Bestsellers

Bestsellers

Sometimes I stand in the book aisle at Kroger
and read just the first lines of the bestsellers,
thinking how those lines caught an editor’s attention.
Often I'm dumbfounded by their dumbness, but sometimes
caught just enough to stand there and keep reading--the ink,
as someone once said, dribbling from my mouth.

Other times I sample a single grape from the open bags
in the produce department, pretending I'm checking for ripeness
but really just stealing a grape. That special sweetness.
I wonder how a single grape fits into the world-wide late capitalist agro-industrial complex.
I wonder how a single line of a book can erase the grocery store, its parking lot, my city, my sorrows, and all the world except my willing leap into a story.
It was purple, and ripe, and the rain was falling...

Privet

Privet
David Noah
2-26-14

I pull privet from the dirt with both fists
and think the world a better place, knowing,

as I bend, that privet makes endless lace
beneath my feet:  its grasp exceeds my reach.

Every day I throw away one true thought
as though thoughts were ocean and truth was rain,

and still go on living, never minding
the loss or missing the sound that it made.