Jim Leftwich


A Coyote Beside The Highway 


_______________

Time too Anew

Time spews time
Time to corkscrew
   Tumekess Vorq
Timeless chewing
     Byte the bird 
Time splatter time
Exhume the bird
Tubular bicoastal
   Tuminf Volatility
     Viscous timing
         Xernity
Carnivorous time
   Get some today
     Cumin on rye
         A holiday
In the sunshine
Time is a shadow
Time under time
Time undertow
Time underhanded
         Melting bird
     Tubing & Roast
Can you hear
       The River
Wind pushing water
Even the poems
Are quiet & slow
       Time reading
   The palm
Of your handstand

*****

We've been walking on the spinach
bah
ah bah
We've been roosting on the ribbons
bah
ah bah
Teaching to the tutors
bah
ah bah
Spinning on the spinach
bah

bah
bah bah bah
ah bah

*****

_______________


No Protein Per

   Hit me with the hidden
Unborn books are bubbling
     Vacuum the Dust
Off the book of Ezekiel
       Driving wheel
   Wheeling in the
Dust


_______________


Cilantro and Peppermint

Take your time
       Jaywalking
              Juxtaposed
Uncle lightning roundabout
     Ulterior Umber
Kentucky is not my name
I remember magnesium
     Lying to yourself
     Is easier said
     Than done
On the open road
         In another Mind


_______________


Ride The Byway


The
Road is a horse have
A Half-toned
Hardhat
Hi
Have a Rice Day
Chicken & Rice forever
Tennessee is not my Name
I've never been to Detroit
But I've been to Arizona
Don't waste your time
So fast
In such a hurry
To be elsewhere


________________

Curettage

       Zodiac human
   Waste firmament
Sodden duration
Flotilla and fandango
     Django fingered
       Oceanic haste
   Numen tenement
Flotation Godzilla
   Pando angle Ego
Lingering in duende


_______________


Colliery

Foghorn from the Bay
Three hundred miles
   Away Hear it in my
Sleep Hey what's that
     Sound Under the
Thundering Rainbow
   Under the Weeping
Willow Because I made
       It The way it is

_______________


I Am Not

I am satisfied with
Being unsatisfied
   Ok maybe that's
Only half the case
     Ok being I am
     Unsalted &
       Unilateral
The other half is
   Your job


________________


Moses Stood On The Red Sea Shore

         Yet therefore yet
     Never met a net
I didn't knot
Treehouse in the river
Rearview in the rain
Eat when we are early
     wet therefore wet
willow weeping sleep
   Sleepy wintry sleet
Rain falling on the River
     River flowing
         Rite on time

____________________


Slide Rules The Playground

Said less than nothing
   Did I tell you that?
       For a time
   Four four a time
Vulture got your gizzard?
   Baltimore, Baltimore
Balloons in the basement
   Balloons in the Basin
       No more than that
       Just one minute
   Just wait a minute
Just so you know
       Got more
              Where that
       Came from
Divided by itself
   X marks the spot
     Y marks the spot
       Z marks the spot
         You got another
Thing coming


______________


Leaps Like A Lizard
In 4-Wheel Drive

Diving in the donut
         Whole
Xeno takes the cake
     Call him up and
Tell him what you want
       Far far away
Going going gone
       Give it up
   Hold on to the
         Hole
Jumble up and go
Jolly up and go
I would not have it
   Any other way
   Other than that
   Other than this
Icarus and Irene
Youth will have its way
     Trust the sky
     Rhythm is right
         Like rain


_________________


Altitude and Latitude

Quonset by the quart
Quagmire in the quartz
At the top of the stairs
At the bottom of the lake
         Chalcedony
Quorum for the choir

_______________


There Is Nothing There

         Ambidexterity
   X muddles the plot
Diamonds in the slough
   Forklifts in the night
Freight trains on the moon
   There is no one home
Gas both liquid & natural
     Vacuum and velcro
Time waits for the bus
         Years go by
   Broken and hungry
How many more tears
         I will surprise
     Just like a woven
              Jumpsuit with
       Jackrabbits
   On the line
   Open up the door
Let me in the house
       I'll get it myself


