Thursday, December 30, 2010

Four Haiku for the Old Year


Footsteps already
fading beneath moving feet
remind us we move.

Latticework of trees
against pale December sky—
Spring will fill these holes.

Summer memories
already fading to white,
like my fading hair.

The heater kicks on,
and my eyes again open:
at least one more day!

Monday, December 27, 2010

One Week After the Solstice

So cold the air
across my skin,
vibrating strings
of harp frozen
beneath the snows
outside the town
the old mad king
dedicated
to a dead god
pagan, alone,
and forgotten,
empty and white
as Alaska,
or as tonight.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

After a Movie, After Some Wine

In the corner, past the cobwebs,
the room’s angles ramble into focus
so sharp even you can see.

In that moment you’ll live forever,
all regrets and plans left behind
on those receding planes and lines.

You’ll melt, slowly begin to flow, like desire,
the way you once slid across her slick skin,
like sweat, like shadows, like goodbyes.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Vow

I close-to died in my arms tonight,
Choking on my barbed betrayal,
Wishing my tongue absent, ablaze,
Luminescent as the lie I told.
Stumbling on the clumsy curb,
I resolve to once again fall silent,
Go live amongst the fallen leaves
And other scattered, unsung heroes.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

And Once Again: Advent

The last of the birthday cake
plunged into the trashcan
as the three pennies in my pocket
howled at the teapot moon.
Meanwhile,
my Shih Tzu fell back asleep,
my wife logged back on,
my daughter checked out,
and I found myself wandering,
as I’ve often always done,
up and down Escher’s stairs,
panting in ragged rhythm to
the spectacular deaths of the stars.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Last Night’s Dream, with Revisions

I rummaged through a ransacked house
which I somehow knew was mine
until I stopped to trim the lamp’s toenails.
It was then I noticed the duck’s half-head
glaring malice from its lonely eye.
I hoped the marauders had gone,
but the next moment hoped they hadn’t,
for the fear kept me blissfully sleeping,
clippers in hand, under the mallard’s gaze. 

Friday, November 26, 2010

Nine Non-Autobiographical Lines

The trumpeter blew madness
into the humid Houston night,
and over your padded shoulder
I saw pink flamingos flying
North toward Oklahoma.
At that exact, awkward moment,
I finally came to realize jazz
And ornithology really don’t mix
Anymore than love and memory do.

Lonely Haiku #9

After Thanksgiving
moon lurks in a clear, high sky,
my cold companion.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

After looking at photos of old friends

You say you knew me when,
but when you say you knew me
that wasn’t quite me you knew,
nor for that matter were you you,
were you?

If we could travel time
as in certain confusing films
to moments when we intersected,
would we recognize one another?
I can’t say. 

Perhaps in the future
things will become clearer,
we’ll see each other more fully
and finally know some truth.
It could happen.

In the meantime,
why don’t you give me a call?

Saturday, November 20, 2010

theology #9

so after dinner
we spoke of the saints
their poor yet smoldering eyes
eccentric habits
poor housekeeping
magnificent martyrdoms
general lack of humor
meditated on their miracles
possible roles as mediators
until the wine ran out
and the sun came up
and we beheld each other
in the early morning
across the table
table surrounded
by bleary saints

Thursday, November 11, 2010

After Studying Apostolic Succession, I Go Outside and Look at the Stars

At one point,
The Catholics and the Orthodox
Mutually excommunicated
One another—
“You can’t fire me, I quit!”
The Crab Nebula was unworried,
Continued its perpetual dying.

The laying on of hands,
The slipping from one body to another
Of some ancient mystery,
Elusive responsibility
Moving from flesh into flesh
Under the distant, distracted eyes
Whose light is only now arriving.

The conventional image is a fire
In the form of a bird or a tongue
Falling from Heaven and through a man
And from there into another man.
And so on and so on and so.
My dog sniffs at some leaves.
I touch my head and something happens.


Monday, November 8, 2010

and a grace came upon me

thirteen pigeons
on the performing arts center roof
not performing yet centered
near the apex of the pyramid
dark against early november dusk

gracie rolls in the clover
outside the deserted library
leaves stick to her thick coat
bury themselves in her beard
but she smells momentarily sweet

the honor society inductees
and their smiling families
vacate the auditorium in clusters
across the campus their chatter
wafts on the warm, leafy breeze

the pigeons still stand guard
over the sleepy sunday afternoon
occasionally a wing flashes dull green
or one marches chaplinesque
down or back up the slanting

i release gracie from her leash and
lie down in the bright leaves
outside the english building, pile
them over and around me
no one’s found me yet

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Prior to the Breakup

Two pair of shoes
Stare at opposite walls,
Tongues folded tightly away.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

The First Happy Morning after Tragedy

Morning flutters
Over twitching eyelids,
Curtains dancing
An orange tango.

Not far beneath
But galaxies away
Thanatos and Eros
Kill and copulate

Amidst strangers
With quite plaid eyes,
While old friends and lovers
Negotiate the beauties

That keep blood young,
Stumbles at bay,
The dance—now a waltz—
Rippling the half moons.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Epiphany

Then everything layered like onions,
Levels pulling and peeling away,
Curling on the floor, feral fetal cats
Mustachioed with reality’s whiskers,
And by the prism-glow of my heavy watch
I see as I have seldom seen before
The slow steady breathing of the sky,
The trees stretching toward heaven,
The ground all falling down to meet me.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Ever-Ending Mystery That is God

Put Him in a corner, turn your head, He’s gone.
Bury Him under Nubian sands for generations,
And when you dig Him up, He’s equally gone.

