Post-Solstice Haiku #1

These blue ice crystals
Growing on my grizzled beard—
Obvious omens.

Senza Titolo

I see the bright birds
Arise from your mouth
Feathered in motley,
Gliding and singing
Between the day’s teeth,
Beaking, twittering
Staccato sonnets
Through the languaged air
Of our mortgaged cage.

December 28, 2009

This damned year lurches
Toward, finally,
Closure, cessation,
An end to counting
The days piling up,
Unopened letters
In an ignored box,
Key lost long ago
On the road to now.

Fable

Once within a withered time
There somewhat lived a tired man
Who counted his little losses
By piling up the lonely leaves
Clumped around the roots
Of some very rude old trees
Still growing despite all odds
Deep in the deep green heart
Of an odd and ancient wood.
When his losses grew too deep
The wild west wind rushed in
And scattered them to itself
Leaving only roots and silence.

To an Abused Wife, Almost Saved

And suddenly you just knew,
You knew how to save yourself,
What you’d need to do, the steps
You’d take. The process appeared
Before your sweet, swollen eyes
And you wept, just a little,
A trickle really, as you
Visualized a free life,
Devoid of complications.
You lay in your narrow bed
And smiled, then put it away.
You needed him more than you.

Christmas 2009

‘T’is the time of Capricorn—
A goat, like the Nordic goat
That frightened Finnish children

In the days of pagan dark.
The Swedish Gävle goat burned
Prematurely Tuesday night,

Black straw smoke lifting into
Cold Scandinavian skies.
Prank or ancient sacrifice—

Only Thor and Yahweh know,
And They don’t speak anymore,
Snug in Asgard and Heaven

Floating on myth and on faith.
Here in Oklahoma, snow
Freezes on the rural roads

And very few can get through
To the places they long for—
fir fires blazing in huge hearths

while luckier firs, adorned
in all festive finery,
stand tall, already dying.

Blizzard Conditions

blowing snow
all day long
obscuring
lonely roads
reminisce
all you want
this winter
will always
trump truant
memories
your blank face
in morning’s
bright sunlight
is reason
enough for
winter joy

meteorology

orange snow
sky hanging
low overhead
some say
eight inches
by morning
the wind
says nothing
no forecast
no expectations
only motion
the sole
logical response

Three Days Before Christmas

According to the legend,
A Mexican peasant girl
Too poor to leave Christ a gift
One long-ago Christmas eve
Prayed to the Holy Virgin,
Then on the altar left weeds
Which blossomed into beauty—
These glossy leaves, red and green—
The colors of the season.
I’m no peasant, but I’m poor.
I stretch myself on the floor
And pray for a miracle.

Gnostic #3

This solstice
Dark meets dark--
Slice of day
Like the wink
Of an eye.
The young think
They won’t die.

December 20

Orange crescent low in the sky
This last night before solstice—
And all thoughts are on Christmas,
Now less than a week away.
I’d love to offer the world
The gift of this orange moon,
But it’s busy with dying,
Called business-as-usual,
And none of that has a thing
To do with your shining eyes,
This eve before the shortest
Night of the rest of our lives.

Gnostic #2

Alone with
Disbelief,
The acrid,
Sulfur smell—
Protestant,
Postmodern,
Damned hipness.

Gnostic #1

We behold
Sky’s darkness,
Distant stars
Familiar
From childhood—
The last time
We saw them.

Winter Haiku #2

Old man sycamore
White against the winter sky:
Rising into dark.

Mao Mao Mao

A real, random possibility does exist
That the people will one day soon seize the power.
And then, they’ll scratch their scraggly, cold collective head,
Lacking a clue what it is that they want to do.
More than a few will round up someone new to shoot,
Cheering as their bloody, bloated corpses collapse
Into the dust of the glorious brave new world.
Others will immediately start to revolt—
After all, that’s what revolutionaries do.
Most will shrug and go on about their dire business,
Wondering just what that damned fuss was all about.
Me? I’ll be over in the corner—taking notes.

The Daylight Donut Shop in Tonkawa, Oklahoma

The old men cluster and cluck
On politics and weather
At an hour when I’m sleeping

And dreaming—always—of trains.
They’ve solved all of the world’s woes
By the time I’ve had coffee.

So when I stumble into
Their brightly-lit lair of talk,
All of the donuts are sold.

They stare in contempt at me,
Shifty village liberal
With my long hair, beard, earrings,

And the ones who know me smile
The toothy grin of the shark
As I take my coffee, beat

A harried, hasty retreat
Away from their rugged world
Of tractors, combines, and guns

Back to my books, my old books,
Waiting patiently for me
To load them aboard those trains.

On the First Monday of Winter Break

A dead starling lay
On the yellow grass
Just outside my door,
One fragile foot hooked
Toward the empty sky.

The unbroken glass
Feigned indifference,
Stuck with its steady
Task: solidity.
The cold wind blew on.

Beware clarity,
Eschew certainty—
A hard lesson, bird.

The Slow Slide into Melancholia

Nothing to say.
So, Beckett-like,
I fall silent,
And simply wait.
The sky remains.

12:01

Ceramic teapots, chickens, pigs--
knick-knacks on the shelf—
glitter in the midnight glow
from the refrigerator light:
spouts, beaks, snouted bacon
chilling on the China cabinet
containing no cups or plates.
Wineglass in your wan hand,
you ease the door closed,
watch that bright wedge
leap across the kitchen wall
one subtle, waltzing step
ahead of sweeping darkness.

Camouflage

No one important has come by today.
In fact, no one has come by at all.
The shadows in the desolate hall
Have been my lonely, only friends.
They fold themselves into memories
That lengthen with the falling dusk,
Fade moment by moment to nothing.

Which shadow, which memory
Would you presume to be?
Stand tall against the darkening wall—
Stretch your long limbs to their limits,
And slowly fold yourself well into me.

On the Paucity of Great Leaders

In those days giants walked the Earth—
So says the Good Book.
We see only their fading footprints.

These days, most of us seem small,
Shrunken, and cold.
We wander our worried minds

Like survivors of a disaster,
Huddling, grateful,
Yet filled with guilt and shame.

We hoard all save our money.
Love, compassion—
These we guard most jealously.

Let’s go find us some giants!
Grab a shovel,
A lantern, the list of ancient sites—

They must be somewhere near,
Long-buried,
Awaiting the appointed hour.

Who You?

Unmade clown face
Foggy in the mirror,
Bags sagging under
The weight of your eyes—
You have stories to tell,
But why, why dwell
On maimed memory’s lies
Always involving plunder,
Sex or death or fear or
The keeping in our place.

Another Celebratory Birthday Poem

And somehow the years crept across the screen
Without me noticing, despite the birthdays,
The anniversaries, the birthings and buryings,
The small and large losses tossed my way,
The undeserved progress, pitifully slow.
I awake in my fifty-first year an old man,
A cold man, snakes in place of my veins.

And none can know the time that’s left
For me, for you, for any of us. . .
The fat black bus accelerates
And we lunge for the lashing straps,
Reflexes dulled from repetition,
Arms moving as if underwater
Or six feet underground.

Lazy-Ass Father Confesses

I don’t know
What to give
Those I love
Save myself,
A poor, sad,
Meager gift.
I long to lift
The box lid
For them all
Christmas morn
And listen
For their breaths
Disappearing
Into awe.
I know them all
And love them all,
Yet I know not
What they want,
Nor how to grant
Their desires.
I offer only love,
My frail failure,
Wrapped with
A ragged bow.

Leaving San Francisco

Back to the real world,
Where everyone is white
And Baptist or Catholic
And fervently sure
Ronald Reagan was
another name for Jesus,
where the land’s as flat
as the people’s lives,
where marijuana’s not medicine
but crank and beer are,
where gay men and lesbians
stay in their places
and don’t shove their sex
into straight faces,
where those with certain eyes
are automatically Chinese
and work in restaurants
with rice and sweet-n-sour,
where those with brown skin
are automatically Mexicans
and dig ditches or make tacos
and somehow take away jobs
while also on welfare and
selling drugs and making babies
who’ll do the same damn same,
and God Bless the U.S.A.
as it bombs and kills the world
for not being Americans
and anyone who doesn’t like that
can just Love It or Leave It,
and everyone’s waiting
for the Rapture
but never experiencing it
when it’s all around,
like people occasionally do
in a few other places
which aren’t all San Francisco,
but, hey, you know, it’s One.

On the BART

The high morning blue
Plays peek-a-boo
Behind low gray clouds—
Just another day
On San Francisco bay.
Train rumbles underground
And all fades away,
And I might be in NYC,
But no one’s wearing black.
The stoned stare
Of the Hispanic kid
Across from me,
The Asian mother
With her triplets,
The hippie vagabond
In his broad-brimmed hat:
This is where it’s at
This cold December morn—
Another world waiting
To be born,
Just barely visible, playing
Gaily behind obscuring clouds.

The Photography Exhibit

In some, faces flicker
Like candle flames
When doors close.

In others—you know
Which ones—the doors
Are already closed.

You’ve never seen
These images before,
And yet you have.

They crawl like bugs
On the inside
Of your eyelids.

You badly want
To open the door
And let them out.

But you can’t
Take your eyes
Off of that one:

How did he know
You were coming
To see your life?

Pathetic Fallacy Tanka

No fog, only sun—
Shining San Francisco bay.
The water sparkles,
And my soul spins, pirouettes.
Some days the outward matters.

Winter Haiku #1

Summer’s forgotten,
A dim, distant memory—
Chill frost fills our lungs.

Statement of Fancy #2

Deep in a dream
Last night I knew
I was asleep.
My eyes rustled
Under the sheets,
Restless voyeurs.
From far upstream
I heard murmurs—
Monotone gods.

