Updated 07152022-110125
https://bit.ly/Feebleshttps://davidblue.wtf/feebles
A word arrangement by David Blue.
Copyright 2022, Extratone Media No rights reserved.
Cover designed by Catherine Trehy and Kaleb Martin.
Second Edition
ISBN: 0-692-66135-2
When one finds oneself with a warranting quantity of recognizable talent in word arrangement, but lacking in the discipline required for a respectable profession, I think a collection of this kind is a sort of inevitability. Feebles in Night is the aftermath of some five years of wholly irregular and nocturnal thought spillage and nostalgic memory fragments, but I have made my most valiant attempt to compile it in the definitively optimal manner for reader enjoyment, reflection, or inspiration. You’ll note my tendency to play with wordage - sometimes violently - but such is the privilege allowed me by this medium. From my perspective, it is perhaps the most essential quality to my works’ originality. It is my sincere hope that some soul-derived insight and value will be manifest for yours.
David Blue Columbia, Missouri, USA December, 2015
Belt-driven attic fan, curious Hearing punctual freight trains in the heavens already willing it to rub off Hard at work, building waiting excepting the chamber pot, inhaling cracking leather on the relic
Schwinn over Main’s embossed crossing past absentee-doted bushes over the driveway’s entry jagged canyon two creaking screendoors ...(leaves, leaked) pat the mouldsteps to the twineswing by the naked bulb’s pullchain with the best view of the forgotten sandbox where one could excavate clump’d plastic Shermans and creased Army men under the baby-powdered bathroom’s drain and remember The Bomb and smell death
It’s not good for it Always, Susan Suzanne, at least? I tried to cycle a gritty cap gun but cowboys bore me
It’s just candid cadence so his pacemaker’s ok, right? How tiring Tear a whole day from Kiwanis’ year Examining up and down, an auger under load ...than Ghandi, superior lucidity Asked politely to soften on the organ (pot-luckers absentmindedly exchange recipes and are es vee peas)
Granola flakes on colored paper but Slim was always with me from Peoria, thru-front flaring nibbling on a ham sandwich with a splintry broom entombed by the fireplace under die-casts and lanyards and taboos
Bite me, Cold I’ll stop at the y-lot No isn’t always no
Blacksheep from the secret tower rooms since forgotten stage wiring is infinitely more enchanting than distant cousins’ water balloons
Mesh-umbrella’d cheap labor born around her open switches and chandelier moods
The swath of energy, constant swivels over chaff and stalk, alike
I come down from the great pinging creature through the rainbow’d pockets of heat it’s already released I’m always thinking about the loyalty of gauges like simple friends or the starchiest click’d acquaintance, they point as best they can to the truest truth of the moment
Communication is never tangible but it can be aspired to through it you can tame voids or in haste, consume the fawn bedded neathe the stalks or ignore the odor until the flames lick out the hopper
Tell me
how the brigade goes earnestly chaining so we’ll visit at the bar later
Even hacking up black dust, I am grateful for my hours of seeing it through the panoramic window of the county bathysphere
I heard that you'd found a new family recently and I wondered how strange it would be for anyone to do with you the things we did once without knowing my name
I think about the condition of your fame as you approach your centennial and what people will say and what they haven't
I remember the day we met and an old white display covered in ashes
I was military marching through a muddy field full of tired old implements
Some had rusted beyond identification Others were clinging to the better side of the line between usefulness and nostalgia
It was so wet, the ground didn't seem itself It absorbed my cold rubber boots They made sucking noises in tune with their smacking against my calves
You sat with your ridiculous face Your fading orange paint
That big black cylinder with the flush pulley I couldn't stop staring at it
Some bolts were missing
Your wide bus steering wheel that left black grit and an old smell on my hands
I laughed at the placement of your pedals and the deckplating noise they made when depressed
I looked right and left and saw your cracked tires peeking above those old gray fenders like shoulders in perfect symmetry
The inside of your wheels attached to orange drum brakes with a mechanical rod
I pushed and pulled your shifter through old gears (without synchromesh) and watched the stale boot as it bent and split, its lips forming some personified embarrassing function
Even your cooling fan was orange, with the belt that drove it
Your throttle looked like an orange thermometer When I pulled it down through the notches, your fan sounded exactly like the great night fans on the grain bins (They could blow me over and hurt my ears)
I laughed, bouncing on your seat, enjoying the beauty in every angle