Even the image we held of Him has flown—
No white-maned Jewish patriarch comes to mind.
Instead, we see Our Father, in baggy overalls,

Puttering around the messy, shadowed garage,
Fixing one thing while fouling up three,
Ranting about the Philistines and the Democrats.

When we weren’t looking, He slipped out the door.
We prowl the night lanes, shouting out His name,
Which returns an echo on the empty wind.

 

Thursday, October 14, 2010

This Thing

I don’t yet know what this is.  It’s sat on my heart a long time.  One day I thought it had left, but when I came back it was still there.  Late at night, or early in the morning, I sometimes feel it stir.  I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to call it but “it.”  It scares me sometimes, with its formlessness, its ubiquity, its general disregard for convention.  It sometimes seems to mock me and to enjoy itself at my expense.  Once I considered cutting it out but all my knives are dull, I’m no kind of a real man, I’m no good with tools, I’d blame it on my father but instead I think I’ll blame it all on it.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Road Trip

Sometimes the road
runs in the wrong direction
and sometimes you do,
but you’re making good time,
listening to The Band
and Johnny Cash,
stopping only for beer and gas
in the last town before the border,
where the locals eyeball you
by the low sun’s fading beams,
turning away and spitting
into the impossibly red dust
when you threaten eye contact,
and you want to keep on moving
away from everything you know
but that’s always a feeble fantasy.

Even now, as night catches up,
you’re slowly turning around,
cruising back into the low black clouds
where your life lies, waiting to break.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

One Sunday

Over the altar hovers
A shiver of holy light,
Captured in the tight corners

Of my dim, cynical eyes.
What did I see—blushing wings,
Feathers brushing Paradise?

At such moments the blood sings
Above the head’s wooden facts,
Pulsing until the heart stings.

Despite logic’s sullen pacts,
Beauty has taken wild flight
Into the soul’s sudden cracks.



Friday, September 24, 2010

After Armageddon

So no one would ever know
we had destroyed the world.
Raptured in our nano-sleeves,
we drifted to the very edge
of an obliterated reality,
dared—just once—peer over
upon the never-ending flames.
We were lonely then for God,
wished He could have been there.
But He had been the first to go
once we decided to offer
our vast and perfect sacrifice.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The First Night After the Freud Seminar Began

Sometimes when I dream of babies
They’re oozing pus from their pores.
And sometimes I arrive quite late,
Clad only in a ratty old swimsuit.
Some nights are just finally like that.

On other nights the slick big rigs
Fly slow circles over L.A.X.
And lovers on Santa Monica Pier
Smell diesel as it falls from the sky.
Such things, like God, can’t be explained.

Now I lay me down to sleep.
It’s a bit like playing Russian Roulette,
Bullet my brain, chamber the spinning night.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Late At Night and Early the Next Morning

In her mouth were marigolds
And all the promises of God.
They shone, polished teeth
Bright in the peasant light.
I wished then to be rent.

Later, after we’d awakened,
Drunk morning’s bitter light
Patterned through the blinds,
Cast hard, suspicious shadows
On her belly, on her thighs.

Scarcely a thought out of place,
We languished until quite noon,
Convicted in our ridiculous love.


Monday, September 20, 2010

After a Long Monday

Moon a light balloon
Straining against the dark strings
We hold in our hands.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Raw (The Last Poem?)

I’ll lie down in the dirt
If it will stop the hurt
Gasoline smell of hell
On my tired fingers
Waving like a madman
Drinking like a sad man
Lips numb toes and thumbs too
Only my heart feels
Fluttering in my fat chest
As my scalp floats
And I try so hard to remember
What the hell it was
I wanted to this day recall

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Well, What Do You Know?

This bird’s about dead, I said,
As the damned raven raised
Its ruffled, tussled head
To stagger across the parking lot
Like a frat boy after a kegger.
Feathers blueblack
Like comic book heroes’ hair,
But paltry and perilously hanging
From an Ichabod Crane frame
That bounced in the Oklahoma breeze.
This bird’s defeated, I repeated,
And then the sad sucker flew,
Weak wings perhaps just enough
to prove a faithless poet wrong.

Monday, September 13, 2010

There Are No Monsters

Only

Waters cold as winter’s bones
Buses out of control
Rattlers on the roadways
Blending into the bloodstains

Knives with knowing edges
Gleaming in the headlights
Racks of loaded rifles, shotguns

Tiny tumors prowling the nodes
A loaded hypodermic

Nothing worse

Thursday, September 9, 2010

After Philip Lamantia

When the day crawls over sleep’s slow-eroding edge,
And the night’s dragons have curled around their hoards,
Even the gods emerge groggily from the dreamworld,
Blinking at the eternal newness of all that they have made
During their eons of restless, surreal, and sublime visions.
So each morning, before I don my armor to face the day,
Only your eyes, your sudden kiss, bring me fully to life.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Wherever You Are, There You Go

Sometimes
I see things
No one else does,
Faces in places
No one else looks;
My mind’s gone
From one end
Of my memory
To the other,
Poor mad nomad
On a stick camel
Caught in a storm
Of tiny, shiny nows.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Things I’m Ashamed Of

Having made a few women cry.
Having cried in front of a few women.

Killing animals that weren’t threatening me,
Like that snake, and in front of my children.