Statement of Fancy #1

Stars die each day
In brilliant throes,
Flinging deathlight
Across trillions
Of galaxies,
Each one of which
Whirls dervishly
In the sudden
Flash of your eyes.

First Sunday in Advent

Fervently I wished for white, a silken wan today.
Instead, I got gray wind, gray sky, gray soul.
The cold kept us in, left us only ourselves.

So many prayers paralyzed on my lips,
So many subtle slips of the waferless tongue,
When, like David, all I want to do is dance.

I found You hiding between the bars of hymns
The wind discovered in the barren branches.
Hand in hand, We left to look for Lazarus.

Upon the Advent of Advent

Oh, Good God ¦ who hides Your holy head
Above the clotted clouds ¦ far from our faithless sight,
Your perverse peek-a-boo ¦ grows old and gray—
The dubious discern you ¦ on tortillas and tavern walls,
While we, the why-cryers, ¦ belief-longers, Bible-stunned,
Sick in our salvation and sin, ¦ peer into a white pit
Of near-nothingness, ¦ ephemeral fog fading in wind.

I’ve learned Your lightning, ¦ Your terrible tornadoes
And horrid hurricanes, ¦ Your dying leaves and dead children,
All changes explainable by chance ¦ and fickle fate
So far as we can see. ¦ Damned to doleful ignorance,
We wail into the wasteland, ¦ Your presumptuous, proud
creations.

Pink

Sunrise and bloodypale sunset,
Sex, sunbleached blood on cotton,
Hot ham fleeing the oven,
My eyes the morning after wine,
Shrimp, God’s favorite memories,
Sun-baked adobe deep in the desert,
Rosé splashing into my fancy glass,
Little girls, flamingos, flagrant shame—
Muscles buffering my bursting heart.

Thanksgiving Day 2009

After the dinner, the dishes, the naps,
My dog and I stroll laps around campus.
She stops to sniff random turds, blades of grass,
Discarded fast-food wrappers rustling
In the cool northern Oklahoma breeze.
We see exactly two other people outside
(not counting those passing in their cars),
A tall, lean, lonely Russian athlete
Stranded here over the long holiday,
And a blonde boy-child madly throwing leaves
In his grandparents’ huge, unraked yard.
Otherwise, this corner of the world
Isn’t saying much of anything,
And that’s a good thing when
You’ve got a belly full of turkey and pecan pie
And you’ve just awakened at 4 p.m.
And all you really want is to be alone
With something who doesn’t talk,
Just barks at squirrels and falling leaves
As the sun pirouettes towards the western edge
Of all that our four eyes can ever truly see.

Autumn Haiku #5

On Thanksgiving Eve,
Indians hold their red breaths—
White coyotes come.

Desert Rat Haiku #9

“Vodka” means “water”
In the Russian mother tongue:
Eight glasses a day.

On the Eve of Another Birthday

Tick tock: slow clock speeding ever up.
The things I’m needing dwindle daily.
Time doesn’t fail me. But I fail time.
Rhyme tries its damned best, gets tired, retires.

Someday these days will suddenly end.
I tend the garden of this black thought.
Late at night I plow this fertile plot.
How these dark blooms wither on the vines!

Seeds of a North Country Song

Together, they slipped into their sleep,
Sleep so deep they didn’t hear the slow,
Sure sliding away into no-sound
When it finally ground to an end.
Could simple slumber mend what troubled?

When they awoke, hungover, she hissed
At him, but he missed the sign, mangled
The chance she dangled for makeup sex,
Missed his ex- in his morning shower,
Felt his power fade to naught by noon.

She had slept soundly but woke troubled.
Love had hissed to a slow, mangled end.
By noon, he missed her, so he got pissed.

Psychosonnet #2

Christ, that was a crazy old man,
Cranky, with rancid wino breath
And darkness of death around him.
The brim of that funky fedora,
Those clunky black Dingo boots,
Thick cheroots smoldering on his lips:
He was in cahoots with the very devil.
Still, despite his evil, leering eyes,
The chill in his every whispered word,
Something stirred down in my gut.
The rut I was in, this wretched town—
When down fell that old drunk fool,
Every rule I’d lived by fell too.

Psychosonnet #1

So I’m always being asked to
Think fast, do more and more—
Such a bore, like politics,
The dirty tricks we all play
Each bloody day to survive
In this hive of crackhead bees.
Someone please make it stop.
I drop to my wounded knees,
A sad, sad loon. Did God give
Rules to live by before She left?
We’ve cleft those 10 “suggestions”
Down to a few questions: Dearheart,
They all start with “Why?”

After Many Years of Marriage

Sometimes
The darkness
Seems like light
After much dim reckoning—
And we’re left
To puzzle
Paradox

Happiness
Surprises us
Late at night
When our bodies part—
And we’re left
To ponder
Love

Step, Aluminum

A lonely ladder leans against a wall
Seemingly oblivious to its incongruence.
No workmen wander our halls,
No painters in their mocking whites.

We’ve simply no sufficient shed,
No refuge for our random tools,
So they loiter in our living room,
Damned Home Depot refugees.

Still, the top’s toward Heaven,
Though a ceiling seals it away.
So I lean, and loaf, uselessly shiny,
Stretching my arms to only air.

First Frost

The almond days, awful, delirious,
Pass as do memories of pastel nights
When the moon shone like youth
Lumbering through death’s land
And your eyes were sufficient light
To guide my hands to your breasts
And morning came just as we did,
thrusting all grave thoughts away.

The stars tonight barely winked
Under winter’s white lashes—
Breath before me like incense
Glowing under the streetlights,
And in my mawkish, wormy mind
The moon’s a mere lonely votive
lit with devoted, trembling hands
suddenly so small and so cold.

Melancholia

These environs
Encompass no
Horizon, just
The day-to-day
Play of plush light
On this window,
On that widow.
Everything

Will die, it’s true.
In the meantime,
This stream of rhyme
Serves as sandbag
Against the plash
And pull of time,
Party killer,
Filler with rue.

Authorities
Scamper, intent
On some duties.
Lights blink on and
always back off.
She coughs into
Her small, black hand,
And night slams down

On the tense town,
Filled with promise,
As all towns are,
for a moment,
and then it’s gone.
The rubber smiles
And random miles
March ever on.

Autumn Haiku #4

No one’s out today—
Rain has kept the wise inside.
I dance, a wet fool.

Autumn Haiku #3

A cheap Scotch whisky
In an orange plastic tumbler:
Not rice wine, but fine.

Autumn Haiku #2

Mist chills the morning
Without any sun in sight:
Has winter caught us?

In the Midst of the Recession

Trees arouse from their trances
As last leaves gyre to the ground
And the wanton north wind advances
On that terrible, tiny, drowsing town
Where day flashes, a dying flame,
And night lands—no noise, no sound,
Only repetition, randomless eternal game
Of the wind and the moon and the stars
And the clouds, always and ever the same.
Across the lake, the lingering drone of cars
Going nowhere, really, on random drives,
Crunching under tires leaves, falling lives.

In Praise of Doubt

Long the lingering, last-minute mind games
When faced with what, and who, and why…
Father Winston in his fat white collar tries
To soothe, to salve, to somehow save,
But this boy’s already around the bend,
With absolutely no one behind that wheel,
Wheel which spins when the tires spasm
And we finally fishtail off the highway,
Bearing down on many bushes burning
Only from the freakish Oklahoma heat,
Crashing through the thorny thicket
Surrounding this ultimate emptiness.

Just Another Poem About Time

Orange juice and vodka
With a slice of the moon.

Soft-boiled eggs warm
With sea salt and pepper.

You away, voice on the phone
Cracking across distances.

In these simple moments
The future is decided.

With each heartbeat,
A new world blooms.

Indian Summer's End

Sky’s been dry for weeks now,
Unseasonable autumn heat,
And while you’re enjoying
These searing, surreal days,
You know that the lightning
Licking the western horizon
Promises, at last, an end
To fall’s lingering fantasies.
Thunder, wind, and sudden rain
Sweep over your rooftop,
And drops from the broken gutter
Gradually coalesce into a cascade
Of November’s stern realities.

Before Anyone Else Has Risen

This little lake near Seminole
May not even have a name,
Yet has a face open
To the morning sky—
Clouds rouge its shimmering,
And autumn leaves float
Like tiny ducklings
Across its wide, wet eyes.

Autumn Haiku #1

Listen carefully—
Within yourself you will hear
Silence bursting free.

Desert Rat Haiku #8

The sunlight, morning,
The sounds of nothing at all—
Cross your legs and breathe.

Retreat at St. Crispin’s, November 2009

A simple wooden cross
Bisects the cabin wall—
A blue-bound Bible
Weights the table down.
Outside, the distant stars
Do their best to teach us
The very simplest Gospel:
Shine brightly, speak softly—
So softly that your words
Will light some far-off world
A billion years from now,
And a poet will raise her pen.

That One About Peace in the Middle East

And so I listened as the learned lecturer
Profiled the problem of peace in the Middle East,
The need to speed the distant day
When the Jew and the Arab, the Jew and the Muslim
(and let’s not forget the Christians and other infidels)
Break bread together on the holy Temple Mount
While flocks of white doves float benignly above.

And so I left the crowded lecture hall
With his wise words lingering in my mind,
His charge to change the ways we view the world
so as to usher in a sweet, so-shiny day.
I walked out into the full-mooned night
And watched the stars burn coldly
Millions of miles from where we fight, and dream

Of a sometime when words take shape, stand up, and walk.

Desert Rat Haiku #7

Hustling the whole day—
No moment for reflection—
Busy, but wasted.

Desert Rat Haiku #6

Fat full Buddha moon
Floating amid glowing clouds—
Grace in eastern sky.