You were still a snotty little bully among larger equipment seventy years later
Front tires so thin, they appeared useless I loved watching them so much, I once lied to dad and said I didn't notice their sodding of the pasture grass as they tilted and turned
You must've seemed ahead of your time ten years after you were built A cute accessory to the returning soldier's ten acre paradise
The crowd moved about the field, following a red-striped auctioneer like old donkeys A mass of faded hats with bankrupt seed company logos, denim shirts, cigarettes, and Dickies coats
I'm guessing they smoked and laughed at crude jokes But honestly, I never bothered to notice
Though it was a little embarrassing when the mob surrounded us and the auctioneer used the word cute a few times
Oddly enough, we did make a pair, you and I A seven-year-old kid on a tractor ten times that
We weren't worth much to anyone, together or apart
You'd seen as much as my grandpa and you expected to sink down in that mud with dignity, holding eye contact with the old house as it shed shingles, both of you giggling at fate Appear in some old farmer's field of vision every once in a while In his thoughts, even less
The picture we made humored the murder members who'd had enough coffee, and I grew angry
The red-striped auctioneer yelled for someone to start you
I used a whir of little hands to convince your starter wewopwewopwopwewopwop I pulled out your choke You spat black black smoke that smelled of old lubricant remedies with exclamations on the can The whine of your orange fan As your blades turned to a solid translucent pancake
I carefully modulated your controls before looking up with pride But all we did was stop the smiling I hadn't redeemed you much I felt like crying
Somebody told me to stop your engine and the bidding began
Nobody was thrilled, the process reeked of obligation
I tried to figure out where your ears were so I could cover them
But then dad raised his hand and it didn't seem like much of a surprise We'd already been matched, you and I
All the others sensed it too, and went about their business of concealing wisdom
And so, we came to be together Dad's attempts at getting you on a trailer with a slipping clutch bore the first time I laughed at him
I laughed again when we drained your oil It smelled as if it had soured and looked like soupy cottage cheese
I laughed at your darting travel method
Dad called you squirrelly
I'm sure whoever made you was very confused about what you should be Not that it ever bothered me
We mowed a lot of grass I did a lot of sneezing The heads hit your grill and I wondered if you were allergic like me Maybe you wanted some antihistamines?
We didn't always mow straight or fast, but we'd get the job done
Our pace and reliability equally frustrating for dad
Remember that evening we mowed the acre patch West of your shed? On top of the hill, we could see the red sun as it began to hide in the neighbors' beans and you crawled through yellow fescue heads, humming in reliable intent
I know you were observing the moment like I was Maybe you thought, too of how we'd always be together
Twenty or thirty years from then we would live the same scene Except it would be somewhere a little colder where I wouldn't sneeze and the mower's discharge would smell of tea Dad wouldn't be there to be frustrated with us
I'd have my own money for gas to pour under your flying cap
I could drive you to school if I wanted to and show you to all my friends
We'd participate in those stupid parades, milling around town, throwing candy at children, looking our best
I'm sorry to say now I have no place to keep you where I'm living I'd get ticketed if I took you to school (I don't have any friends there anyway) I have no grass to mow and I'm not much fun anymore
So, I guess I shouldn't regret not coming to get you, or my lack of time spent with you there
I know what we had is something I'll be trying to get back for a very long time
Be glad you've aged so slowly
I leave you dotingly with fondness and well wishes I hope you dirty another conspirator's hands and that they will become a friend who will do with you all the things little boys and little tractors should do
creaking plastic camcorder tape the noise it makes red light catch up it drops up the sidewalk the sky is blue under haphazardly-scattered white veins wrapping around the entirety of everything a little less organized than the ones wiggling toward my hands (they weren’t visible, then) everything had some bright label on it the plastic seams itch my bug bites when I slip wobble wheel wing nut chlorined urine on the seat
It’s the smallness of wanton regiment that reminds one of the ever-approaching nothingness and the proximal moments stacked ahead to bar their dusk
The sound of the voice that should fill a last hour and the logistical implications of what if have come to weigh upon me as the leaves turn as the crawling things go, and leave me with peace enough to hear such silence and reflect upon the crowding teeth in my skull and permanence