_______________


One foot at a time

Jalapeno Moon hibiscus
   Hibernating inner helix
Foment helium torment
     Furbished hologram
     Turbulence & tumult
Prowling with the vowels
     Biscuit
         Ibis
              Tornado
Bowling down the backstreets
   In our Chevy Pizza Shoes

_______________


Of Course I Remember His Name

jockeying routes Urgency
     keening Train
keeping up with Elvin
       Jones / Untold
Linear Rhythms Unyielding
lurch leeching Oranges
Uulunching Unlemming
         Yielding
         jotted eyes 
Quinine on the Quince
Rumors of rooming
     Running rivers
even the whole Romance
         emptying each
     Every essence
fermented fervid
diamonds dappled
   after the Falling
       feathery fevers
   diagonal argots
fat As poems in
pigeons / Flat as
     fur And fiat
Dreaming after
     The fabric of
       The deluge
   All you are he
Said in an email
       on the day
David Crosby died
Is a problem for me
     and I said sure
Put it in storage
Hell freezes over
Once in a Blue
       Moon
ask me anything
   I'll help 
   In any way 
   I can

_______________


too early to tell

umbrellanding & earsplitting
         rolllling Outriding
     too Ioose to leap
oil of putrefaction
               Yieldinging
jumble Yummy Unction
       juts out a bit
       Under the York
You were there too
         Unless I am mistaken.

_______________


Headlights, The Funeral Mountains

Greasewood Wild Horses Moonsemes
         Monosemiotic moonspray
Beyond catpurring rugwater
              mmany Beguiling Nothings
cyanobacteria Non-committal
              for your information
         Help is on the way

______________


Batch Batch To Batch

half-assed twofer badasses
Hot on the trail of jittery
   Tylenol Lemniscate
rather rot in Eternity than 
Rummage through the
Hierlooms looking for a
     Fillip in the dollop
     how did they get in?
Right through the door
Like nobody's business
   Too many to count
Right through the door
You sure about that?
     why Yes I'm sure
every door has its lock
     every lie has its lip
Every horse has its healer
Between the window & the key
For our House has many basements
         How did they get in?
     There's one now
         Who do you love?
Between the furnace and the creek
              so Far Between batches


______________


Sing What You Know

Gritting the Runes
Ruins / grinding
The ruins / grinning
         Grifting
Gifting / drifting
Drifting / like a
boat out on the
Sea / grinding the
Switch / switching
       Shifting gears
     Gears / Gears
Drifting gears / like
a sewing machine
in a Florist / Banging
       about the ears
Like an Umbrella
   In a dust storm
     Down on the
       Spilling Floor


______________


Feet Dust The Thumbs

   Every Foot Emits
dust devils & Verbs
Rigor rumples the
Sweatshirt grease
         Greases
   the Tide Pool
By The Time
   Loops upon the
       Lease
I must have been lost
opposing the thumbs
     out on the Piles
the Pylons the Poles
   Looping upon the
         Jumbles
Howling at the mood
   moon or no moon 




No Artificial Sweeteners

_______________


No artificial sweeteners
Genuine
Authentic
100 percent real
Guaranteed Jim Leftwich
Certified by Leftwich himself
Don't accept anything less



Burning Hats in a
Shoe Burning
Hats in a Shoe


Tall crickets weaving the grass pie west
Wallange evelt
Kallenge evet
Grantee howling changeling
Bistro multipersonal cattongue
Goblinkers awn
For the winter desert
Splinters westward
I have been reading Alice Notley
I have been reading Cindy Juyoung Ok
Am I unruly
Fleeing the tigerfield
In an imaginary rain?
Apricity
Haute yoyo yoyo
Our sunlight on ice
Our u-turns on cue
Lawns for dessert
Are best as
A slice of the city
Flies



Once upon a timeless
Ounce a foot of sour
Fauns hotter than
April



An Acre-Foot
Fortuitous riboflavin high-jump
Dawdling windy lingers
Wind-chill Facsimile Headlamp