The Morning After Time’s Fallen Back

So far the day’s flying right,
Dispelling night, dispensing light,
Causing coffee to brew on time
And words to wobbily rhyme.
The birds from their perch bitch
As I pull the paper from the ditch,
But it’s sunny and I’m alive still—
Just say it’ll be good, and it will.
At least that’s what they all said.
Trouble is, of course, they’re all dead.

The Trickster Legends of Nova Scotia

A man in the paper
(which could be any man,
Since everyone hits print
At least three or four times,
More if he’s a criminal,
A President, a rock star)
Was killed by two coyotes
On a Canadian hiking trail,
Though coyotes are shy
And usually easily shooed,
So these two mangy mongrels
Must have had a bad day,
Been looking for a scapegoat,
And along comes a man
In boots and L.L. Bean,
And for once they didn’t run
But demanded he share the trail
And, when he ran at them,
Fat city-raised arms flapping,
The two just snapped
And jumped on him and took
Him down in the tall grass
Near the bend by the river.
I feel for the man’s family,
And for the Family of Man,
But a large primal part of me
Could be a coyote easily.

Post-Vita

What sound does the world make
When starting to wind down—
A sigh like failing wind,
Slow hiss stretched tiredly
Across the universe?
Perhaps only silence?

God may have tired of us
As we have tired of Him.
We catch the shimmering
Of His languid retreat,
watch the remaining stars
to black fade, one by one.

Faucet Song

Some water’s running
in another room,
barely audible
through the heater’s hum:
last sound before sleep.

Step

A ladder stands in our living room,
Its aluminum legs spread-eagled,
blue plastic top step a parallel plane
to our floor, our ceiling, our lawn.
We’ve no other place to store it,

So it’s taken up sulking residence
Between the book shelf and the sofa,
The tallest member of the family,
And with by far the finest posture.
We suppose we’ll have to let it stay,

For we’ll certainly need it some day
As we stretch our anxious arms
Toward the waiting, textured sky.

Two Hours West of Tulsa

Who knew the sky flew so close to the horizon,
That the stars sang like the wind in her hair,
That the trees hung from the bluff with regret?

Who knew the words to open the mirrors,
The spells to dispel all the blues in her eyes,
To morph her sorrow into linen and light?

Who knew what questions to throw at God,
Safe in our memories, sated with man-prayers,
Yet fading into these questions we never ask?

Under a Clouded Moon

Walking my dog tonight under a clouded moon,
I met myself walking a dog not unlike my dog,
With white matted fur not unlike my dog’s fur
And small black nose and eyes not unlike my dog’s,
And I finally had to conclude the walker wasn’t me,
But that the dog was most definitely my dog,
So who, who the hell, was holding that strange leash?

Omens

The accidents kept on occurring:
Glasses shattered, spares shredded, the clocks
Falling like mere dying metaphors
To flat reality of tiled floors.
And all through that lingering autumn
We watched each other’s faces for signs,
Some clues of carelessness, thoughtlessness.
But all we could read in those shadows
Was harried joy, dismay, random love.

Where the Land Meets the Sea

Waves came faster, foaming white wishes
through my desert imagination

flying like herons over cattle
grazing deeply in the greenest field

breaking into random molecules
misting our pale Midwestern shoulders

yet we are mesas, cacti, and sun
our memories run like grains of sand

through some stranger’s dark and trembling hand

The Prophet Who Wrote the Book on Juggling

Looking at an online card catalog
For an obscure part-time seer,
I found instead a book by a juggler
With the very same author’s name,
And I imagined cryptic questions,
Doubts and fears, budding aphorisms,
Flying though the air in oval patterns,
Touching flesh for the merest moment
Before flying back into the hot air
Of some crowded vaudevillian venue,
The clustered metaphysicians frozen
In awe by the gurus and sages
Tumbling through all lives, all time.

The Fall's First Frost

When you told me you had only months left to live
But that the months might hold their breaths for a few years,
And you asked how I’d spend those days if I were you,
I stupidly quoted Joseph Campbell and then
Spent several minutes explaining about bliss,
When really I know precious little about it—
Just this—only that it ends. Only that it ends.

Remember What Never Happened

Who knew when the rain started,
When the midnight stars parted
To let the moonlight beam through?
I know I did; maybe you
Still stalked the rain-slick terrace
In the middle of Paris
Until the oui hours of day,
You and I two pillars of clay
Shining in the clouds’ shadow,
So resplendent though sad, so
Mired to the meaning of we
We could barely see to see.

The Old, Old Testament

Who knew that our Lord God hid so competently,
So completely, we couldn’t behold Him at all
After around 1700 but instead
turned our stern gazes toward the fractured mirrors
in which we beheld as if for the first time our
own fractured faces, long and ever lengthening
as the full weight of our loss began to sit in?
The joke—something profane about rabbis and priests—
Was most definitely on us, as we soon found
we didn’t even need God to kill each other,
though He’d always come in handy for that—still does.
The joke wasn’t funny. All we can do is laugh.

Toward the Sea, With Attitude

Several times a day
The river ignores us
With haughty, wet disdain.

We try to catch it looking,
But always find its silver back
Arching under moonlight.

All night we listen to whispers
Around the blackened rocks,
Secrets washing downstream.

At sunrise the herons gather
Wading the slow shallows
Of its winding insolence.

Unknown Wings

I wish I knew the names of birds
The way I know some songs and books.
Then I’d say, “Hello, warbling wren,
And just how the hell have you been?”
Instead I stand mute underneath
restless flutters of rising wings,
random tune from 1980
rising unbidden to my brain
as a blue shadow of beauty
glides namelessly into the sun.

sign high overhead

insides of my eyes
sparkling like water
as the sun rises
within me
this very morning
shall be the day
of my glorious eclipse
visible to all nations
but only if they peer
carefully cautiously
into a shadow box
of crumpled dreams
gripped in trembling hands

Little Book Rock Room

I need to book a room
In Little Rock

Or is it

I need to rock a room
In Little Book

Or perhaps

I need room for a book
In Little Rock

On the other hand, it could be

I need a little room
For a book and a rock

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

I need a little book
But with room for a rock

My therapist always says

A little rock needs me
Like a room needs a book

So I have only one final question:

Will you read me like a book
Here alone in this our room
Oh lover my little rock?

Desert Rat Haiku #5

Moon has no shadow
But I still stand underneath—
Where else could I be?

Forecast

Nine days of light rain
no sun no moon and no stars
except inside us

Another One for Pam

In the desert of my domain,
Down in the languid dunes,
You appear daily, a mirage
That dances over the sand,
Pitcher of cool water in hand,
Love deep enough to bury
Deep under these sacred grains.

Theological Sonnet

This morning rain and now a low, light mist—
The sun’s been absent for seven days straight,
So I’m afraid we’ll just have to get pissed,
Sit in this woe-filled house and simply wait
For some bright god to break this depression,
Bringing beams of light, cascades of sweet song
To us poor sinners needing confession
For all the right we meant to do, the wrong
We didn’t but compulsively did well.
But can a god or goddess find us here,
Mired in the muck on the pathway to hell,
Grinning into a mirror neither clear
Nor particularly accurate, yet
All the glimpsing of heaven that we’ll get?

A Simple Question on a Simple Night

Mountains of rain on the horizon
And sky blue day overhead—

The wind brings us its secrets
On the dark arms of the night.

Have you ever heard the voice
Speaking deep within your belly,

Your belly which vibrates to a song?

How Mysterious Are the Workings of Our God

They wheeled her into ICU,
Cancer running through her like flames.
For three painful years she’s endured,
Praying only God’s will be done.

What if this horror is His will,
Some sick diversion from boredom?
Above, the angels pray daily
To escape His divine notice.

No such blasphemy does she hold:
Her faith has endured as has she.
The hands move slowly on the clock.
I imagine Him still plotting,

As she, hands folded on her breasts,
Silently sings His due praises.

A Scrap of Paper: 2059

The last bear lives in my basement.
I feed him drugged squirrels,
Sunday potluck leftovers,
A very occasional honey pot.

He misses the woods, I know,
But they’re not safe anymore.
The priests with their bulldozers
Clear space, clear space, clear space.

I think he may be depressed.
He watches TV all day,
Channel-surfing with one shiny claw.
He especially likes the Food Network.

The last bear lives in my basement.
He misses the woods, I know.
I think he may be depressed.
I’d better recheck the lock tonight.

Desert Rat Haiku #4

Rain, thunder, then sun—
All day long, old Mother Earth
Changed and changed her mind.

As a Bone

I’d never say it doesn’t matter;
I’d never tell that lie.
You’d know the awful truth,
That my memory stutters
Every time I’m near reality
And then I’ll say anything
To make the past retract
And give me back my conscience
Clean and white as a bone

Sistine

Michelangelo knew
Himself as a sculptor
And not as a painter.

The pope sent his army
To bring the sculptor home.
And then the work began,

Hours on the scaffolding,
Arm stretched above his head,
Hard work for a young man,

Which the sculptor wasn’t.
But still his calm hand moved
Across the chapel space,

And God’s immense hand stretched
Across a universe
To touch the first maker’s,

And God said, “It is good.”
And Adam stood, stretched, sighed,
simply said, “It is God.”

Occasionally, a Moment Such as This

Green and orange sky
On October 5
like algae, tangerines,
random simile shades
Under a cloudy moon.

You’ve to bed hours ago,
The dog’s still vet-drowsy
And the children in bed,
So it’s just me and the sky
Suddenly raining down.

Raining down.
Raining.
Down.

Wash and Wear

I was washing coats
As a prelude to winter
And pulled out my wife’s parka,
Leftover from Minnesota days.
On the care tag I read,
“Dry on low
With clean tennis balls,”
And I am baffled.
I’d never throw dirty balls
Into a clean dryer
With a clean coat,
But then I don’t play tennis
So I own no such balls.
What’s a man to do?
Would other balls work—
Perhaps yellow softballs
Or dry wiffle balls?
I hang the coat back
At the far end of the closet.
Taking care of lovers
Shouldn’t demand
Such absurdities,
And, besides,
It’s only early October.