Pledging a fraternity because my friends did
And then trying to get other friends to pledge.

Having briefly registered Republican
During a selfish Libertarian phase.

Having let myself get fat, lazy, and soft,
And deciding to just stay that way.

Having written too many checks
But raised too little hell.

Having idolized O.J. Simpson—
Having ever idolized any athlete.

For not speaking up when I should have,
And for speaking up when I shouldn’t have.

For quitting smoking marijuana
And drinking a lot more instead.

For reducing God to a failed religion,
Making it too easy to dismiss Her/It/Him.

For thinking I was anything special—
Believing my own quite-biased press.

For ever having hurt my Pam—
No woman’s deserved pain less.

For not staying in touch with friends,
And for making all those excuses.

Above all, for not paying attention
To each second of each blessed, blessed day.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Simple Physics

My beautiful world resists stasis
The way God resists being known.

No music without motion,
No passion without reach and thrust.

We trust all that undulates, shudders,
Breathes in the bounty, then exhales.

The faintest stirring at vision’s edge
Reassures—the world moves, so we live.

For Pam (Again)

Bright water erupting from a desert stone,
White sky descending upon an eager child,
Glance at a blue jay’s insolent, sudden wing,
As right as pure music in morning light.

These, and much else, my soul will miss.
These, and the worlds within your kiss.

Friday, September 3, 2010

The Poem I Almost Wrote Yesterday

Insolent cur, so callow and bent
Toward the hollow halo’s tawdry gleam,
Syllables singed, smeared with heavenly smoke.
The meter’s upside down, full of falling angel feet,
And had those conceits sweetened some pages,
Haughty Paris would have stalled and stayed paltry.

The Poem I Thought About Writing Yesterday

The left-handed sonnet, sodden and listless,
Limped toward the almost-late turning,
Swerving sweatily towards the distant ditch
At the nasty junction of eight and nine,
White lines lumbering where the lights died,
Killed by the crowd’s cunning, brutal shrug.

The Poem I Didn’t Write Yesterday

That glassy-eyed, litterbugged bastard,
Tossed as refuse on a toady Oklahoma roadway,
Rolled randomly into the east-leaning weeds
Which swallowed those awkward, swollen words,
Awarding the world with a sullen silence
Breathtaking in its broken invisibility.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Somewhere Between Pawhuska and Ponca City

Up all night, once again, morning gray
As all Hell, as my mind, as this day.

Stopped the pills, like I said—stopped them cold.
But I’m fine, I’m OK, I’m just old.

Go away. Leave me be. I’m no fun.
All I want, anymore? To be done.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Sight Seen On the Way to Work

Not broken and not battered,
This butterfly will not fly
Again this side of dark death.

The faintest rippling passes
Along these wee, fragile wings,
A shudder in the morning.

A quick breeze brings this pilgrim
To the edge of the steep steps—
It perches for the last time,

A last volitious action,
A sigh at the suddenness
Of sublime life, now blasted.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Once Upon a Time

The huge blue skies hung, skanky
With Lord Thor’s last thunderbolts
Flung godhot from Asgard’s heights.

The wine-dark oceans wandered
Dizzying depths, carved the coasts
With Neptune’s terrible tongue.

The misty mountains trembled
At deities’ deathless tread,
Peaks crumbling like crushed paper.

Now, we behold beliefless
Beauty, damned distant echoes
Of archangels in our ears.

And now for a sudden outpouring of banal prose...

I'm back, dear readers, after having bitch-slapped my wayward muse into submission.  I never meant to take such a long hiatus, but then I never "mean" lots of things that I do.  Thanks for checking in over the last month--please keep coming back, as new attempts at music will emerge.

Friday, July 23, 2010

On a Friday When I Don’t Want to Work

Above my head I hear the hammers sing
As roofers thwack the brand-new shingles down.
Our Shih-Tzu growls from her light slumbering,
Lids shivering in this construction zone.

The laughter of the Mexican workers
Falls like the ripped-up, hail-pounded shingles.
These men fight July’s heat like berserkers;
Though heavy and humid, the air tingles

With their languid, lunch-break-together joy,
And now I can hear the roofers singing
Some sad corrido where a border boy
Loses his life for love, and the ringing

Of the hammers on the heads of the nails
Falls into a rhythm that somehow lulls,
And the lazy dog’s light, raspy snore trails
The beat, and the Friday afternoon fills

With various musics, various love,
Various graces falling from above.


Saturday, July 17, 2010

Wishing to See

My father-in-law proclaims
the local rabbits friendly,
so I suppose that this one
simply doesn’t recognize me
as a member of the clan.
He jumps through a fence-hole
and hides behind a crepe myrtle.

Perhaps it’s the barbecue fork in my hand,
or the smoke and smell of grilling meat.

Moving into the blazing July yard a bit,
I crane my neck around the flowering crepe,
and see him posing, staring across the creek
to where the tall grass swallows gazes.

Two robins land a few feet away,
tweet and twitter at him who never moves.

I look to where his eyes have gone
and all is yellow, orange, green,
all blade and brush and heat.
When I look back, he’s vanished.

I stand there for a long time,
my stupid fork hanging at my side,
while the meat turns black
and the night comes relentlessly on.

Driving to Pryor, Oklahoma, on a 100-degree Day

The steaming cattle lumber from the pond
toward the shifting shade beneath the cottonwood
where they lie, fly-tortured monoliths mechanically
chewing their cuds through the day’s long, liquid heat.

