Pete Zeller

Homeric Blues



...................1. Homer, Alaska, June


Love is this thing blurry and only.

He’s in favor of her wholesome escape.

And I’m up again, and poisoned.



How’s about no stars for a while?

How’s about some wind through my weeds?

How’s youth looking these days?



Somehow the girl left here just last week.

Her whole head was lowered, watching her feet.

She supports the troops, she eats meals ready to eat.



It’s a grey evening, Alaska Time.

A headache wakes, it searches for a tree.

And I’m stuck but maybe in luck.


Tools laid out on the front porch rusting.

In kool-aid circles her morning ritual exudes.

And talons relay vegetables that look like mothers.



Part way out of the dark it dawns on her.

There is a corporation for that, a heavy duty trash can.

A whole glass would wash you all away.



Is it wrong to hope for failure?

A dog is long gone, it’s on the street and playing games.

You have parlor parts and hearts, I respect that.



Is it freedom to be unencumbered, like an old tooth?

Are mothers and brothers waiting in the grocery store?

A last look at the tires you tore up and down her road.


Taken off, stripped down, rolled away.

Left to sit and rot like a crack house bathtub.

Not behind eyes, nor stirring like a stationary bicycle.



Is pride like a story you can tell?

And that brings us back to love, that’s the lasso.

Screws or nails, one day you must choose.



The wind is meant as a welcoming.

Just as the knots in wood are seen as eyes.

An unfriendly animal would run the show.



It’s tallow for breakfast, tallow for lunch.

Along the painful poolside revelations, I crunch.

A single memory is all you will be paid.


Is there a walk home with no destination?

A tidewater welcome mimics the contours of beauty.

Your brain is squeezed dry – no more color or joy.



It’s been ten months now since the faucet sale.

Step by step ancient gardening wrote me bad checks.

There is a gazebo raising tonight somewhere in heaven.



A drunk is waiting in the library, he’s lonely like an exit ramp.

And when no one is watching she will steal glances at the horizon.

You will have your work cut out for you to surpass even the minimum.



Boot liners line the hallway, drying and shrinking and winking.

Boxes wilt under terrified sets of expectation, and the rocks are rocking.

My undercarriage is caked and scraped and making noise.


It’s loose and how am I to respond?

She’s in the desert and soon I’ll be gone.

The backdrop will remain, untouched and unloved.



There’s a sound that is missing.

Just at the edge of listening.

A blue glass bead bearing my name.



Rain filled the trash cans and the chickens ate spaghetti.

The tomatoes rolled away, all their spots in a tizzy.

A promise was rolled up in a tissue and discarded.



Nothing makes sense.

Our words cannot add up.

The road repeats and repeats.


You will learn nothing about yourself.

Horses and goats and children and storm clouds.

Apple trees lining the edge of your heart.



Foam insulation’s used to keep the theater chilly.

An old friend’s birthday has arrived.

My eyes are faded, they were left on the windowsill.



It’s the power of suggestion.

Of pretty brown haired girls and flaking paint.

That smell where your nose goes.



An evening of living and searching in your small seaside town.

That blue gold of sunset which lingers in the warmth of worn wood.

A kiss is in the key basket on the table by the door.


An antelope descends menacingly.

Happiness is regulated like insulin or trash bag tags.

Clam chowder only gets good after about seven years.



It’s the question of what’s going to make you sick.

That the sack of shit is leaking we’ve long ago established.

We had a ball at the French Fair that June two years ago.



Dreams are sad, but sad’s not bad.

The cloud of jurisdiction is spinning and grinning.

Her father is always fathering.



The drug makes you tired, makes you light headed.

And Jesus is calling all night and all day from his wooden payphone.

The fisherman have treated their ailments with oil and sunlight.


The breath! The kiss! The apple sausage!

A cup is broken where the table ends and floor begins.

A whole sky rips and mellows on the fingertips.



Pasta and kerosene in the morning.

Tires and quietude, the promise of needing nothing.

A girl is waiting for her hair to grow.



Shallows follow and strange sores blossom.

He looks into the mirror and recognizes loyalty without reason.

The night is gone, its remnant children hide in corners.



What is perfect? Is there a better doctor yet?

Where’s the beef? she intones over gravy boat purgatives.

The sea of faces is deepest at the sides.


If only the light would stay like this.

Blue enough to see no shadow, only shadow.

White enough to write by.



You’re perfect and I want to remind you each morning.

The band is open and flowing, it hungers for our moment of salvation.

I am in dire straits because no one has been watching.



Closet space and a carpet face, the wasting lasts.

Love is like a fire, it consumes the extras and their remnants.

But in place of collage you have heat, you have sustenance.



He realizes slowly, painfully, that he is a prisoner.