Existential

If it is indeed true
That the first bomb
Dropped on Germany
during World War II
killed the only elephant
in the Berlin Zoo,
then I am again humbled
before an absurd God.
How mysterious His ways?
Give me a fucking break.
Forget His ways, his means,
His inscrutable theology.
Our lives are as random
As blips on a radar,
Dark spots on an MRI,
Radio static on the dish
Searching for alien life—
As pointless as the rain drop
Sliding down the elephant’s trunk
The moment before.

Desert Rat Haiku #3

Rouge lips at twilight
As the deer cross the meadow—
This wine, those deer, us.

In the Kiamichis

Swerving the sweet mountain road
Sun high in your mirror shaded eyes
You suddenly hear music
A minor key in your ears
Blues jumping up like grasshoppers
Into your quiet mind
So you slow and pull over
In a meadow filled
With black eyed susans
And try to train your brain
On some little things
Her lisp when excited
The bright flash of her words
Early on an autumn morning
Yes some little things
Like lines from old songs
Playing through your head
In a field full of nothing
Beside a mountain road

The Middle Ages

Warm breeze after too-short sleep
The bitter stout tongue of coffee
Birds’ bleeps and tweets high above
So this then is the promised land
Flowing with silk and money
I promised myself if I ever got here
I’d promptly blow my brains out
Yet now and yet now
I grasp for dreaded contentment
Addict jonesing for normalcy
Aha What a sack of shit
For most mortals this boredom
Would be sweetest paradise
This angst no worse
Than after dinner burning
In that most vital of organs
Where peace flows out and in
In the mundane pump of blood

Desert Rat Haiku #2

Bottom of the glass
Something seems to be stirring:
Sudden memory.

Some Days

Some days the skies
Hover too closely
Pressing away our breath

And all we lovers
Huddle close together
In the clouds’ shadows

And invoke that old sun
That’s never completely failed
To brighten and lighten some way

Out of whatever darkness
Deepening into the hours that
We knew and feared and found

Pineapples

Stumbling, stuttering, vacant and lost,
The old man with the Billy-goat beard
And the 15-gallon straw cowboy hat
Cut through the crowd of consumers
At the Wichita shopping mall
Like a machete through a pineapple
In an old South Seas survival film,
One that the old man had seen often
As a child at the now-closed cinema
Downtown by the Harley dealer,
Where one of the dudes has a similar beard
And a fondness for blades and forbidden fruit,
Though pineapple is forbidden only by fools
Who’ve never been to the Oahu roadside stands
Where the old man with the beard and hat
Used to take his girlfriend for a treat
After a long day of snorkeling and making love
Before his Naval hitch ended and she stayed
And he returned home to the aircraft plant
And his high school sweetie who’d broken his heart,
That same sweetie who died giving birth
To a daughter who died later that day,
And he started in with pineapple juice and rum
But soon shucked all pretense and decorum
And took to the thick strong wine
Straight from the brown bagged bottle
Until he couldn’t keep anything in one piece
And bit by jagged bit he burst apart
Though that bursting took twenty years
And this morning he went to the mall
For no reason, no reason at all,
And walked its sweetly-tiled length
Until the security guards ran him out at closing
And he sat down in the empty parking lot
And watched the bright moon over Wichita
Turn slowly to the ripest of pineapples.

Desert Rat Haiku #1

Stars and tequila
Both fill my spirit tonight—
They twinkle, they shoot.

Accident at the Wishbone, 1979

When you pour hot
deep fryer grease
On your arm
You get your attention.
Your skin ripples
Like bubble wrap
Popping into pain.
Your best friend
Drives you
To the local E.R.
For your very first
Shot of morphine.
That night,
After Wild Turkey
And a couple of pills
You drowse through
The football game
Take off your bandages
And let your scalded arm
Scat through the sudden,
Impromptu party.

It was May. It was 1978.

Our river ran roughly that day,
Carrying our canoe over the rocks
That lay just under the water’s loam.

You’d wanted to stay home,
You felt feverish, foolish, and weak,
But it was my twentieth birthday.

So we went down the river that May,
The river high and wild, spring-swollen
And flowing very like our young lives.

What the river takes the river gives.
We finally floated stable under the stars,
Pulled up on a sandbar, bedded down,

And watched lightning lick the town
We knew lay over the knobby hills.
We smoked—innocently—a joint.

Back then nothing really had a point.
Today, we’re all angles, nothing but.
We’ve lost a lot, but mostly our flow,

That led us one wet May to go
Down our river very together, yet
Even then beginning our slow drifting.

A Little Ditty for Norman Vincent Peale

Try again.
When all else
fails, try a-
gain and a-
gain. Then you’ll
learn the truth:
when all else
fails, fails, fails,
so will you.

Minuet in a Minor Key

Sound familiar?
This sad music
Means so little

To most of us,
Who guess quite wrong
Most of the time.

You hum that tune
So awkwardly
I want to hush

You forever.
A terrible thought,
That I could kill,

That you could die.
We could, you know.
Sound familiar?

Playing Doctor

Nothing changes, but everything does,
And the sky flies away every night.
We circle each other tentatively
Before crashing together at first light.

You awkwardly smoke, and I crave your fire,
Wanting to enter you like a disease,
Unseen, unfelt until my work is done,
And your fever burns brightly and higher,

I’m like a virus seeping through your veins,
Sweeping aside corpuscle confetti
But also obliterating your pains.
Let me infect you. Come on, Hon. Let me.

Nightmare #1

The charismatic alcoholic
Sees faces in the bathroom wall:
Monstrous, looming visages,
All teeth and bulbous cheeks,
When he crouches on the toilet
Late at night, too drunk to read
And too drunk to stand,
Sitting like a woman,
And he hears his dead father
(who may be on the wall)
Railing at the hospice nurse,
“Goddamnit, I’m a man!
I won’t sit down to piss!”
And he sees another face,
Briefly young and handsome,
Phase slowly to bloat and sag,
And he remembers that
He needs another drink,
Just one more before bed,
Where he’ll lie on his back
And stare at the textured faces
Falling dizzily down upon him.

Dava

A baby’s toddled
Into our house
Blonde curly locks
And stubby legs

She smiles lemons
Fragrant oranges
Traces of sea salt
And two new teeth

She’s being weaned
And behaves badly
A cyclone of sorrow
Flung on our floor

We love her screams
Laugh at her tantrum
Because she’s someone
Else’s unhappy baby

When she departs
In her father’s arms
Our eyes waltz in time
Our babies now drive

Flight of the Last Bat, 2034

Sonaring into the soft night,
The last bat sails
From lonely upside-down
Onto a dark, quivering branch
Battered by a deepening breeze.
She receives no reply to her pings,
Audio hieroglyphics fading to silence
Throughout a lengthening moment.

Populist #1

Hey man,
Where you been?
And what’s up
With that sign?
You say Obama’s
A socialist?
Shit, I thought
He was from Chicago.
Man, I don’t know
Where you get your info,
But if I’m a red
For wanting folks
To see a doctor
Without going broke,
For desiring
A cleaner, greener scene,
For wishing our boys
And girls back from Iraq,
And school for them
When they get home,
Then, hell yeah, I’m red,
Red as central Oklahoma dirt,
Dirt that clung to Woody’s boots
When he sang (they
Called him red, too)
“This Land is Your Land.”
So it is.
And mine,
My red brother,
My sweet sister so rose.

Kudzu #15

Woke up to thunder
Far away in the southwest
Sad, lingering dreams

In a Yellow T-Shirt Holding Dante (for Kris Manasco)

So I saw your picture today
In an old photo album,
Red hair falling around you
Like the licking flames
Of a house burning down.
You held your green iguana
And it flicked its slim tongue
At the camera, and you smiled
A smile that’s lasted ‘til now.

Kudzu #14

Late morning sunshine
Bearing no real shoulder heat—
Autumn’s falling fast.

Widsom Poet #13

My mind failed today
But the river kept moving
Washing away fear

What did Kierkegaard Know?

And the Lord God moved
On the face of the waters
And my boat is rocking still
Riding the random waves
Of a story that never ends
Or does it
Ah that’s the question
And you and I never know
Never know never know

Spaceship No. 2

At first
They expected worst
The gnaw of hunger the throb of thirst
They swore they were cursed
Then burst

Spaceship #1

Your night
Isn’t like my night
Except regarding the lack of light
Darkness isn’t right
No sight

Apolitical

The president made a speech tonight
And all the markets trembled
In anticipation of most dreaded change

Me, I made myself a cocktail
Watched the night swallow the day
Along the west horizon

I listened to the oratory
And it was very good, but
my cocktail—and the night—were better

Nordic

When the wind first whispers winter
Doesn’t your skin crinkle with joy?

The dog days lie under the porch
Panting into their shadows.

Leaves fall freely into your pool
And you skim them absent-mindedly.

Let others have their flowers and heat.
All you ask, and ever will, is the chill.

Labor Day

No massed marchers down these streets today—
Squirrels and birds the only pedestrians.

Celebrated by moving furniture—
And scrubbing an obstinate counter.

Not a single phone call all day—
Instead making love at 3 p.m.

Tomorrow reality returns—
Those in power hold all the cards.

But I still have my ace to play—
Memory of one almost-perfect day.

Illinois River Blues

Do you remember the summer of ‘79
When we floated the river weekly
With our trash bags and contraband beer
Brown as the bark on the dark submerged trees
And all the women had flat bellies and tans
And we were all young and very high
So even the maggots in the trashcans
We had to empty almost daily
Didn’t discourage us—much?
The crazy old man named Glen
Managed us with a gleam in his eyes
And a slingshot in his pocket
With which he brought down a dozen squirrels
In the parking lot where my lonely Ford lounged
Waiting for the end of the day.

