shorts on Friday
snow on Tuesday
move along, nothing to see here
/ / /
19 April 2022
Pittsfield MA
Category: Massachusetts
Furusato
This atarashii town
is the place where I umareta,
but I don’t yet know its michi or tori.
I don’t have a sumu basho.
Last night I ate heibon Mexican food
at a restaurant whose iriguchi
I had trouble finding in the pouring ame.
The path to antei is long.
/ / /
15 April 2022
Pittsfield MA
Based on experiment #80 by Charles Bernstein.
(NaPoWriMo Day 15)
Leave a Commentratty sparrow
teeters on a bench
in front of the old high school
/ / /
14 April 2022
Pittsfield MA
Oh, Mexico
for CC
This sandwich is named for a James Taylor song.
It has Mexico in the name because … guac, I guess?
While eating it I learn that my friend has never heard of JT.
I take our shared frame of reference for granted,
but it’s a smaller frame than our pictures require.
We send one another photos of London streets
and Berkshire marshes.
Voice notes sailing the ocean faster than any ship.
Back in my office, I look into the eyes of a Funko Pop Tom Baker.
What a weird old world it is.
Have a jelly baby.
/ / /
13 April 2022
Pittsfield MA
(NaPoWriMo Day 13)
Leave a Commentwaiting to go in
cars in both directions
headed to their own round holes
/ / /
13 April 2022
Pittsfield MA
back in the lot
three broken RVs
& a pickup on blocks
/ / /
12 April 2022
Pittsfield MA
Derelict
As I leave work, the anxiety sets in.
Heart racing, fast breaths.
After five weeks of safety
it’s back to the van.
Nowhere to go, on the hunt
for a safe place to park.
I walk along a marsh trail
after parking in the first place
I ever slept in a car.
It was fun then, a shared adventure.
Tonight I need the sound of the birds
and the feeling of the breeze
to dry the tears
that suddenly spring to my eyes.
Later still I find a Walmart parking lot
with several broken-down RVs,
a pickup truck up on blocks,
a derelict school bus.
I’ll take a chance,
hope to avoid a knock.
/ / /
11 April 2022
Pittsfield MA
(NaPoWriMo Day 11)
Oasis
It’s such a cliché even Looney Tunes covered it:
the desperate man in the desert, crawling toward water.
In the cartoon he usually dives into the pond
to find only sand where he sought salvation.
Me, I’ll be driving a minivan to the water’s edge,
and I’m fairly certain it’s actually there. At least
as certain as we can be of anything in these times.
At some point you have to ask yourself why you move.
What possible promise could await over the horizon?
Does forty degrees of longitude matter that much?
I’ll be the judge of that, says the little voice in my head.
I don’t trust that voice any further than I could throw it,
which is no distance at all if past is any kind of prologue.
“Go east, middle-aged man” doesn’t have the same ring to it
as the other, more famous phrase, but what the hell.
YOLO and whatnot. The tank is full, the nose is pointed
toward the rising sun. I have nothing to lose but my chains.
And probably some engine parts I can’t identify.
Save me a spot on the dunes.
/ / /
Jason Crane
25 October 2020
Tucson, AZ