It is not enough to hear the wolves at night.

“I am no prisoner,” he writes on an envelope.



Premonitions of an automobile accident.

Stories pulled out of the nonsense on your pillow.

Headaches sowed, the rainbows carrying and growing.



Said and wondered, your case of troubles boiled.

The air was made to carry smells in.

Your love was made to make madness tolerable.



The jewel is part of morning and that is open.

My close attention is to the growth of doubt and shame.

A nursery rhyme drinks your brain up, spells your name.



The dreams are terrible and God given.

The giving is done in due time, because you are exact change.

And soap cleans clean things only.


Held over into some pointless fancy.

The jeweler trades a butterfly for a mosquito.

A nun is born to slave holding parents.



Tricks outman and outmaneuver inspiration.

The test of time is theft.

His deadfall pit remains, filled with cans and yard debris.



My taste in people is slowly defining itself.

It seems to seek an expiration date.

I am not certain yet only because I must not be.



The threads are loose and the sky is changing.

No direction smells like home.

The rune was opaque, she interpreted it falsely.






...................2. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, August


Just in time for supper.

Done in, strung out, gassed up, and falling down.

There’s wind enough to power our complete revolution.



She told me that I’ve been someone else.

An enthusiasm too sharp and sudden to be healthy or genuine.

This ceiling’s been patched and patched again.



Fizz and lip gloss and sandwiches cheaper than gasoline used to be.

TV screens the size of glass bottom boats.

Sometimes you itch for no reason at all.



Even the laziest heart throbs from time to time.

The driving range is still there somehow, boiling in the rain.

The last man standing won’t be getting a funeral.



Chips and bologna, coffee and cold medication.

These are the days of our lives.

There’s nothing inside me but silence and fear.



Grace is blind and we are blind to grace.

You cannot swim without a fish inside.

You cannot love without chores to mind.



Superman is gone but his stone nemesis remains.

My hopes are full and powerful, they have flourished in these feces.

It is terrible but precious, I am troubled but immune.



This is the same place and I was mistaken.

But that’s no excuse, this is no time for excuses.

Water damage can have but one advantage.



Jewels and flashlights.

The poems are parched.

We fell asleep ‘neath a golden arch.



Despite it all, there is always a river.

In the descent a jailer studies.

A mother was chosen for the mothering.



My body is clean because it’s been burned.

My heart is bloody from butchering.

My head is awake with aching, and slanted by seeking.



The clouds are gifts of pollution.

A genius soft drink prepares the participation.

No one knows which paint to paint the walls with.



Rants catch grass and pine bark.

A dizzy stretch of highway, spattering the evening.

Yellow leaves and familiar rain.



Who’s distracted enough and who can sleep?

A book is not enough, nor a piece of recorded music.

Not a story or a memory or a quiet chocolate either.



And there’s sirens in every city, be it a city for sure.

No green lights on the Sunday that you’re leaving.

Selfish was swallowed and passed, love’s what’s left.



How did a hobbit fare? or a bell?

It wasn’t a question of if but why not.

The rowboat might just one day reappear.


Hopeful nosebleed shows nuts and legumes.

A true disciple is slow to catch on.

I was too drunk to catch the ice cream truck.



Prayer flags swagger in the flimsy darkness.

Her story was retold many times.

A white framed deer asleep in Christmas lights.



It’s a new sort of pink and a new sort of bowling alley.

Plastic cups full of familiar things, and chicken wings.

Sweaters that smelled like other people.



I can’t stick it all together.

Grass and long hair, creekwater and blue slush.

A rain cloud can’t get exchanged, not exactly.



Where’s my list of duties?

Where’s the cancelled check?

I’m calling in sick for good.



The tempest caught on video was less powerful.

You cast off romance, break pavement and soil.

There’s no time to sneeze or butter your bread.



Time’s running out but you are not to blame exactly.

A bull is a bull is a bull is a bull.

Tears are like french fries, like origami.



The mythical woman has dark black hair.

The haze in my vision was cut clear and swept clean.

A daytime soap opera was ignored in the background.


Heavy cream running through my mind.

Doors laid out on the lawn, leading god knows where.

He’s never the same but he loves me.



She is perfect and she knows perfect teeth.

My arms are too full of questions to carry anything else away.

There is a wave that hits him without fail (he is no failure).



Yearly visits, monthly deposits, weekly dispatches.

No one is old enough and no one is discreet.

There are still mattresses, flip them if you wish.



I am in the numbers somehow, freezing and waiting.

We hear this as a faint whistling.

Today’s reprieve was the last of these miracles.



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return to sawbuck 4.3

**
Pete Zeller lives in Fairbanks, AK, where he studies biochemistry and edits the journal Sikuliaq.