Haiku for J.K.

Where’s Jack Kerouac
When we need his speed and tears?
Silent forty years.

Labor Day 2009

After so many plains
Mountains surprise
Rolling green bulk
Under smaller sky
Our car rolls on
Into a sudden fog
Careful on the curves
We’ve miles to drive
Until the morning

Then I Turned Off the Phone

Something sad on the radio
Something bad on the news
Something white on a dark shirt
Something quite out of place
Something missing a piece
Something hissing downstairs
Something blue in your eyes
Something new has been born

Wow! You Really Meant It

Under the curve another curve
And on and on
Light bending down
Veritable rainbow bridge of swerve.

Reality is a construct
And on and on
Minds bending down
The only player left was Brecht

What if all you needed was love
And on and on
Hearts bending down
I came to push you came to shove

Nuit Mauvaise

Slowly, old nighttime slithered in,
Black tail filled to the tip with stars,
Tight breeze the tongue with bitter brogue
Cursing the failing, falling light
Haloing our hollow shadows.
You started to stutter a prayer
But forgot what followed “Father…”
Damned, we cling to our shared darkness.

Low Glycemic Index

First day of a diet
And I’m hungry as hell.
My stomach won’t quiet,
And I don’t feel so well.
I’ll eat lots of whole grains,
Until I start to moo
And experience pains
When I skip to the loo.
All this so I can wear
Those old jeans on the shelf?
Being fat isn’t fair—
I’ll miss part of myself.

Who Knew?

Skies are schizophrenic at times,
Conjuring blow-ups from clearest blue,
Yet I would not lock them away
As we quarantine each other.
For some nights, the darkest nights,
The stars scatter like playful children
From one horizon to another,
And the moon tries to light it all
And we fall in love with each other
All over again in its crazy beams,
And I’m damn glad these skies
Stretch so far, shine so brightly,
Fall so close to our fast-beating hearts.

Pre-Aubade

After making love,
We watch the moon for an hour—
Time and wine well spent.

OK Moon

Half-moon working hard
To illuminate the sky—
We can see enough.

August 29

This summer’s passed by
Like the shadow of the sun—
Hello, harvest moon.

Eighty-One

Again, and again, lightning flashes.
Small rain patters into the green pool.
Summer’s at an end, old tiresome fool
Messaging fall with dots and dashes
Stretching across a cold, tattered night.
The signs all point to early demise.
The clouds stumble through the clabbered skies
Chasing the owl in its lonely flight.
Somehow, in this place, you and I thrive.

Transition

Whose eyes peer over the glass,
Brown as earth, steady as blood
thumping through a healthy heart?

Art flies in the face of fashion,
The maker’s fingers trembling,
Hysterical at the touch of God.

Sod we were, are, sod we’ll be.
Between the womb and the tomb
A few chances, if we’re lucky, come.

Some nights the sky hovers,
sentient yet impotent, reflected
in a glass, our blood, our heart.

[Clouds across the sky]

Clouds across the sky
Racing towards the morning.
Me? I’ll just wait here

Consolations of 50

I can’t really be in a big hurry.
I’ve never ever had so much money
With so few things I need to spend it on.
I sometimes get discounts at restaurants,
Where people excuse my obesity.
Children are now less fearful of my face,
Which day by day grows more grandfatherly.
It’s true I think about dying a lot,
Every left-arm twinge cause for concern.
Yet every morning is victory.

Noirish

The killers couldn’t see us, somehow.
We hid low, and they looked over us,
Their pistols dark in the pastel light.

I remember your breath like bread,
Yeasty and hot in our hiding place.
Your breasts bracketed my arm.

Eventually they went away.
Still we lay, stricken hearts loping
To rejoin our redeemed lives.

Tighter

Green moments in a great day—
The liftoff of the morning’s light
Falling into your upturned face,
The sprinkle of rain around noon
That settled the restive dust,
redbirds’ feathers reflecting rays
filtering through the maple leaves.

Such moments tend to escape.
Hold them tightly. Tighter.

Amnesia

John Doe slept in the park
walked out into the morning
in a Brooks Brothers suit
and a $500 shirt
and didn’t know who he was

He said plainly in three languages
he didn’t know who he was
when told his name he believed
but couldn’t remember ever
having been such a person

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

More distance in the lightning
Leeching over the horizon
Held in place by darkness
Drifting over the town
Terrible in its implications
Ignorant of its power
Personally I’m tired of the rain
Renunciation’s no option at all
Anyway the lightning’s fading

Huh?

A swimming pool’s a lonely death
devoid of playful amphibians
angling for bluest corners
concrete shoulders bearing water
wasted in the growing deserts
designed by no god in its right mind
maybe maybe a purpose
posing as a classic conundrum
cars racing though vast aridity
avidly racing land with no corners
California no one really wants
we gave it to some Indians
imagine their and our surprise

Kudzu #13

Hail against the house
Windows groaning in the wind
Storm inside or out?

Mid-Autumn Midnight Storm

Lightning lingers in the latticework
Of the west-facing window,
Vamping like fireflies, flittering
Amongst the glossy glazed glass
Like errant drunken souls surfing
The uncertainties of the sullen storm,
Its distant lumbering diminishing
Into random raindrops, drowsing
Their turbid way to the wet turf.

Right Number

No one called you today
though you watched the phone
hoping to see it dancing.
You sat it on the table
with an ashtray and a drink
and studied its blank black face.
After mute hours of boredom,
you decided it was broken,
when—really--you were.

Through the Maple Leaves

Faces falling under
The spell of the leaves
Lit from above
By the bustling sun
Busily shining through
The shimmering noon,
The lingering motion
Of clouds on water,
mind wading the shallows.

A Question

Why do two shoes
tossed to the floor
almost always land
facing away from
each other, the way
two lovers end up
back-to-back after
they’ve made love,
staring into the dark?

A Casual Comment

You said you liked Nick Lowe,
which was hard to argue with,
though I really only know
a couple of songs.
I like his name, the way I like
certain words, like “kumquat,”
the way I like meteor showers
and sudden attacks of quiet.
If you like him, so must I.

Perception

So my friend said, “Man,
have you noticed how
sometimes things you’ve seen
a thousand times
look really strange?”

“Yeah,” I said,
sipping my beer.
I was looking
right at him.

Deletion

You’re learning to live
With the pain.
After the first slice,
It gets easier.
A finger here,
A liver there,
And pretty soon
We’re smelling
A flood of blood.
All part of the project—
The ultimate revision—
Will anyone notice
All the empty you make?

[She wanted to talk politics]

She wanted to talk politics
And I was a little drunk
(which I usually am), so
I said what I always never say:
“Me, I’m a radical rubbishtarian
With a populist propensity
Toward Rhinegoldian rhetoric.”
She whacked me hard once or twice
With Mao’s little red book,
Or maybe it was Atlas Shrugged
Or the poetry of Jimmy Stewart,
And I again repeated 1,000 times
“One for all, and all for one!”

More Matter of Fact

Your pizza never came.
We sat in the Hideaway
On a rainy August day
When war was in the news,
As it almost always is,
And strange omens, too,
With a group of strangers
We’d come to call friends
And listened to the music
From a drier, saner time,
Drinking pitchers of beer
And avoiding conversation.

Your pizza never came.

Kudzu #12

Steam in the kitchen
From a pot of hot noodles—
My stomach murmers.

Jazz Fantasy #1

I’d like to hear Jimmy Smith
Jam the organ at Convention Hall
In high-cool Atlantic City
And sit and feel the vibrations
From 33,114 pipes pulse
Through the soles of my feet
Until they reached my heart
And I’d be back at the Chicken Shack,
A Midnight Special just for me.

But Jimmy Smith died in 2005,
And I’m small-town Oklahoma,
And my wife doesn’t like jazz,
And do I have a heart to reach?

I Want My $8 Back

The two young potheads
In the back row
Snicker and giggle through
The unfunniest of comedies,
A predictably preposterous romance
That we have all seen
But none have lived.
The stale popcorn’s hotter
That anything on screen,
But we’re with friends,
And with each other,
And those two stoners
Chortle and chuckle sweetly.

Weather Report

How hot was it?
You have to ask?
It was so hot
I took three showers
Just to freshen up
From the monumental work
Of getting out of bed.
How hot was it?
I already told you.

Early August Morning

Red-tailed squirrel
On the thin fence
Facing off with
Two small sparrows.
He dances down
Toward the birds,
Big tail twitching
In bold spasms.
The sparrows flit
A few feet down
And turn their backs,
Insolent wings,
To the rodent.

World Poetry

Perches high on a shelf
Alongside the dictionary
And a paperback of prints
From great sculptors.
On one side words,
On the other stone and steel—
Bracketed for eternity
Or at least as long as we’ll get
To open the whispering pages.

Home Base

Sunday night’s adrift,
Unmoored from Monday
With all its dramas.
No, she simply floats
While we manufacture
Grievances amid the grey.
Often on such a night
The moon signals to us
To see whether we’re listening.

Matter of Fact

Morning, noon, night,
Everything hurts.
I’d always thought
Old people whined
Until I turned 50.
Now, now I think
They’re masters
Of understatement.

Against Empathy

Your father is dying.
Do I know how you feel
Because my father is dead?
No, every dying is different,
And every father as well.
I know my own pain,
But I wear yours as mine,
Though words fail me.
If I could speak the right ones,
You and I would share
The miracle of death
As we have shared—
three times—
The miracle of life.
Yet I can only stand
In the shadows
And take your hand
Whenever you offer it.

