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.