Do they miss spring, wish for fall as I do,
restless and depressed through endless July?

No birds circle in the pale sky, at least none visible from
here, the back seat of a Honda with my daughter at the wheel.

The trees and grasses along the road shimmer greenly
beneath the sun.  They reach heliophilic blades and limbs
upward through the heavy air. You can be better,
they whisper, turning their eyes suddenly into mine.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Haiku for Midnight


Rain falling, faster
Into the edge of the night,
Where tomorrow lies.

Emphysema Memories

Daddy’s coughing up that sputum again,
Hunched hacking into a red handkerchief,
His thin shoulders shaking like leaves
In the opening scenes of a thunderstorm.
When he raises his red eyes I see pain
And the kind of weariness that kills,
And the kind of very something else
I’ve tried to forget the look of for years.



Monday, July 12, 2010

A Reminder

The summer wind has kissed
The white hairs on your wrist
Under the July moon.
But you’ll be feeling soon
The paintbrush breath of fall
Stroking your cheek, the small
Orderly reminders
That it’s always finders
Keepers with Ma Nature.
No matter your fate, you’re
Destined for her embrace
At the end of your race.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

The Jealous Angel’s Lament

One has to watch one’s wings when flying west—
The sudden storms can surge and buffet you
Before you see the lightning streak the clouds.
Next thing you know, you’re grounded, and you’re blue

Because that glib glory hound Gabriel
Has once again gotten to somewhere first.
Just look at him preening his white feathers!
I swear by Yahweh that I think I’m cursed.

Perhaps I’ll singe his sacred golden tips
Before the toff takes credit for the sun.
At any rate, the time has come to soar
Before ol’ Blondie ruins all my fun!

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Once Upon a Time in the Future

I still remember stars, the wondrous way they flew
Suddenly towards me when the darkness arose
From the thin, distant horizon.  They clicked in view,
Holes in a mourner’s curtain the color of crows.

Floating in a pool—can you comprehend the waste?—
In a blue plastic tube, I’d watch them softly shine
High overhead, beyond my reach.  The wind I’d taste
As I’d taste the flavors of women, sweet and fine.

No bright stars arise now from this damn rancid black.
The last reported sighting’s been years.  In the east
No moon floats, sated and full.  Once it used to track
Time’s progress.  But progress—and yes, light--now has ceased.


Friday, July 9, 2010

A Dinner Conversation

The artist talked about her craft
Over a glass of Chardonnay.
Relentless in her repartee,
The woman neither smiled nor laughed,
But lectured us on discipline
And perfect use of line and light.
We thought she’d pause, and then we might
Have fled.  Had she presumed to then
Have asked me what I thought about
Her ideas concerning teaching
I’d have told her she was reaching,
And I’d have loved to see her pout!

The Truth Hurts

Our bodies fail, as all that’s flesh must do.
The fresh and supple frame soon falls, frail dust.
So we console ourselves, conspiring to
Content ourselves our minds have yet to rust.
But there’s the rub—our brains already fade,
And soon we can’t recall our bodies’ prime—
The gears get hung on all the plans we’ve made,
So we forget the reason and the rhyme!

Ah, but the Soul, we say—forever young!
Our Spirit’s white and bright as newborn eyes,
Eternal, taut, and keen.  Yet still we’re stung
By Truth’s uncouth response to all our lies—
Your Spirit’s sicker than your putrid blood;
Relinquish all vain hope, damned speck of mud!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

A Kiss-Off


Sudden the savage comment, the cold sneer
That grinds the slow heart late in the evening
When all falls flat and low, and everywhere
The very air bears the smell of leaving.

Stunned by betrayal, you struggle to find
A reason, meaning behind the cruel words.
And somewhere in the corner of your mind
You see yourself dividing into thirds.

Someday, no doubt, you’ll once again be whole,
And all this anxiety forgotten.
Yes, surely you’ll find a suitable role
For one so black, so thoroughly rotten.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Heterogeneous

The microscope and the telescope
Ultimately peer at each other,
Lenses locked on the mystery
Seeded in our cells and the stars.
Electrons and galaxies whirl
Around hearts thick and dense
With dark illusions of stasis.
A nucleus splits, a sun supernovas,
And somehow we still go on,
Eyes clamped tight to the tubes
Tying us always to the questions
Our instruments strive to answer,
Face-to-face on the edge of forever.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Rainswim

The morning after Independence Day
Neither moon nor sun appears--
Heavy clouds the color of ambiguity
Hover like raised rapiers.

We sweep up the empty cans
From the swimming pool deck.
In the filter we find two dead frogs
Amid the bugs, leaves, and dreck.

The rain begins well before noon,
And soon the front road’s a river.
We drink the last of the warm beer,
And by two discover the lever

That opens our hearts to the day.
We laugh as we dive into its chill,
Plunging into the deep, deep end.
We remember that dark rebirth still.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Independence Day

The patriotic citizens of Tonkawa, Oklahoma,
Popped so many fireworks today that the air,
Wiped clean by unseasonal rain, was sulfurous
And rank by the clearing early evening.

My practical, construction-worker neighbor
Roars off in his wet, black pickup,
A huge American flag flapping from the bumper
In the midsummer light prairie wind.

On the far side of this tiny town, around 9 o’clock,
Chinese rockets rise into the darkening sky,
Shatter into patterns of brilliant color
Tracking bright paths to the damp ground.