Kudzu #11

Sundial on its side
Like a watch in a drawer.
Who cares what the time?

Late July Funk

Grilling good beef
On a clean patio,
Sky empty as my mind
Toward summer’s end.
Pink crepe myrtles
And still-green tomatoes
Along the fence line,
And I’m wondering when,
Oh when, life will begin.

Prom, 1980s (for Jeff Tate)

Looking at old photos
Of a new friend
On a weirdly cool
July evening.
In the pictures
He’s about the age
Of my younger son
And as I look at him
In his silver tux
With his big-haired
Small-town girlfriend
Something in my heart
Dances slowly with Death.

Unseasonable

Movie at midnight—
Something we’ve seen--
And cold white wine
In plastic tumblers.
Outside the sky
Clotted with clouds
And a half-moon
Riding the chill
Above the pool.
No reason to leave,
No reason to stay
Save the only one
That really matters.

Meditation after breakfast

Sometimes the world seems
A wonderful little idea
In the mind of a happy fool,
A bit of a lark, a folly,
A fanciful experiment in lust
and need and near-collisions.
On those days it’s best
To take the sun as it’s given
And find a quiet place
Inside or outside yourself
To hide away the moments,
Your own private heaven,
The only one you’ll own.

Manifesto

Morning clouds and a Bloody Mary—
Why the hell rush things?
Sunday Morning it’s not,
And no cockatoo’s in sight;
But some days feel right
Lived at a deliberate pace
Rather than a breakneck race.
Time enough for all that later,
All that flurry and frantic hurry.
For now we’ll sit by the pool
And watch the lacy patterns
The warm wind makes
On the blue, cool water.

Kudzu #10

No alligators—
Is this really Florida?
Not one log no log.

Kudzu #9

Five hours of driving
Late into the Southern night—
Sing on, whippoorwills!

Kudzu #8

No sleep in two days,
But worries and fears of death.
Now—morning redbird.

Kudzu #7

Fine Florida day—
Rain flew out by the morning—
The palms shine and wave.

[He realized]

He realized
in staggering stages
that they had changed,
that they talked
without looking
at one another,
as two men do,
that she walked
out of the room
as he was talking
and never noticed.

He noticed.

He supposed—supposed—
he really had nothing
to say, anyway.

Did he?

The Good Ol’ Days

That damned, sad summer
The sun sat like an anvil
On our flat, tired town,
And we flocked to our churches
To pray to that tired old God
To send us His tears, His grace,
And we flocked to our bars
To damn Him and each other
As our fuses flared in inferno,
And as the sweat-streams pooled
At the bases of our tattooed backs,
We joked about global warming
In the hysteric tones of the doomed
And would have held each other
In our shared terror and rage
But for the damned, sad heat
Which made us hurt each other,
Tear each other apart,
Trying to pry that anvil
Off the dark bottoms of our souls.

Auditory

Below, the words you never,
ever, ever want to hear.

“I don’t love you anymore.”
“You need a root canal.”
“Mom? Dad? I’m in jail.”
“A spot on the x-ray.”
“This may hurt a little.”
“My period is really late.”
“We’re looking at cutting costs.”
“There’s been a major accident.”
“Your poetry isn’t for us.”

Cover your ears? OK, but
we hear what we fear.

Helsinki

Across the broad street,
A sweet flash of thigh--
The high color floats
And gloats in your face.
You place her right then,
Amend intentions,
As inventions play
And stay in your mind.
Be kind, keen lover.
Lay over her heart
A large part of yours.
Love tours summer lanes
And claims casualties.

Type A

Run that wheel, rat—
Wheeze your fat ass
Through your daily motions,
The endless, mindless errands,
The droning, pointless meetings
At which you all decide
More meetings are needed.
Kill that coffee, black and sweet,
That Red Bull, ginseng-laced.
Get up, get it together, get going—
You’re not quite dead yet.
But you are beginning to reek
Like a tired, sweaty old rat
Trembling in anticipation.

After a couple of boilermakers

Ever notice the acronym
for “good old days” is God?

Sounds like an email forward
But it’s just an observation,
The kind you’d make if you
had time on your hands,
A chip on your shoulder,
A reflective nature,
A Compaq on your lap,
A tendency toward ambiguity,
Fickleness, and doubt,
Toward wonderment,
Mystery, uncertainty, and awe.

The kind you’d likely make
If you indeed were me.

heat

109 degrees this afternoon
no clouds no hint of rain
only waves of heat
breaking over the wheat fields
now in mid july shorn dry

pool water like warm seltzer
ac wheezes and strains
lava breezes skillet sidewalk
they don’t dare touch
sweat trailing their shadows

separately they imagine igloo
roaring fire fumbling of furs
onto a dark icy floor
bodies moving toward warmth
on the longest, coldest night

she and he: the further adventures

‘twas a moment only
the lonely moment lost
such cost they bear
who share such love
push shove each other
father mother husband wife
this life short long
this wrong blessed rightness

Kudzu #6

Squirrel’s tail whipcracks
Above my pup’s yapping head—
Pity she’s so short.

summertime she and he

she and he lounged in the lake
as the sun was settling down

he and she loved their lives
and their together times

she and he sometimes hurt
each other but burrowed on

he and she bought burial plots
when their money moved out

she and he slept side by side
until the first one died

he and she aren’t there yet
I’m getting ahead of this moment

she and he lounged in the lake
moon spread its glow around them

Wedges of an Old Friend, Now Deceased

Gary,
You never
Made sense, guy,
With your strung-out
Hair and erratic bathing habits,
Your charcoals of children
Growing into trees
Under Lenora’s
Eyes.

Gentle.
That’s one
Word that fits.
Like we imagine deer,
Or perhaps they dream us.
Without the normal malice,
Even when sober,
Which wasn’t
Often.

Dead.
That’s the
Damned, damned reality.
Buried in red dirt
In a town you hated.
Still, you avoided the rush.
And I see you
Yet, drunken artist
Of my
Memories.

Conversation

“I love e.e. cummings,”
She said.
“He loved the French whores,”
She said.
“That’s understandable,”
I said.
“After all, they were French,”
I said.
“He was in a prison camp, you know,”
I said.
“A French P.O.W. camp,”
I said.
“I know,”
She said.
“He loved the French whores.”
She said.
We drank our wine
And stared into the night.

[Dog at my feet]

Dog at my feet.
Feet at my dog.
Whose feet?

When we meet,
Our smiles
Cross swords.

Made of words,
We go on and on,
Indomitable, snug

In language as a bug
In our bed.
Whose side?

So we ride
These words, this life,
Until they end.

End.
End.
End.

Riversong

Behind, below the trailer we called home,
The Poteau River tracked on westward
Toward the border, Coaldale and Hontubby,
southeastern hills of the old Indian Territory
where the Choctaw had made their home.
Eventually it would snake through its namesake
To fall into the Arkansas at Fort Smith,
To become a mighty, major river at last.

Behind, below the trailer we called home,
The Poteau River ran shallow and brown,
Shadowed with runoff from the chicken plant,
The pulpwood mill, the furniture factory,
The chicken houses spotting the county.
We were advised not to eat the fish,
But set out trotlines anyway, ran them daily
In a small, leaky, flat-bottomed boat.

Behind, below the trailer we called home,
I sat for hours on various stumps and logs
Watching flecks of yellow foam pool
Along the quiet shallows, listening
To my heart thudding to the whippoorwills,
The slow croak of Buddha-like bullfrogs,
Witnesses to the casual devastation,
The slide and dance of algae in the sun.

Behind, below the trailer we called home,
The Poteau River tracks on westward,
wandering shallow and brown,
past where I sat for hours on various stumps and logs,
another witness to the casual devastation.

Kudzu #5

Blue jays and redbirds
Wrangling above the still pool—
Welcome home, Morning.

The Strip Pit

They told me it was bottomless,
And I believed because its skin
Shone black on starful nights,
Reflected nothing to heaven.
When I was baptized in it,
A part of me knew God couldn’t see.
No fish or snakes swam its deeps,
Yet when I dared that water
I felt innumerable nibbles.

That vast hole was left by coal
Miners when my father ran young.
He’d swum those very currents,
Endured those dark movements
Beneath his dangling feet.
He first showed me its coolness
One August day after hauling hay;
We washed away the straw and dust
Until dusk floated in on the wind.

The coal from here burned long ago,
Heated homes or steamed a turbine.
The miners moved on, and my father’s town
Melted into insignificance.
Even my father left, for labor and family.
Only a few stayed, and today
Their grandchildren float those black waves,
Eyes flying through great swaths of stars,
The empty water heavy beneath their backs.

666

Radio’s gone silent.
The end wasn’t violent.
I saw the white moon rise
Over the blasted fields.
Faint light bled through the skies.
Love’s the last hope that yields.

Sounds Like

Chalk on a nail-board,
Asphalt on rubber tires,
Eardrums striking music,

Shore crashing onto waves,
Melodies entering birds
Like random memories,

Laughter slipping into children
Formed from “I love you”
Falling from your lips to me.

Parable #1

In the dark we see beasts
Where be no beasts;
Our senses see over
What really is.
In deepest daytime, though,
We overlook
Evil most obvious:
Blinded by light.

Solo Camping

And then the foxes’ barks
And the spinning moon
And I lay in my hammock
With my senses strewn
To the fine night breezes
And I saw different darks
Dancing behind my eyes
And I heard the deep sighs
Of the sad dying trees,
Felt a stitch in my stomach,
Watched the latticework friezes
Of starlight through leaves,
And knew that finally,
At the end of a long road of days,
I’d found some kind of home.

Kudzu #4

Moon’s a fingernail
Upon the fist of the night;
Blood bright from the palm.

There Are Men, and There Are Men

Bald man
On the side
Of the highway—
At least I have hair.