Gane gene
Gine gone
Gune
Read linear exclusion
Give them what they need
Two diving ducks pecking
At the pond's surface
Groan gulp gallop
Grown gallon of worries
Why too much for so many?
Route touted doubtful
Fecalith
Verisimilitude
Forecasting
Vox Populi
Nobody home
Generation Next
Doom perched like a cat
On the edge of an unmade
Bed
Coots discussing minnows
Deliberation
Delta libations rationale
Nobody has left home
Divide and con
quer the whirl
wind



Diamond cairn
Brumation diacritical
Galvanized fumigation
Hints rinsed
Rheophile finagler
Thumb player piano
Dump stationary durational
Emanates testicular reading
Glance of seahorses
Shiny silver buckle
In the sand



Gothic church trivia
Found poem-objects
Electable social studies
The forgetfulness
The invented niche
Thimble spilling unicorns
Youthful lessons song
Divided by
Vertical
Dividends
Giddy volumes
Galloping excavations
Edited engagements
Gaggle of horseflies



Twins twining
Windy wine
Tasting winter
Beginnings



Given the dirty dust
Divided by the dusty dirt
O the shoes
Their momentary reign
Divided by rain on creosote
Given the dusty wind



Germs are not from Germany
What did they want a poem to do?
I've probably eaten a dozen of them so far
Green figs and yams
Ghost peppers alive in my mouth
Ignore my life
Ignore my feelings about my life
Burn my hat in a
Shoe Eat my shoe
At a sidewalk cafe
Ghost mouth
Ignore my hat
Burn the uneaten sidewalks
I germ
I what
I do
I I've
I them
I green
I ghost
I mouth
I ignore the big core door
I ignore the fig gore lore
I life
I burn
I shoe
I at
I ghost
I ignore the pig rig wig
I burn



Drums are dreams or are
In dreams or dreams are
Drums or are in drums or
I am not a tree not a tree



Given the burnt shoes
The hats
Burning
The brittle fires
Here they are
Hold them in
Your watery hands
Yes haven yams jumping
Religion is anybody's guess
Griffon given roughage 
Feeling of fire melting flame
Ego is everybody's guess
Celadon seeping from the sea
Cost-benefit frenetic
Smoke treaty celadon
Coastal sweat invisibly
Edict from nearby
Divided by beside Itself



Listen to the
wind blow
through your
self as you
turn to snow



Asparagus
Windfall
Imitation as wine
Pair of fallen imitations
Gusts imitating wind
In the fall windy
Imitations parachute
With gusto
Is that all there is to it?
That's all there is to
Two minutes of it.
Please do try this at home.
Get back to me
In twenty years.



Walking the line I
Walleye the kingfisher
Roaming I
Romaine eye mingle
Tasting I
Waste the tingles



It is
A sharp
Instrument.
Life is
A sharp
Instrument.
A poem
Is a knife.
You can
Make a life
With one.



Tyro thyme rose rotting meat
I am Ham the Yam
Our sour flour by the hour
Put the gut in the hut but not yet



Don't run
Without
Scissors



Paper dirt on the legume shirtwaist
Pie in the skyscraper paperweight
loop looming palms plop blooming calms



Under herein before

______________

Lower Colorado River Basin
Arizona & California
February 2023



Drying As We Go

____________


Bifurcations catnip
Febrile ruffling
Buffer fertilized
Ballistic allicin
Talisman yantric
Bastion tailfin
Barbecuing baseballs
embattled feta
Heraldry
Given justifications of
The gizmoidal



Kudo fuzzy donuts
Optimized muzzled
Roundabouts



Oneiric suitcase
Intuition nearly
Liminal nailgun
Polished



Double dodgeball
Exvanguard vertiginous
quadrupled
Scissors
Cutting roomy floorboards
Egg embossed gossamer
Facsimile
Emblem evermore
Rebarbative
Harvesters
Timescape
Navigable
fontanel bentwined



The whodunnit
Jaunty fax
Forthwith vireo
Timorous mousepad
Gaggle bard pine
Garbled bleeding wings
Gestation gaseous
Yestermorn moonstruck
Infinitesimal malady



