Earl Randal Keener

02/06/2024

“I don’t agree with you but I love you always even out of forever.“ (A quote left in me head when I woke this morning.)

31/05/2024

Heads or tails: To be cursed, may, at times, be the equivalent of possessing a singular blessing…

31/05/2024

IN THIS WORLD

I coulda
shoulda
woulda;

yet
how clever
the Lord was

to design me

as

the one that got away.

27/05/2024

cortical riot —
fireflies strobing
the crown vetch

26/05/2024

14/05/2024

El amor también fue cómplice de la condenación de nuestras almas.

03/05/2024

SPOOKY ACTION UP CLOSE
(and strange attractors)

Imagine Poetry
As a serial killer.
Not just any Poetry
But the one that slays you
Every time,

And gets away with it.

(A goon squad Poetry)

You begin
To understand
Why you hate it;
Why it turns
Your stomach;

Why you decided
Some godforsakentime
Not to ever read it.

29/04/2024

Basically, the compass of the heart has lost contact with the compass of the brain.

25/04/2024

FOR GOD’S SAKE! “Most of what we do is self-indulgence; lacking a hotline to the Muse what else do you expect us to do?”

21/04/2024

In the relatively new-speak of whatever time it is we are “to be saved” one might imagine it might not be such a good thing “to be saved”. It seems, historically, linguistically, and intentionally both intent and meaning have a way of leaking out of our communal bucket. Yet the stars keep moving over every waste and progress; As if meaning existed before and apart from its parceling and butchering into the prime-cuts of our rudimentary language (s). ((Overheard from the edge-of-the-color-spectrum—violets as I was cutting the grass)

21/04/2024

So…

Earth Day
the anesthesia
wearing off

it's your fault he says--
his Adam's apple
bobbing up and down

21/04/2024

ALIENABLE REAL ESTATE
(for my father)

Coming to Weirton
you gave up the source,
gave up your roots. Roots
that belonged to us, others too.
Gave up the families,
the stories, the events, relationships
that never happened
for us or you to tell.
Pulled ‘em out and left the wood.
Gave up the place
that sheltered repose.
”Down home.”
Gave up the cemetery
you’d be forced to visit
time after time, the last
you’d be buried too;
above the valley, the river
that sang your youth.
Incalculable
what you surrendered,
the transaction of mountains
for a lifetime job in the northern mill…
Over the decades we watched you fade,
the realization seeping in of what you’d done—
the shame—the equivalencey—the snooker—
of taking a handful of beads
for the whole of Manhattan.
R.I.P. I love you.

19/04/2024

‘What we mint in our own minds appears to be the current currency of thought.” (Overheard)

19/04/2024

“As long as I live I will always be revising. Unbeknownst to us it might go on forever.” (Overheard from a Hangnail)

18/04/2024

So close! My fetal language mumbling in its crib almost managed to say it!

12/04/2024

Most of our important questions amount to the debris a drowning sailor clings to.

04/04/2024

Trying to construct a reasonable Miller’s Analogy: Netanyahu is to Israel as Trump is to America. Or Netanyahu is to Gaza as Trump is to Democracy? Which , if any, is more apropos…even agreeing that all people are creepy?

02/04/2024

“Enter with caution: Hopes are so expertly woven with lies almost no one can tell them apart”. (A Caveat @ Our En-Trance)

02/04/2024

We’ll soon replace our mowers with the scythe ‘gotta go cut the cattails…’

31/03/2024

The disembodied spirit becomes addicted to an incarnation in words. Over time that addiction, because it is an addiction, feels like the most important thing—becomes not only vital, but necessary. In hubris as well as in supplication, in pride and humility—in its addiction—the spirit fervently believes its words, its poems, it’s life, are worthy and should be preserved for all time. For each of us life is a holy (meaning separate, set apart) event. It should (or so it appears to me) should be subject to our utmost reverence. That said; it is too easy, and relatively understandable in the realm of inferior logic to see how that reverence becomes confused with self-love in the milieu of literary, religious, and social affectations.

30/03/2024

THE FALL:

It was all an excuse The Cook made up for a failure in the oven. We were no good from the beginning. Like a cat (though they too are not equine!) we were seasoned with too much horse-play.

27/03/2024

“It does, but nonetheless, constantly doing this resuscitation to prove that ‘poetry matters’…that’s the heart of it.”

26/02/2024

2024 —
and still I notice the sound
of a particular frog
jumping into water…

24/02/2024

OVERHEARD IN THE GARDEN:

“What you saw
Was nothing compared
To what I am,

And so we leave it go
At that.”