Later, I stand beside my quiet backyard pool
And watch the air bubble through the blue water.
The wind rustles the surface like a wheat field,
My soul like a trumpet slowly sounding Taps.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Somewhat Lunar

I’ve never been mesmerized by a blue moon,
Not even while under sinister influences
Such as that autumn pumpkin orb
Or that distant, cold December one
Yearning for a proper solstice celebration.
My moon adorns the wide prairie sky
Much like a brazen pagan amulet,
And you and I stand in that ancient shadow,
Legendary lovers from a half-forgotten tale.


Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Mona

Sometimes at night she lies by the pool until long after midnight,
Warm Merlot in a pink plastic tumbler her tawdry companion,
No IPod, no phone, no way to communicate, and no need
As the tiny stars and huge moon drop as the blackness rises
And the pale clouds curl and roll on the sky’s invisible winds.
On these sullen summer mornings, hours before sunrise,
She traces the names of old lovers across the darkness,
Remembers their kisses and rages, their inevitable sorrows,
The same way she remembers breakfast, tea, or a nap—
Sweet pleasures of the past now fading toward nostalgia.
She’s always stiff when she finally wobbles to her swollen feet
And tries—each night—to recall which door will lead her home.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

No Zen


The first time I tried to meditate
I was tired and fell into sleep,
My beardless chin curling to my chest.
I don’t recall that long-ago dream,
But know still I awoke to joy
Despite my guilty embarrassment.
Next time, I knew, I’d touch Nirvana.
But the next time I was drunk,
My “OM” more of an “Oh shit,”
as I sought the quiet sacred place
Where rooms ceased spinning
Cross-legged beside the toilet.
Every few months now, for years,
I dust off my rusty lotus,
Focus my mind on a single point,
Try to think of absolute zero.
But my mind’s still not still,
I don’t want to lose myself
In some vast and cosmic One.
I already know I’m nothing.
Why, oh tell me why now
I’d want to feel that truth?

Monday, June 28, 2010

A Lonely Haiku


Random memory,
A maple leaf replacing
The touch of your hand.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

The Greatest Country in the World

This legendary land lies, of course, quite far away,
Farther than the distance between now and then,
But when we finally enter its enchanted gates,
We’ll learn that the CEO knows the temp’s name,
And that the taxis pass right by the bigots
To pick up the trannies and the young black men
On their way to teach peace to the generals’ sons
Who by six have memorized the Tao Te Ching,
All the works of Whitman and Langston Hughes,
And the Cherokee songs of short love and tall corn.
The flying cars run on dandelions and desire,
And no one knows what “cancer” even means.
Everyone gets to be the president for a day
But no one ever needs be a judge.  All guns
Fire thick bread, fresh fruit, and sweet wine,
And never run out of their fine ammunition.
The children gleefully flock to their schools,
Gleaming gold on top of the highest hills,
Which of course overlook the cemeteries,
Which are spotless, revered, and joyous,
Filled as they are with music and dance
And the memories of such brief, bright lives. 
Best of all, not a single citizen has ever said,
“This is the greatest country in the world.”

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Machete

How high were you that ancient night
You stumbled into the Burger King
And demanded a large order of French fries?
The clerk knew your natty dreads, your face
With all its naiveté and confusion,
Knew you well enough to call you a regular
And know you were always hustling, so
He probably wasn’t flabbergasted when
You pulled out those empty pockets
From those droopy gangster jeans, said,
“Come on now, brother, help me out”
And flashed that dopy golden grille.
But when you pulled out that machete,
That brush-chopping, pineapple lopping monster,
He got suddenly very silent, somewhat sad.
“I’m sorry, but I won’t give you the money,” he said,
And you knew through your Robitussin haze
That this stupid boy would die for whatever
Tiny amount of change was in the register, so
You settled for those salty, glorious fries,
Held them aloft as if you’d won a marathon,
And ran into the heavy, humid Tulsa night,
Already forgetting what you’d meant to do,
If—that is—you ever even knew.


Friday, June 25, 2010

One Magical Day in Tulsa

Waiting one day for the light to change,
They might instead decide it never will.
She might open the Lexus’ shiny door
And sashay away from Utica Square
Past the I-Hop, Wendy’s, and the hospital
Down 21st street, past the park to Peoria,
Where she’d make a left toward Brookside.

Meanwhile, back at the frozen light,
He might reach across her empty seat
And pull to closed that dangling door,
Floor the pedal and race across
The after-all-vehicleless intersection,
Rubber screeching and peeling
Over the summermelt asphalt.

She’d have now walked 20 blocks
To sit in the Brookside Bar
At five o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon
And throw back shots of tequila
While telling anyone who’d listen
Lies about her life as a local actress
Who was an extra in The Outsiders.

He’d head north at a high rate of speed,
Take 244 east past the tiny airport,
Merge onto I-44, crowded with cars
Cruising to the Hard Rock Casino
The Cherokees run in Catoosa.
Soon he’d set the cruise on 78,
Follow the signs toward St. Louis.

She’d let some random handsome cad
Carry her to his pad and fuck her.
“Well, that’s done,” she’d think,
And she’d never drink tequila again.
She’d get a job teaching kindergarten,
And she’d join the Catholic Church,
And she’d live someone’s life, now hers.

He’d barely glance at the famous arch,
Take I-70 through Illinois, Indiana,
Stopping only for coffee and Red Bull,
Popping his last few ADD pills,
Leaving the car in lower Manhattan
Near the exit from the Holland Tunnel,
And walking north on Greenwich Street.