We gave another bushel of apples to the sunroom yesterday, waiting for company to show
Windows are walls, late-rectifier in the country The old house with comparative vulnerability but never stagnancy moving more, always enough for the self to be grape ‘n’ blueberry-speckled ...cushion
.........traveling ......have to drone, clench .........ration attention supper slave, .........nodding attempting to contain escape-seeking Conserve tot lorde of constriction .........time-hung, the vicious ......wiggled ears ‘en virulent miracles
Live and step lightly, young lovers Live and step lightly, old friend
The bounty deceives and the sea is too deep
Seeds newly, unevenly, recently deposited in the soil black
Walk with your old boots v’d, joined at the back cover them
The world is my ashtray dare I seek the sight of the spider-laden sages or the dour children, falling or the new money-filled lake and its endless coves of desperate happening Perpetually breathless, accelerating in a fish tank
You’re the smell of the dusk heat escaping the city and the sound of fresh wind in my ears
Browning Locust leaves begin to blanket the little lagoon Tendral-stumps ratchet the bank in place
The ticks have gone away and the corn’s tasseling steadily cozies the world
Overgrown chicken coop rubble surrounds the shed, sterilized by desolate decades
The spaceship’s on the dirt behind the six-row
The old Oliver is my favorite friend
Reunion is always occasion and always as I’d left it
Observing imagined gondolas on canals through my bluegreen memory along with my own movements in reflection, unnecessary
The rats are real, at least
The romance of far-off water cities is lost on me, and the intricacy of companionship is mentioned far too little when the robin’s egg walls berode cigarette smoke and coffee
Rifles on the stoop Nature in the shag
between sleeping and waking, the viscerally pleasant scent of washing denim for working
Give the rain purpose and rut the soil for a season
Broken week of fever’d bedsickness with a drink of the brittled well’s tenacity Riddling with clay turns bounty to impressionably fickle reality
Earth curves away too soon the tilled horizon and the ill-grated gravel upon which so many have tried to outrun death’s Sunday morning apparition
A little of everything e v e r y t h i n g l i t t l e
Mothers on stilts above an energetic boil compressing the stream to break the universe as wholly as I can manage to fathom the distance to mind the gap that is, by clarity, widening
I should’ve tried harder to capture the essence of you but the few notes I knew couldn’t contain your ambition
Only you do I allow myself to wonder under everything, knee-to-chin
Metronomal knoll-combed clouds approach, suspending persistent exhaust wretch of absent infecting staying assured dystopic .........post-ing tick-teetering defaulted ritual ...martyring ......Croaking up flights .........muttering downwind their stumbles through life
She believed what was easier to believe
Movement in bitter vibrations about weighted clique in the sooted pit
Selling whatever and approaching some place to be saved, surreal or left or dead but included
There’s a love of the upset condition of leaving the bitterness in the bathroom
Fool me, but it’s expensive seeking and gluttoning the spirit medicine The muse of a thousand obstructions frighten amassed pulled anatomy of cowards to the drudged rhythm
Open something unwanted for wilting wanters tonight
Take it and you’ll thank everything give it all away
What is it, now?
Accompany me with your night to our hideaway from pleasant surprise
Glide me through what trees you give move’d about striding cruel stream
I am yours to reflect and bear with noble assumptions to reciprocally know across our existential divide
to divulge few precious cross-corridor smiles to know with only a rhythmic zest a favorite name
Such designed convergence! Such intentful patience! My escape in heavy air accepting as last heir to your sanctuary of apathy or so it seems in our newborn night lit by nearly-familiar intermittent tower lights to reveal a way devoid of purposeless reciprocation remind me occasionally, but not this night
To hum the music and dance in your beautiful retreat with the voice of a coincidence of a comfort of a pinnacle seen in sunlight one more time over the hedge by old plotting eyes that wonder’d in dignified legacy It was a shame
The voice of my dancer sustains necessary function to indulge our wary dark dabbling
Too occupied to sound off for warmth in kind that is appropriately distanced in disgust without fail, instinctually instantaneously
Briskly striding through the blackness without complaint or its language, paced by ancient intuition
Ye sure-footed sage Ye lethal lunar predator Killing as serenity obscured by silence’s sleepy wool
Stitched and bound by effort’s promise
Visible only as correct form to voluntarily carry noble titles through nostalgic undulations
O ’ l i t t l e c i t y o f q u i r k a n d c a l m W h o m o n l y I k n o w t r u l y , a l o n e