By five o'clock
Knit morning
Jumbled hours
Distributed jilt to jolt
Void wherein prohibitive
Tuesday sharp
By fines
Doubled between
Further bygones
Fixated on
Nowhere nearer
Than behind the rearview
Mirror



Hairiness
Reborn
Baptized in
Tweezer lung
Twice



Twigs nightingale
Nylon brackets
Etiquette inedible
jettisoned sonic
kayak flak ukulele 
jackets kykeon iconic
iterated aeons
Storyboards clinical
Jerky racketeering
gadgets nominal
Diablo homestead



Nosebleeding
sidereal gnatcatcher
Nightspiders guardrail
Nocturnal galvanized
Jigsaw puzzling
Javelin linear
NightMusic
Nickel slide rule
Juke boxing
Jeremiad
Egg yodel elbow
Knowingly
Ritual mythos



Kafkaesque rivers
Embody kudzu
kamikaze roughhousing
zippered ventriloquists
Nibbling on the dawn
Go on
Xylophone vacuole neuron
Give em the one joe twice
Yesterday is just
Yesterday and
Tomorrow is gone with the
Nine
Ducks kicking
Yessir
Keep the chin up
From sun up
To downtime downplayed
Yikes jive my Easters
One more
Merry yellow yoyo
Let's just say
each one is enough
Unto itself
Toe the line
Every inch
Is its own last mile



Easy enough to follow
Lurching kelvin rye
Edsel yucca edgewise
Lunch around the clock
Drying as we go 

_____________

Oxbow
Colorado River
February
2023



The Non Neon Content
& Its Discontents


1.

Sunny wind
Sandwiching
Dunelight

Dwindling
Dunefelt
Driving
Rootless

Trailblazing blizzardous
Buzzardic bards

Til the morning
Grows its growls

Given the
Hatjump
Haltjinx
Jumper beans
Ok cartel

O my janitors
Ok sunny dune sandwich
I felt like a dwindling root
Under the buzzardoom
I sleep like a bard in the morning
I growl like a vowel in the understory
Under the hatjuniper tree
I jump like a salted mink

June is the saltiest month
Jalapeno is a kindly pepper
Nobody but meat
Nobody but youth
Behind the fourth door
Below the ash above
Between jobs
Given the hatstomp
Given the highbeans binding dunelight
Forfever & a dayjob


2.

Curly
Flights
Recentivized

Eat the ears
We are not robots
So many sings to song
Such a long plot of bears
Said as much
More than once
Do not drift
Silky into the
Gambled night
Damage damage against the
Hurry of the light

Jump on the
Hopping bean and
Ride like the
Wind

Hoovering advice
Inscripted return on
Artificial Investment

Turn
Up the radio and
Let it prune
The lawn

Turn it up
Until it explodes
The radio
Eat the
Electric light
One soul
At a bite
The electric bike
Turn it up

Rigorous
Like rent
Control

Find the coast of free
Doom worried in the sky

Quietus forth


3.

Do not goat first head first into the
Dimming lightning the polar
Vortex the
X-ray the
Xeriscaped escape

Volve & revolve
Carry on
Carrion
Vertical intruders
Now is never noon
My sermon is I take
My sermon from
The Lost Books of
Isaiah Luke


4.

If you could be Isaiah
Any of all the Isaiahs
Well
Which Luke would you be


5.

Call it anything
Zephyr across the cay
Clay the champ

Ventilated voters
Vacuum cleanser
Forfever & a dayjob
Given the dry waterfalls
Guven the waterproof drywall
In the
Dwindling dunelight
Gone golfing
In the
Night
Rootless radio
Turn it up
Youth goat soul
Rigorous
Like a radio
Vacuuming the vortex
Curly cay and a bay
Carrion weigh station sun
Bite the electric bike
Cumulus with us
Vertical intruders
Serious and Nimble
Cirrus & nimbus
Go feet first forth
Into the Nightlight
Nefilibata
Gambling with the plight
Figurative and Blight
Haltsemic stoppages
Grip them by the glue
Yourself unto they chew
Ride the
Windhorse wild and
Blue


6.

