     knifty Forlorner

if not, then Far

little bitty Lightnings

       In a row

forward Dawn the Line

Slip lips sop sap

Slop laps sip soap

At the bend of the day

Around the blend

     Of the day

So arriving unlanded & sandwiched heads tiliting and thinking outside the box,
unholdable and firmly grasped harlequin riches leaning undressed in bereft and sadly
sweet and softly blanketing grandma’s bulletproof afgan, insulating sieve, head on
holey firmament rising to scan horizon, electric lookout, ducks in a row at sunup,
magic hour magic’s ours, twilit quacking, toeing the line, recalibrating like safecrackers
at dusk, yawny lisps rising to certain and tentative roars, forgoing easy money
frightnights for gaining sightlines while at a loss for words, pivot play pivoting the day,
livid the lay of the landed admixtures’ say.

are Yes again

       yam Aookes

yesterday’s Asparagus

yclept Apple core

universally Askance

under the bookshelf

   Snide artichokes

   breccia & gabbro

us plus us equals us

universally Eschew

Escargot & cargo

umbrellas are everything

       Say Hello

         to my Hat

Flea markets are Forever

   Like shooting

Goldfish in a Punchbowl

Finish them off by Noon

     The very bottom

     of the Non

Back atch ya fruit and vegetable bygones to currency sunny-banked on big questions,
under-cooked and undone and half-cocked knowledges’ revelations parboiled to
bedrock valences, lightness plusses and minuses in charges, some unanimous refusal
having truck with snails at snails’ paces, whatever slows and sluices the unexamined
incoming is all, greet one’s accoutrement bought anywhere, current’s currency easy-
money as priceless fish in infinite pond, anticipated chop-licking by midday to the top
of the yes, and pro, and embrace.

       Dogs of Gold

For the foreseeable future

High beams on the lowdown

   typewriterly Religions

yardsales in the junkyard

   Backwards in the day

   Therefore Thursday

take Nothing for granite

Leave nothing bee hive

   your Jaundiced July

   your Jolly January

   your Kind of Day

My kind of nighttime

Their kind of kindness

       Beware

           Of golden

     Dogfood

Priceless mutt as far as is known, fort knox knockers’ erect nipples’ incandescence of
teats hovering spilling spelled-out sacred white elephant curiosity shop, happy days
and months of bad dreams subsumed by milky-wayed flavors of duress undressed,
cautionary baubles popped per canines showing, unclad screams to glad reams.

Utility Cliches of Light

       Iump

   lumps

lump lump

innerly ooenists

     Roitibylar

Rooting

For the Home

         Team

Authentically faking the bumps in the written rode, taking the lumped neologs
internal to external appleseed sack seeding self as consumate cast, mulched, thriving.

hermetic Rust

gallinaceous

   egg fur

Eat the Time

Every rooster

has a treehouse

Every chicken

     is a Rose

Knocking the rust off dusting off the knockers back to the egg, embryonic rhyme-
eating, a cunt for every cock, nutting butt chime, unhanded every clock, de hunting
for grunting landlock, parsing and grafting tomatoes and potatoes, a flower for every
pollinating butterfly, every butterfly a flower.

John Crouse is a poet who works at a public library in New Mexico. We have known each other for 30 years. Look around and you will find some of the several thousand poems we have made together.