I drove my truck to the valley with a forty
I found a little peace I found a little respite, as had many before me
And it’s in such an affection that I lay
And I thanked, habitually In particular, nobody
And I remember the family in a similar state speaking old words of past lovers that had let themselves go
Perhaps, only in that moment, I wished them well
We are magnetic fission Elastic & wishing for the tide to come back
Geologically, I am as unstable as the summer sea
Wisdom & I at odds with mediocrity I cannot ask you to stabilize me
It takes bravery to kiss a ghost, but we have little else, pressing
The opulent dance on warming current, rising The anomalous pair through the little city, haunting Livid lightning in the gray gloom erratic stings hovered decorum on my sleepy peace Default equations writ the heart-turned-machine prosthetic in jest; hourglass emptying Draw of static sans companionship of loyal light Competent senses, an ultimate sentence when the clouds have so far descended Relentless .........endless Mist of all time, misremembered
Pedestrian solidity is ......past when the grain of the street is swept in my hour
My hour, when the city’s too cold for the lonely and sure and the contrast of the contact you won’t have owns one for a moment of serenity amongst splinted trees and resting doors
My silence is cosmic and my peace is the morning I am the mountain and its road I am the unseen envy of the unseen man My breath is rare and my hands are poets You could imagine the Holy night and its shedding When all the energy has gone and the streets are swept, I am life and death and home
I was told I’m not at peace of all things me, not co-existing with the sleeping streets every night while you were resting and seeking them in dreams which you chase away
Delicate whisper notes Fragile crystalline jewels in freefalling tumble down to my lips
They hang there in a minor wail The surface of the pool l rippled into hills Each crest in time with the soft balsa hammers striking my cheeks Light linen kisses
An allergy to conviction swells in the bleak face of beauty, cupped in my hands over the fading red-checkered fruitile carpet flooring the hotel lobby
I wonder if I’ll be allowed to slip for a moment and lapse some cognitive energy or if the cultists spy me for a cheap bust of pounding feet
Even so far away, I recompile while the strange metropolis sleeps, curious for the form of conformity manifesting before me like dwelling in the dreary aftermath of arranged comically diverse endeavors
For me, only? I remember our pilgrimage fondly Our starry Spring sabbatical With the swayful white lady and her leather hugs Evermore we knew for every silent home sauntered by
Only best friends can impart such generosity, wordlessly A piece of fatherhood, mutually
First-hand American grace, originally elegant
Cryptobotanical detergent odors stripe the city Luna has just hidden away, but I still see Polaris clearly I’m engaged in my shadowgrave, cresting mist in duality, paved The weary and their cars reviving ......idling I, as them with dew’d shoulders silk-enclosured
As horizons bezel gradients, startlers find no more entertainment in the beat and return with the owls to roost until the city goes back to sleep
There was a different smell that Spring We departed the country, but never left Mutual youthful surreality, kisses in the back seat
Nodding off with the river nomads, waking them before twilight with down-come discoursing on Muddy’s simmering thrash
Inexplicable stirring opposite outline’d bank as she savagely deepens Intermittently-corporeal, Bitter-ramp postulate, Ever-tumbling vertigate, Degenerate with a fountain pen and I catch a whiff of past Twain-toddling academic Mark-fetishing (Polishing half-desks with shaving cream) and I give a little tug on the knot that’s tethered me to the quaint little village; The outpost of lamplight on a bend of the widening Missouri
Graceful pressure elliptically to my lips
Faith .........the virus that topples ............hourly wages
They’ve bandaged the road with black toothpaste
We’ve come back dreary doom impending
My skull bounces against the window .........overtime Why couldn’t his skin to the glass be given? They’ve reduced wing-walking, strut-hammocking, and free-loving to bags of salted peanuts and vomit You could scoop the gray from the sky with a fish net
I ’ l l p r a y f o r y o u
My bare feet lose heat from the passing wet wind before gaining it back through the light of Sol ascending above yonder steeple My book’s pages require a defense from ranks of lonely morning spiders though they decrease from all-nighter sleepiness
My thumb rests unintentionally on the transmit button Our jokes are heard but not listened to
Methods methods methods glued together;
Communal confrontation
I break too many things that aren’t mine I’m too often forgiven
The clock on the ashen kitchen wall whistles on the third bird waves of sound carrying the soap smell It floats, Purpose-driven
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