500 channels

I've been staring at the ceiling
all night, counting knot holes

in the pine wood and the
way streetlight glares

in the shadeless window pane,
making each slight strand of

spider webbing shiver
just so on silver breeze

and then collapse
it's span between old Cornish detail

and the cable wire
spooled in the corner

where the installer left it
years ago

before there was
such a thing

as having
500 hundred channels
and nothing to watch.

So Now What?

So the laughter takes us all
to another worse- day ever
that now graces diary pages
where ink runs to the margins
under tears and moisture
that rises from the grass
and falls from the trees.

So spins another day laughing
at the runs in the stockings of
pretty women for whom legs
are a religion of length and shape.

So laughter is not the cure for all that
ails the center of night,
but it is song that is barked like the glee
of seals in a circus act performing
Bach on so many tricycle horns.

So the shoe horn one brings to the jam session
can only play sole music is enough to
make us laugh again by the rise of the sun
when it comes over the hills and the mansions that
ruin the view of the coast line,

So the leather that was wasted on the sidewalk
is gone but the feet survive all the blisters
sweet potato blues could provide in a stretch of
Giving someone a hand for merely showing up
in not just a nick of time, but the whole block of wood as well.

So there is no peace under the stars
when we laugh at the sins of the fathers
who visit us in any hometown that can be hidden in.

So there’s a sign up ahead.

So who’s laughing now?