You might say this wouldn’t happen,
That people just don’t act in this way.
And you’d be right, of course.  In fact,
They went home and watched TV,
Got up the next day and went to work.
Wait!  There’s one other possibility—
Perhaps they’re still sitting at the light.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Nodding Off Haiku

Now almost midnight
And now almost 12:30—
Brief sleep has fooled me!

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Late June

This wind stormed in from the north tonight,
Caught all us summer people by surprise,
Filled our pools with fat maple leaves,
Pitched our tattered patio chairs against the fence.
We watched bat-like clouds fly over the moon
As rainless thunder rattled the windows,
And for this one mad, random evening
The too-familiar town grew sweetly strange,
A beautiful face glimpsed, then lost in a crowd.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

How I Plan to Please My Woman

I’m poised to make you pancakes,
Very early tomorrow morning,
Before the dog’s fully awakened,
Before the phone’s rung even once.
Blueberries I’ll stir into the batter
Just until I stroke a purple streak.
I’ll pour a perfect pentagram
Of slowly spreading circles
Bubbling from the griddle’s heat,
And fry thin slices of bacon
In my mother’s battered skillet
While the coffee sings in my blood,
And I await your step on the stairs.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Once Upon a Time in San Francisco

The blonde dreadlocked boy
On the path to Golden Gate Park
Pounded the warm December air
And raged against the bland sky,
His eyes tight meteors streaking
From passersby to sidewalk
To whatever lost high shadow
Loomed over his tattered life.
I wanted to pick up his pieces,
Take his wild face in my hands,
Tell him he would come down
From whatever he had taken
And all would again be well,
But his Hell was perennial,
As much a part of the Haight
As the graying ponytailed men
Turning away from this bad scene
To make their way up the hill
To the endless circle of drummers
Raising their rhythmic praise
Up to whatever maddening God
Could possibly demand
Such a bloody damned sacrifice.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Pending Repairs

Maybe the basement holds water
While the pool cracks in the sun
And the hole in the kitchen ceiling
Leads to the burned-out chimney
and the window screens rip
and whip in the summer wind.
They say the hail ruined the roof,
Knocked the guttering askew,
Pitted and gouged the poor siding.
No doubt, I know, all this is true.
But no damages mean no living.
You and I limp together, battered
And broken in the ways of love.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

The Blues Club at the End of the World

The sad music wasn’t on the radio, of course,
But somewhere at the back of the house,
Where a few blasted and saggy old men
Sat in rickety chairs of their own construction
And spoke in the shattered voices of the tribe.
A few people listened, their faces blue
And beautiful in the hot, smoky darkness.
The men’s long fingers and fat lips danced
like autumn’s dying leaves on the chill winds,
and the music went on until the sudden dawn
surprised them all with its wistful brilliance,
and the women collected their now-quiet men,
wincing into the way that it all continues.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Prey and Predator

The windows glare
At the July air
Like antelopes
Stare at the lion
Sleeping deadly
Under the lone tree
Casting no shadow
Upon the savannah
Rolling eternally.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Oh, You Must Remember That Morning

A sore neck, an empty wallet,
Stains of dubious origin—
A good time was had, and yet
Emptiness remains, lurking
In the milliseconds between
Memory and embarrassment.

With coffee, reality returns,
And the longing for a cigarette
Still, after 20 smokeless years.
You stub that dull urge out
On the blunt edge of your love,
This desire that feeds, keeps you.

Mornings have always chafed—
As a child you hid your head
Under the covers of your bed
And waited for the daylight
To settle in around you,
The way it’s still settling.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Rebellion at the Symposium

The story you want to tell
Takes us toward an edge—
Your edge, not ours.
When we peer over,
Nothingness peers back,
And we’ve enough of that.
Why do you think, oh bard,
We built such beautiful edges?

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

The Week Before the Solstice

Early summer storms—
The river flows out of bounds,
Washes spring away.

Monday, June 14, 2010

The Worm Dharma

Three days of warm, thin rain
Bring worms from nowhere
Into the small, marshy yard.
Some seem as big as snakes,
Wriggling between the drops
Drifting from a dull low sky.
I step between their dark curves
Like a cautious Buddhist monk,
Moving toward a distant sun
Crawling behind the clouds
Clotted thickly as the desires
Crowding the path to wisdom.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Déjà vu

Some times
Surprise us—
So different
From others
Our breath
Focuses us
On each
Stark moment,
Already somehow
Remembered whole
Since lived
Once before.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Cluck and Cackle (and Thanks to Albert Hoffman)

The night the chickens spoke
I was quite out of my mind
But not yet in another—
Stuck in a strange interstice
Of quiet and barnyard fowl.
I didn’t want to be inside
Our tiny rented trailer
With its tawdry Playboy pinups,
Its stinking, overflowing
Stubs of good intentions.
You hissed at me to come back in,
Your voice a frozen snake
In the thin October darkness.