Thin man
Walking down
A flight of stairs—
I possess some bulk.

Drunk man
Falling down
In the dank street—
I’m quite moderate.

Sad man
Crying pain
Into the night—
I know happiness.

Mad man
Feigning sane
Mannerisms—
I’ve got your number.

All men
Be well warned—
I’m not like you—
I speak your sorrow.

Travelogue

They give you no maps,
only the vaguest of directions.
“Somewhere that-a-way,” they say,
snickering under their tattered breaths
at your considerable confusion.
So on and on and on you go,
shoe leather, tires, hair wearing thin,
debts and pounds accumulating,
‘til finally you’re barefoot, sunburned,
the odometer’s broken,
but you know no life but motion
so on and on and on you go,
to the valley of dry, brittle bones.

Kudzu #3

Summer heat’s begun,
And we wilt beneath the sun:
Bowing red-stem necks.

Sawdust Man

Now, father, when I think of you,
I think most often of sawdust—
Fine, sandy grainings of the stuff
Sifting down my collar, my arms,
Pooling at the base of my spine.
Together we slaughtered forests,
Fashioned boards into makeshift barns,
Sawed, planed, sanded, hammered in place.
And all the time you coughed and swore,
Sputtered and raged, and I looked on
With the son’s sad, detached concern.
Oh most imperfect carpenter—
Shall we never again approach
Those trembling trees with saws in hand,
Never again inhale their flesh
And from their muscles build a child?

Vegetation

No, no one saw you.
I’m quite sure of that.
Your secret is safe
For another night.
Breathe easier now.

Plant your rank sins deep,
Water them with tears.
In time they may sprout,
Spread out across you,
Vines with blood-red blooms.

Transaction

The light’s too bright;
Let’s tap that switch.
Swallow the light,
Oh perfect pitch!

Loosen your blouse;
Better, let fly.
Listen, oh house,
For our love cry.

Don’t sip that wine;
Guzzle it down.
You’re looking fine
In that lace gown.

Lie in the dark
With me, my wife.
Lend me your spark,
I’ll spend my life.

Kudzu #2

Watch that willow tree—
Branches falling down like tears—
That tree knows the score.

For Mark Richards

Each day he wore the usual—
Levi jeans and jacket faded
By the sun, not acid,
Over a worn Western shirt,
Cowboy boots, a smartass smirk,
As he held forth in the back
Of the rattling, rancid bus
Jarring and jolting down
The rutted pigtrail that
Really was Arkansas Highway 80.
He’d smack the back of my head,
Or the back of any male’s head,
Or pummel our shoulders
Into the submission of the pack.
“Lissen up, you little assholes,”
He’d say, firing a stream
Of sweet tobacco juice
Into a torn RC Cola can,
“this here’s the greatest damned song
In the whole damned world,”
And he’d launch into a wobbly warble
Of “American Pie,” and I’d almost cry
Because he was such a bully bastard
And I wanted so much to be him.
Every morning I’d wait to see him
Hunched in the autumn cool
Before his family’s fading trailer.
And then one morning he wasn’t there,
And he was never there again.
He’d driven his Chevy not to the levee
But toward the low-water bridge,
But the whisky was driving by then, not him,
And he didn’t make that blind curve
Hard by the old Thompson place.
They said a pine branch
Came right through the windshield
And right through his eye.
I can’t say.
I can only say the bus was quieter,
Less dangerous,
And I never loved that ride again,
All those lonely high school days.

Kudzu #1

Red bird and rabbit--
blackbirds over empty field--
Seen from your back porch.

So-so Mom

So she chopped the cotton
Because the cotton needed chopping.

So, later, she picked and packed the oranges
Because the fruit needed packing.

So still later, she built the batteries
Because the Hueys needed the batteries.

So then she built the furniture
Until her heart one day screamed.

So after a few months of rest and pills,
She built the batteries again.

So then he crashed and burned,
Lawyers and bureaucrats hovered.

So then she washed the dishes,
Because diners leave them dirty.

So finally, she wrapped the meat,
Because we want it sanitary.

So one day they threw her a party,
They gave her a cake and a rocker.

So then one day he died,
And she went on and on.

So her mind left shortly after he did,
And she swept the walk until it grooved.

So we had to sell the house
So she could live in Bedlam.

So then she died,
But not quite soon enough.

So.

So.

It's All Over Now

Past the dirt lane,
Past the sycamore,
Past the green house,
Past the open door,

Past the black hearse,
Past the tall stone,
Past the memory,
Past it all alone,

Past yesterday,
Past today, tomorrow,
Past that empty playground
Past childhood’s sorrow,

Past the past. Present.

Souvenir

That cross on the wall
Somehow centers everything
In this new yellow space.
Celtic, sandstone,
Wise beyond its years,
Hovering over expanse of paint
Between the bookshelf
And the open door,
Arms opening wide,
Like rose petals bursting,
Stretching to meet the sun
Bowing into our room.

The First to Leave

A woman drove to the end of the freeway,
Where parking lots spread like cancer.
She took her ticket and walked away,
Shedding her clothes like black snakeskin.
This, of course, attracted a following,
Cell phone cameras clicking, birds circling,
Everyone was sure they’d seen her before.
At the foot of the mountains she paused
Just long enough to shave her head,
Then trekked on up the brown slopes,
Gravel trickling down from her steps.
Around the tree line she turned to the crowd,
Mouthed, “I love you,” turned inside out,
Skin, organs, spinal column puddling
While something white, blinding, bright
Wafted to the clouds like incense,
Growing dimmer, growing duller,
Growing gone.

Demonic Haiku

An ancient cliché:
The devil’s in the details.
Sign on the black line.

The Baby

Center of gravity
For the entire world,
Bearer of smiles
Too big for belief,
Sudden skeptic
Of noises, strange faces
Or food, mood ferocious
One instant, then
Gleefully concentrated
On the wonder of now—
Little Buddha, Little Christ,
Little savior of us all,
Your adoring disciples.

5 x 3 x 2

Storms in the early morning
Sweep across your sleeping face
Turned toward the open window.

The thunder rocks you awake
And you turn toward me,
All lightning, rain, and wind.

2 x 5 x 3

Lonely pool.
Puffy sky.
Bright night.
You. I.
Vodka tonics,
Sudden quiet.

Far away,
Distant hum
Of traffic
You strain
To hear.

Why bother?
Sudden quiet.
Close by,
Bright night,
You. I.

The Aging Satyr to His Nymph

Listen! Can you hear me?
Strange that these flighty words
Have sound, have substance, sigh
Like a sad beast fleeing
The scene of a slaughter

She was powerless to prevent.
These words float above us
As if in comic books
Where we have super powers,
Never age, never lose, never

Forget each other’s special names,
And the villains are obvious,
Drawn all in garish sneers
And grasps toward ultimate power.
We’re real, love. And mute.

Annual Review

Whisper and sneer,
my angry pretties,
whisper and sneer.
Do push yourselves
to further plots,
schemes, vivid pettiness.
Smear the names
of your enemies
like sour jam
on moldy bread.
Itemize the slights,
document the snubs,
relish the rumors
of impending disaster.
Soon you’ll rule,
we’ll love you,
right will triumph.
Right. Some advice:
watch your back.
Targets tempt us.

Old Friend

I remembered you.
Across the room,
Lights in eyes,
Music like demolition.
You are memorable,
Like lofty peaks,
Toothy childrens’ grins,
Declarations of love.
Your face shines
With the lights.
I’ll remember you
Next time, too.

Political Rhetoric

Words slither
though the grass
in the dark

flick forked tongues
at ankles
unwary

Mystery #3

Who can say
why we do
what we do?

Apparently people sometimes
leap off buildings
with no premeditation.

Falling to earth
they never know
why they die.

During Chemo

Blank appetite
And brittle hands
Conspire against you,

Kidneys aching
From poison flow,
Even your hair hurts.

These days stretch out
Like snakes in the sand
Or dreams in fevered sleep.

Afterwards

Still
In morning
Sad thoughts meet

Those other thoughts
Coming in
Early

After
A night
On the town

With the boys
Who were
Sad

Almost Midnight

Thoroughly her thoughts meander
Surfing the breeze from the ceiling fan
Whose blades swing like questions
Going round and round forever

Memo

Flowers have eyes, too.
And stones have feelings.
And water has stories to tell
If your pores will listen.

In the densest city
You may stand solitary,
While alone in a field
You’re claustrophobic.

All of which is just to say
You’re just as screwed up
As all the rest of us.
Did you think you weren’t?

Believe me, we all concur.
We’ve had several meetings.
They were about you.
And you weren’t invited.

Where We Live Now

And I remember the desert
As if you and I lived there
Where the sand scrubs your skin
Down to bone, layer by layer.

I left that dust when I was twelve
For mountains, forests, streams.
Now we’ve left the woodlands
For horizons as flat as my dreams.

I walk in the morning still shaking
From my battles with surf and waves.
And I breathe you in like oxygen,
Like music, like landscape that saves.

Hotday

Eighty-nine degrees
by noon. Afternoon trembles
like a candle flame.

Rufus Johnson Alone All Day

Today‘s the butt of a quite endless May
And so much sun bludgeons this hapless plain
Rufus resembles that proverbial egg
On the sidewalk, yet without any pain,

For he’s on at least beer number thirteen
Without even a game for an excuse.
His son’s left home to become an actor,
And so Rufus has become a recluse.

All Saturday he sits on a green chaise
Staring out at his sad, still empty pool,
Listening to old Willie Nelson CDs
While the weather goes from scathing to cruel.

Neighbors fret outside the privacy fence,
Conferring in hushed tones about our man.
They saw it coming when his wife ran off.
They hear the crinkling of another can,

Its clatter on the upswept concrete deck.
The sun begins to set on Rufus town;
Willie’s blues eyes are crying in the rain;
Here, a hellishly hot night settles down.

