Just leave me alone you giant bully
You engine of life
What right do you have
Poking and prodding the sleeping helpless
So painfully early in the morning
What resentment do you carry
What offense could we have thrown so far
Turn your fury elsewhere
For just another fifteen minutes
-T. Weeks
(A response to “A Voice from Death“)
At the edge of a small bay
Framed by stacks of black lava rock
A hundred people watch the water
Others stand in the water
Beads strung across the mouth of the bay
Splooshing and whapping they advance
Shrinking the bay with each step
Sliding over and around obstacles
They keep the line unbroken and noisy
The bay folds in on itself
Fish have nowhere to go but towards shore
Onlookers follow along
We all bunch up
Fish and humans
From the shore we can see a great school
Nervous yellow tangs looking for escape
The master of the ceremony steps forward
Releases a low note from the conch
Silence is returned by the crowd
He volleys back an ancient chant
We hold hands and sing
Words we don’t understand
Strangers and interlopers and appropriators
The rite doesn’t care who we are
It casts its spell anyway
Opening our eyes to this bay and its bounty
T. Weeks
(A response to “Osceola”)
Everything changed when the house flooded
And washed away the topsoil
All routines and havens washed away
Nothing left but us and skeletons of past usses
These remains over here are particularly interesting
They tell the story of stabby-poky
A playful mood most active at dusk
Feeding on water fights, tickling, and headlocks
Long ago stabby-poky was hunted to extinction
Because it was too scary
But there’s viable material here
Maybe we can get all Jurassic Park on it
-T. Weeks
(A response to “A Twilight Song“)
Predawn-mumbles spread into the hallway
Yawns and zippers and clips and buckles
This trip has been on the calendar all year
Now it’s here and no one is excited to be awake
In an hour we’ll be standing in a line
In two hours we’ll be sitting on a plane
In eight hours we’ll be in a new airport
Stale sweat from vinyl seats dried to our backs
Hurrying into a foreign scape
To collect fading memories
In twenty years we’ll dust them off
And pass them around the dinner table
For the hundredth time with the same punchlines
And the same unanswered calls to go back together
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Sounds of the Winter“)
Home but still there
Scaling rippled mountains
Like tigers’ shoulders
Charged and powerful
Remorseless and cold
T. Weeks
(A response to “A Christmas Greeting“)
Was it love at first sight
The falsest and ficklest of feelings
Or was it a week’s affair
Hardly less fleeting
Where in I fell in love
With this island between
Icy seas and tormented valleys
A holy temple for gold diggers
Of every generation to stake their claim
Among jewelry stores and bars
Selling knickknacks and conquest
To well-fed travelers
Who wander off floating castles
Where pilgrims and scoundrels
Find summer refuge
Taking their sacrament with the land
With boots and packs and fishing poles
Seeking alms from the tourists
To fund their worship
Of the towering wild
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Old Chants“)
Everywhere a trail goes
Someone has walked
Every peak with a name
Has been climbed
Forests called parks
Are amusement for the masses
But here I see forgotten mountains
Faceless valleys
Falls with no clever names
The wild wilderness
Void of destinations
After a trek out there
How do you tell anyone
Where you’ve been?
-T. Weeks
(A response to “To the Sun-Set Breeze“)
Work life
Life work
Work’s life
Life’s work
Work in life
Life in work
Work as life
Life as work
Work by life
Life by work
Work or life
Life or work
Work on life
Life on work
Work for life
Life for work
Work and life
Life and work
Work about life
Life about work
Work around life
Life around work
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Interpolation Sounds“)
Our plane dips down into the clouds
Gray sky-foam clumping at a shore
Tiny windows leave room for dull eyes
To clumsily stab at the mist
But they never make a dent
Then the currents shift
Clouds slide back into another sky
And we see
Dark hills and proud ridges
Glaciers twist like untamed sinews
White whisps gossip with the trees
And snicker about our butter-knife eyes
Our inadequacy to comprehend
This unfathomable impenetrable
Dark pulsing Lovecraftean ocean
From our cotton-poly dock
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Bravo, Paris Exposition“)
The cats whole body yawns
For the sixth time in an hour
Stretching it’s will
To get off the couch for a minute
And whimpers for its bowl to be filled
Does it even like this food
An irrelevant question
That full-claw effort to standup
Deserves a treat
At least it thinks so
Leave me alone cat
Your whining is interrupting my relaxation
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Long, Long Hence“)
Life Immense 