I don’t recall a single thing
That those fat hens said,
But they were so beautiful
That I wanted to stroke
Their thick, complex feathers
And stare deeply in their eyes
‘til I discovered their secrets.
Oh, laugh if you will—and you will—
But everything has secrets,
A knowledge in the cells,
Some dangerous wisdom
That can change your forever,
Like full moon light on open beaks.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Advice from an Insomniac

In the neurotic early morning,
Awash in a blue-pixeled glow,
You may clumsily encounter
A brief, pain-filled epiphany
During those anxious bytes
Of stretched, stressed time
Lying between the breaths
Regular as your seasons.
Hold that tiny revelation,
With all its tight agonies,
Close as a constant lover,
Reveling in the sensations
As they burn you to sleep.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

The Endless Campaign

So just what did you say
To make them hate you so?
You were programmed
So as to avoid offense,
Keep the focus positive,
The questions innocuous—
About the kids, mostly.
But now they’re wild,
Ripping up the seats
To make quaint spears,
Classic caveman clubs.
I’ve told you over and over—
Just read the teleprompter
And take the oily money.
Stick it in that fat gash
Where we only recently
Discovered your head.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

A Brief Review

Reading your memoir,
For the very last time,
I’m yet again amazed

At your brutal honesty
Concerning vegetables,
Various and sundry kin

Wearing ankle bracelets
And too-stoned smiles
During huge breakfasts

Bought with barter
From your safaris
Deep into the heart

Of savage memory.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Vision at the End of a Longish Day

The light globes
Look like jellyfish
Floating above us
And my sore feet
Suddenly seek
To become fins
As we’re swimming
Within tight circles
Scales and gills
Silver as sunlight’s
Morning shower
Stretching toward
Our deep places

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Omega Point

All our roads ultimately converge
Into a tunnel whose end cannot be seen.

No one has ever reached that end,
As the tunnel extends with every breath,

With every death, into a future
Where we may not know each other

As human, or even remember
Exactly what that used to mean.

Our linked minds may briefly ponder
The splendor of our gleaming bodies,

Washed in starshine and time,
Moving slowly forward together

To whatever’s beyond the end.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Northern Oklahoma, June

Wheat fields singing in the wind
Wearing a cougar’s sanguine color,
Sky high as distant memory
Or a promise long since broken,
And of course that lucky ol’ sun
Pale lemon, bright revelation
Demanding our immediate attention—
What can any of us do save
Prepare our gold souls for harvest?

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

A Summer Day in Montmartre

The rain sparkling all the way down that day,
A man skipping on stilts between the showers,
Two tumblers in the artist’s square, the hours
We spent in the galleries and the way
The sun surprised the rain and blinded us
Briefly with its colliding molecules.
But soon the afternoon again was pools
Under a high, bright blaze, and all that was
Was once again after all what had been,
What we saw once again what we had seen.
Truthfully?  Even before the rain came,
We knew that nothing would ever be the same.

Warrior Widow

Drowsy after a morning with the old masters
And a late lunch of fat crepes and flat, cold cider,
She lingers in the public park, where disasters
Conveniently stay away, and she can nap and bide her
Time until dusk pushes her from her usual bench,
And she reenters the world with a violent wrench,
And—brave, lonely old woman—doesn’t even flinch.

The Lake Where No One Goes

If the Holy Spirit exists, persists
Within this busy world of tangled woes,
That Ghost dwells soundlessly within the mists
Rising at dawn from the shores where no one goes.
The sensitive mind scans the horizon
For signs that all is not metal and meat—
A reason compels the elision
Of tragicomedy’s bitter and sweet. 
But that lake is hidden so far away,
And life, both short and long, so distracting,
The mind ignores the lake for one more day,
Mists where spirit slowly keeps retracting.
Minds trudge one, down the well-worn, rutted road,
Holding that nothing that’s such a heavy load.

Reading “Four Quartets” in a Paris Hotel

Outside, traffic, the occasional trill of horns,
Punctuated by construction hammers next door.
Inside, where the action is, the wayward mind yearns
To move among the noises, as the mind’s a bore.
In this city the Anglo soul has room to work, to breathe,
Isolated by language, by bias, by more time
To fill with some sort of meaning which will wreath
This tiny rented room with some perfect rhyme
That pulls the tired workers from the construction crew,
The weary drivers from their speeding, angry cars,
And solders them with burning words the way that you
Weld together the mind with lines of metered bars.

Friday, May 21, 2010

On the Beach, May 2010

A pelican died today,
Its ridiculous wingspan
As black as a car’s oil pan,
Its feathers slick from the bay.

The reporter reassured
Only a few dozen died.
That’s small comfort to the bird,
Or the beaches washed by tide

The crude rides like a pony.
The BP spokesman’s a pro,
Some might even say phony,
Though why should we even go

Into the valley of blame,
Since we all drove here to see
The latest calamity,
Another dark sort of game?


Thursday, May 20, 2010

The Macbeths in the Studio

So much blood had the old king
That his killers soaked their feet
In what they’d labored to bring

Screaming from his veins, the beat
Of the tyrant’s dying heart
Fading drop by drop to sweet

Eternal silence.  The art
Involved in violence inspired
This black study, with red part.

Another Summer Night Somewhere in England

The silence after the storm
Lengthens into the dark night,
And so the lovers, so warm,

So unaware of their plight,
Refuse the routine of speech,
Knowing they’ll never get right

The words that belong to each.
Instead, they stare at the clouds,
Eternity out of reach.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Pedophile Priest's Haiku

Father, forgive me…
For I have been called “father.”
In Your place I sinned.

Monday, May 17, 2010

If Only

Somewhere there’s a reason
Waiting for a question
With anxious, long-held breath,
Hiding in the apathetic shadows
Cast by the flickering images
On all those primal screens.
No one ever asks.
Still, the reason feels fear.
Anything is still possible.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Summer 1983

You worshipped the sun
As I did the darkness,
You with your sailboat,
Swims at frigid Spring Creek,
Obsession with tanning,
I with my Morrison mania
For leather, whiskey, and sin,
Weaving under the blurry stars
I knew were constantly falling.
By September no “us” existed,
And you said you wished
That I had died instead of her--
The last thing we agreed on.