Oops!

OK, I knew this was bound to happen--I got caught up in a project yesterday (driving to Kansas City and back to pick up a home entertainment center my wife bought on EBay), and I forgot to do my poem when I got home. I intend to do two today, so check back later!

Logorrhea

Mouth agog, tongue flailing,
I fling my monologues—
Orphaned and homeless—
Into the tattered atmosphere.

My students mostly stare,
Or text, or roll their eyes,
Humor me with half-smiles,
Pity of the living for the dead.

Truth: I really am a bore.
I bore no one more than myself.
And so I talk, and lecture,
And pontificate, and preach.

Often I envy the mute.
I wish I were Meher Baba,
Silent for 44 years.
Maybe then they would listen.

Once I was considered shy,
Quiet, a reclusive loner.
I want to find that past self,
Ask him to show me how

To live by pointing,
Gestures in the air,
A stick drawing in the dirt.

In Which C.C. Is Introduced

His name is C.C. Hornbuckle,
And he prospers upon the plains.
Inside—oh, dear—he’s so fickle,
Stuffed full of ever-changing plans.

He plans one day to be better.
Then the next he vows to be worse.
Meanwhile, he keeps getting fatter,
And for death begins to rehearse.

He has ev’rything, it is true—
A sharp family, shiny job,
Nicest house with the nicest view—
Yet night and day does he still sob.

Of Miniver Cheevy he thinks—
He’s read a few books in his time—
Dreaming of knights of old, but blinks
The comparison away. I’m

Stuck in the now, not in the past,
I don’t give a shit about knights.
He does give a shit life can’t last—
It’s the oldest, tritest, of plights.

Artist (for Gary McMurtry)

The phone hasn’t rung me awake
Which is a damned good thing

Especially at 3 a.m., the time
At which they killed you.

My father always said nothing
good happens after midnight.

So why were you in that field
Of darkness, of darkness?

Those stones were so heavy,
And you were always skinny.

Your bones must have burst
To blood like water balloons.

So much I never heard;
Even your brother wouldn’t talk.

I know it was about drugs;
Back then, everything was.

So it’s 3 a.m., and I’m wishing
I still had one of your drawings,

Something in graphite and pulp,
something other than your dying.

Semantics

I used to believe in words
sky, truth, mother, water, freedom.
But try as I might,
I can no longer touch these—
water runs off my hands.

If I touch my neck
and speak the words
I feel their weird vibration.
It’s as close as I can get
though mother sticks in my throat.

A guitar is hollow,
a resonant box.
I am mostly hollow,
mostly water,
in which I no longer believe.

The sky isn’t falling.
Truth is illusory.
Freedom is a bird
thwacking into a jet.
Water runs. Mother sticks.

In the beginning was the word
in ancient Hebrew.
The Greeks called it logos.
I call it a lie, yet, damn it,
I grip my throat and speak.

Late May in Oklahoma

Sunshine like a whip
Cracking across my shoulders—
Summer’s brash entrance.

Walking on Campus in Late May

Squirrels, birds, and bugs
The only life on campus—
Summer vacation.

Nebraska, May

Above us a sudden hovering,
shadow wings over corn fields.
Late spring-thaw mud sucks
on my black rubber boots.
Distance disappears to horizon
blank and bleak as this sky.
Green flies swarm the roads;
from far a screaming comes.
Souls drum like rain the dirt.

foster

you wore a chemo pump
in a black fanny pack
as you told me
about the snakes
that were summer-bad

i’d seen the holes
marring the lawn
i mowed for you
that i so so hope
you’ll mow again

you praised the six
scrawny tomato plants
i set out in rainy april
we know how badly we need
that sweet red slicing

literary

you just don’t understand
but that’s the point
your referent is dysfunctional

i’ve spent time in the joint
was that a witticism
no, you don’t understand

we stand on the edge of cataclysm
which can’t be described in words
late capitalism’s collapsing

you need to simply watch the birds
be aviaspecific—genus—class
all i know’s what i see on tv

you’re giving Wittgenstein a pass
i don’t care about your philosophy
and I don’t care about your poetry

so we’re doomed to repeat history
and get knocked on our ass
final victory goes to the nerds
i won’t read higher criticism
ah, then you’ve become my point

For Jesse

Smudged soul, damaged dreamer,
you labor through your allotted days
wearing attitude with a wan smile.
From hundreds of miles away I see you
driving your truck full of blood
across the windswept northern plains
no doubt with Pink Floyd playing
as you deliver your scheduled units.

The last time I saw you
I was more than a little drunk,
I stumbled back to my hotel room
and you drove wearily away
for what I didn’t suspect
would be so many years.
I’m A positive, old friend, and so afraid
I won’t immediately recognize your face.

Landscape Poem #2

Now I live on the plains
but once I lived in the woods
whose deep darknesses
I loved, feared, thrilled to.

Once I came across a house
no one had ever seen before
where lived an old crone
whose necklace was of bones.

She owned a white dog
(or maybe it owned her)
whose red eyes glowed green,
the strangest eyes I’d ever seen.

I didn’t go in the house
when she invited me for tea
(did I mention the bones and dog?).
I backed into the black trees.

On the plains houses are plain—
their crones never wear bones.
Yet I miss the strange woods
as I miss madness, horror, and pain.

upon opening the curtains

morning light wet with meaning
winks over the lonely horizon

in boxer shorts alone in a hotel room
blurred from both reading and dreams

faded denim of the sky unraveled
by sudden threads of cirrus clouds

false fire alarm in the early morning
raspy rough sleep before and after

white steeple erupting from a treeline
barely beyond the perimeter road

slow stretches and incantations
awareness of what is to be done

the world comes in a rush at the window
flies in on a shard of late spring light

[down in a hole]

down in a hole
the universe lives
scratching and grunting
through the eons
shaking its head
star-systems fly
into oblivion
so much dandruff
caught by the gale
whipped into black
where someday
I’ll look for you

How to Say

I shoulder your feelings
post-diagnosis days are shit
but at least they’re days

from every direction
comes the primal darkness
in conversation, TV commercials

every book you read, movie you view
someone falls away while someone
grieves the gruesome blankness

and it’s all unreal, all fiction and film
nothing to do with your life
everything to do with your life

The Death of Punk Rock

A.A. Diaper wipes. Lear Jets.
Designer safety pins.
Designer cheeks.
Yoga, Zen, Feng Shui stageset.
Bottled water and a masseuse.
A 50th birthday. Maybe a 40th.
Staying in tune for an entire set.
Groupies with small children.
Wives with small children.
Cooking with Rachel Ray.
A 401K.
Black leather jacket too tight
To fit over a paunch.
Growing up, growing out,
Growing too tired
To stay pissed for very long.

What is Needed

In the wild morning
after lifetime of regret
finally a rose.

A Day in Mid-May

Lightning in your eyes
thunder rumbling in your heart—
yet the storm’s outside.

Mood Poem #9

something lives under
the black water
left in that pool
from last summer

late at night
that something screams
the truncated shriek
of a garrotted woman

when I walk by
the dark surface
bubbles and rolls
even on windless nights

i need to drain it
i bought a sump pump
the constant rain
has been the excuse

for why I watch the water
reach toward the house
endure those wet screams
and fear oh yes and fear

coyote roadkill

blood powdered the two-lane blacktop
a thin garnet film interspersed
with bits of bone flesh and gray hair
not unlike yours old friend or mine.

slowing down I slid past the site
where old coyote breathed his last
under a knobby pickup tire
his pointed skull lay flattened wide

trickster brains meringued on asphalt
his old lady beside the road
shifted her mangy weight from paw
to grieving paw then stared me down

as I respectfully passed on
knowing she’d dart yipping to doom
heedless careless her borrowed life
life that was already long gone

Whatever happened to Shane's little girl?

Third time this week, the teacher said, with thin, wet lips.
You shrugged, mouthed the magic words, waited for the punishment
Which was a reward, no more of this school for you, not this year,
No more of these professional sadists with their bland, bureaucratic smiles.
Inside something reached to touch the sky through the hole in your head
And something else huddled in the dark at the back of your soul,
The something else that had huddled since Daddy left you with her,
And she left you with—well, with whomever, whenever, for however long.
You thought that there really should be a falling black gavel,
A huge blood-saturated stamp thumping upon a white, white sheet,
At least some faceless blue uniforms leading you down a telescoping hallway
Whose end was the same as every other end you’d never seen.

Rimbaud in ICU, 1989

Another night of nasty pain and sweat pissing from you into your sad pillow.
You’d notify local authorities of your situation if only there were any.
Too late for all that drama now, too late for dread as the moon’s below
Your shrinking horizon. Your remaining options now few, once many.

You vaguely recall the coming here, the clownish pratfalls face-first into now:
A woman or man in tears, clear vodka over ice, children, children and blood;
A nurse with yellow syringe and yearning smile, an actor with smirking bow,
Something always about loss, a whole world flushed in a sudden flood.

The idiot sun stumbles in from the east wing, but this stage is empty
Save for you with your ridiculous jungle of hanging bags, tubes and wires,
Hovering huge faces filled with perfect teeth you paid for. It can’t be.
Another night has always, always been. Trust no one. These people are liars.

You push the blessed, fascist button and for a moment it all fades
And you pretend as you have so often pretended, it truly seems forever,
To believe in the profoundest nothing, no shining paradise, no Hades.
A pretender no more, you know you’ll never again disbelieve. Never.

What this blog's all about

This blog is The One-Year Poetry Project. Simply put, I plan to write a poem each and every day between today (May 9, 2009) and one year from today (May 9, 2010). I will then post each day's poem on this site for people to read and respond to. I hope you enjoy my work!