Embodied carbon
Tomatillo
One acre-foot
Of Colorado River water
Equals 329,000 gallons
Cover the puzzle
With a tablecloth
And put rocks on it
So the wind doesn't
Blow it into the cove
Sleeping cats don't lie
Scooters rippling
The water against
The wind
Alfalfa and pistachios
Hamburgers are not
A sustainable
Source of Energy


7.

Rootless canal systems
Do not
Exist
Exit strategies
Will destroy the
Economy
We may as w
ell get us
ed
To the id
ea t
hat the Fos
sil fuel eco
nomy is
Well in
to th
e proce
ss Of des
troy
ing it
self

We are watching the shadows
Of the mesquite trees
Waiting for the inevitable
To happen

Rootless
Trees
Youthlessly
Under the sky
Inventing themselves downward
Into the dirt

I am oil and you are
Oil and we are all
Invested in an In
creasing
ly Ne
gative
Return on Investment


8.

Given the mosquitoes & the bats
Find the coast of free
Eyeballs hidden in the
Estuaries the
Embodied car bond

Empty the day
Empty the night

As abide so beside
Alphabet as in soap
Albumin as in aluminum
Abraham Isaiah and Luke
Sole 
     soil 
         soul
No dust for oil
Do unto the dirt
As you would have the dirt
Do unto you

______________

Oxbow
by the Colorado River
February
2023



Among The Ten Thousand Things

_________________


     Earlier Readings
       fertilizer
   festooned with
grizzly Rabbitbush
grit of the eyebrows
   Rhododendron
Tenacity Shifters
   Said doubt
       hefty Turnings
     holier Syllables
Nor Ganglia Haute
Ymblemic Usemost
jonquil Hachures
Midbrown junkets
     until Useless
Outboard Udder Inches
kudos Ultra Implications
Piano Implicitly Onions
placate the Intaglios
pyrrhic indigo Oranges
   is jut jittery in jest
     yes and not yes
         entry entirely
Rewritten Readerly
We are Everywhere
     Or not at all
rigged Fingers Square
dangling upwards
     differs in kind
The kitchen from its clock
Dovecote Cuticle Excised
beavertail Cactus Verbatim
         bounce of the bean
   beats of the beans
binary Ziggurat Verbiage
boxwood Hedge exhumed
buzzing through the Zoo
by Roadrunner Time
       zigzag Byways
fertilize our Gardens
dovetailed Ganglion
gravel drizzling Grit
   rabbit dendrites
       Gunk & Mud
riparian Buzzards
   rheophile Geese
         realities
Of the Gods



trailing Highland Gargle Fingers
   Youthfully Tremendous
       hinterland in winter
Try Your hand at freezing rain



Youthlessly Underdressed
   illnesses illicitly Utile
opportunist prescience
              Porous
opinions & Oracles
I am neither nest nor portal
       put another way
           Put the knife
     And the spoon
Away



   Loose mops slink flops
Moonlight on the wafer-thin
minister of Bright nostrils
manicuring the protocols
         of absurdity
     limp laps loop & leap
     the lumpy lake



       nor Moth-eaten
Binomial Nautilus
     microorganisms
nimbly on their toes
     differentiate the
         Tardigrades
among Extremophiles





       quartz who Egret
quixotic phantom ciliary 
   Quitting time While
   equalities on the Quay



Rite on Read on
     edgier Rakes
   & remnants



         Sadden Daylight
asemantic Sullen Dollops
     Awaken sodden
           Darkness
a Daimonic grackle
         a geode
zinc under Cellophane
              Zawn calliope
Ungulate syllabic feldspar
   feels like Sensorium
     reddish Ryolite
eaten by the Teaspoon
     emits Twilight in
       Real legal time
My Tablespoons are yours



         if you Or our
     us / If Us
you & us Together
Rite or rather Write
   A poem or two
       Or twenty
Twenty thousand
Then who could
       Or should say
Otherwise / They
Or he and them
Should or could
         Have lived
Some other life
And the world would
     Be some other
     Different world
     But it isn't
     At least not
     In this poem
_______________


Oxbow
Colorado River
March 2023



Jim Leftwich: More Poems

 
 

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