   

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Wordshop #1

Something unpredictable
Is in the air tonight—
A tang of delirium and danger,
Spontaneous rage.
Perhaps three days of rain
And three nights of booze
Have led us to this point,
But who can really say?
I’m not talking about us.
“Us” is a construct.
Like air.  Like rage.
Like rain and booze.
Like what you just read.

Friday, May 14, 2010

The Invention of Time Travel

That day the shore will break on the waves
And the clouds will be filled with sky.
Rain will rise from the soggy soil,
Which will slowly begin to dry.
Tears will climb jilted lovers’ cheeks,
Carrying betrayals on their silver backs,
And the aged will rise from their chairs
And run outside to watch the falling sun.
Smoke will vanish into the stacks,
As all cars back into their garages.
Passion will decelerate from orgasm,
The spasm easing into the foreplay,
Bodies slowly pulling themselves apart.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Two-Step

The blinking cursor, e-twitch,
Reminder of responsibility,
Relentless drive to utterance—
Blank canvas, silence,
The stillness before dance,
Actors frozen on stage
Before the lights come up—
The moment our eyes meet
From across the busy bar.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Spring in Oklahoma

Rain whispers on the shingles,
Trickles down the windows,
While a radio in another room
Offers static and Loretta Lynn.
We tiptoe around the edges
Of the loneliest of nights
Fantasizing a morning full
Of sun and winning numbers,
Warmth, kept promises,
Tiny green tendrils clawing
Their ways into this world.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Simulacrum

The real question
Is seldom asked
In polite company

For fear of panic,
Foolish stampedes
Toward certainty.

Like faithless monks,
We look away
From the accusation

In each other’s eyes,
The shared scorn
At our cowardice,

Terror at the answer.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Tornado Alley

Green’s a bad color for a sky
On a day when everything sticks
And suddenly nothing’s moving,
You realize the birds are mute
And the squirrels unseen,
The TV screen ablaze with red
Radar tracks of pure turmoil
And they’re heading your way,
Where everything lies, waiting.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Claw Hammer

Like a crane
With the snout of a shark,
One long, rubbery leg
Longing to be held, hefted,
While the silver head,
Flat and merciless as prairie,
Pounces upon the quaint nail,
Pounds it out of existence,
Or at least out of visibility,
The body entire arcing
As an extension of the arm
Of this wielder, this worker,
Maker of fragile monuments.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Heretic

Restless imbiber,
Bastard child of randomness
And purest, cleanest spite,
Your white silk shirt, wrinkled
From countless altercations
With authorities local and state,
Is ripped from collar to tail,
Covered with ashes and stains,
Reeking of freedom and death.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Rhetorical Question

Fire by day.  Fire by night.
And the bright light of today
Burns away the memories
Lying in the depths of the bone.
Pay attention.  Take notes.
You’ll be asked—inevitably—
To give some sort of account
Of your various actions.
And what—oh, sinner—shall you say?

Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Pain of Theology

Oh great and gracious God,
Whether figment or firmament,
Fiction or fundamental,
You seek me as I seek You,
In the deepening darkness
Where all lies and all truth
Turn out to be the same
Fatally flawed translations
Of all we meant to say.


Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The Voices

And some are so nearly round
They roll in all directions
And won’t be stacked,
But chortle with chaotic glee.
Others are so perfectly flat
They pile atop one another,
Layer after layer of sound,
Multitracked slices
Of prairie monotone.
A few congregate in the corners,
Smoking themselves raspy,
Whispering like lovers sure
No one will ever, ever listen.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Star-Gazing

I never saw a sky so full of stars,
The shining bright as teardrops.
I sat for hours and stared
At messages from millennia ago,
Last-gasp flickers, supernovas
Sad but necessary as the silence
Hiding between the clouds,
The moments between the hours.


Monday, May 3, 2010

Older

Stones standing watch
Over the fields of nothing
Stretching beyond the eyes
That are too tired to see.
In the dim distances
Of this fading moment,
We finally realize
We’ve no destination.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Why Ask Why?

When everything is obvious
Nothing is extremely clear—
Tentative answers don their gauzy cloaks,
And saunter down an endless, ill-lit hall
Through a succession of half-open doors
Through which tantalizing tableaux
Never quite click into focus. 
Something’s on the tip of your tongue,
Sweet and salty at the same time,
Familiar yet wholly strange,
So you turn to the face in the mirror
And could swear you’d seen it before.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

The Wisdom of Owls

This is where you’re quiet,
And this is where you’re not.

In this way you remember,
Except when you forget.

The stars are not to be trusted—
Even they drift like stellar snow.

The very earth beneath you
Is unstable as the economy.

The hobos digging in the dirt
May be coyotes in disguise.

Late at night after much wine
You can sometimes see the gods

Perched in the branches of the sky.

Friday, April 30, 2010

April Haiku

Two straight gusty days,
Two nights of sleepless clanging—
God’s restless breathing.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

I Heard You Killed Yourself

So who do you
Believe in now,
Disillusioned
And oh so hard?
Gritty, granite,
Skeptical, sharp
As a needle
Teasing the flesh
Along the white
Trace of your arm,
The place you cut
When you were young
To drain bad faith.