Start Wearing Purple

(Inspired by the song of the same name by Gogol Bordello)

Hue of bruises and wine,
Full-passion lips
And swollen organs,
The color of blues
Filtered through love,
Exact shade of orgasm
And certain periwinkles,
Ocean off Oahu
In that summer surf sunset,
Cool red shirt and blue jeans
Tumbled together
In your line of sight—
Black used to be
What purple now be—
Righteousness, sex,
A baby’s first laugh,
Feel of your fingers
On my tongue.

Regrets in the Dead of Winter

(For Gary Armstrong, 1954-2001)

Remember when
You told me Betamax
Would beat out VHS?

You wore such confidence,
Four years older, a vet—
The coolest smoker I knew.

Remember your apartment
Over the funeral home,
Cheap if you answered the phone?

You were so little like Lloyd,
The little brother you resembled,
dark Choctaw hair, deep-set eyes.

Remember those porn videos,
The popcorn and Scotch,
Late nights becoming mornings?

You carried a sorrow
I never understood, something
Nervous, unspoken, and raw.

Remember how
I betrayed you with her,
And then avoided you forever?

I didn’t even know you’d died.
I looked for you, Googled you,
Found a photo of your headstone.

Goddamnit, Gary—you win.
You’ll never have to decide
How sorry I really am.

Snow Day

Falling like feathers
All the day long
Blown in on north wind

From the upstairs window
The roofs of adjacent houses
Resemble sloping fields

The pool has disappeared
The slide drops to naught
Save a slick tight white

The dog stands at the door
Mournful and bored
Metaphorical leash in mouth

Homegrown Tomatoes

(In Memory of William Lafayette “Fadie” Stinson)

Huge as only memories can be
Red as a cartoon fire truck

Or Superman’s billowed cape—
I see Fadie’s sharp Old Timer

Halving those bright globes
Again and again into slices

Thick as homemade hamburgers
Or Arkansas’ August air.

With salt shakers and short forks
We stormed that storied platter,

Left nothing but pink larval pulp
And a few faintly yellow seeds.

No fruit since then has been
So terrible in its beauty,

The beauty of dying summer
Melting on hungry tongues.

On a Very Warm Oklahoma January Day

Snow in the forecast,
Wind already picking up…
Winter’s persistent!

Journalistic Questions

Who?

And the red wind blew
Over and around our roost.

What?

The party ended with a shot,
The blood a gaudy extravagance.

When?

We knew to move on then,
Before the commitments came.

Where?

There’s really no there there,
In Oakland or Oklahoma.

How?

You’re really asking that now?
That shows what you know.

Post-Mortem

Waking one morning
On the edge of a dream,
We found ourselves dead,
Memories and consciences
Picked clean as a bone
In an O’Keefe desert.
We ambled across
An expanse of sand
Colored blood-red
But cold to our soles,
Not one of us aware
Where we were heading,
Naked knees rising
And falling all day,
Which stretched
To meet our march
Where it had begun,
On the edge of a lake
Bottomless
As our lives had seemed.

When Things We Loved Have Ended

The mind, like a mouse, cowers
At the slam of an open door,
Scurries toward dubious cover,
Cracks in a shifting, settling floor.

The eyes roll around like slung dice
And the haunted heart beats, alone.
The outside world has now found us,
And our soul now hardens to stone.

Winter Haiku #3

Good wine and good friends—
Deep winter can work its worst,
But we’ll dwell in spring.

Platanus occidentalis

The sycamore
In the alley
Fascinates me—
Sprawling white limbs,
Rigid flailing,
Nonchalant air—
It’ll be there
After I’m dust
Blowing around
The thin shadows
Of its cold, white,
Skeletal arms.

Haiku for Sigrid and Ken

Friends win great honors,
And we are also honored
By having such friends.

While Longing for Order in Life

The birds veer and swoop like words,
Follow the leader north, south,
Whichever the true season.

The V’s of the honking geese
Are seldom perfectly straight;
A joker on the right wing

(Or on the serious left)
Throws the whole thing off-balance.
No such thing as symmetry.

Late at night the sycamore
Rises silent and sullen,
Its branches quite akimbo.

Dream (On a Certain Body of Water)

At last a boat lists
Into my strangest dream,
Just where I stuck one
In my daytime plans—
Edging ‘round the lake,
Sails quiet in the sun,
Hull haloed in shine,
Clear as a memory
Of a first, deep kiss.

Fog

I meant to type “Fog” just now
But at first I typed “Gof,”
And that made me think of God,
Which I do a lot since I turned 50
And decided I’m an agnostic
Who really likes ritual, tradition
And a sense of community,
Which of course I know
I could find perhaps in Masonry
Or falconry or martial arts
Or the Republican Party
Which I don’t believe in
Because in my mind
G.O.P. stands for “Greedy Old People,”
And I’m not old and I’m not greedy,
Just needy like most people nowadays
Or maybe—maybe—always,
People needing each other’s support
To validate their existences and choices
Like the choices we make at Wal-Mart
Which I love to hate and hate to love
Because they’ve driven out of business
All those mom-and-pop stores
In all those quaint little downtowns,
You know the shops with nothing much
And you paid a whole lot for nothing much,
But at least they’d make eye contact
While they checked you out—
I mean your merchandise, not you—
Which is more than I can say
For the tired middle-aged women
With the Carpal Tunnel-related casts
On their varicose wrists
Who are too weary to say “Hi”
When I go through with my dog food,
staple guns, tampons, and grapefruit,
my diet pills and Rocky Road
(and isn’t every road rocky in the end?).

Wait. I was talking about God, wasn’t I?

I Don’t Know What to Call This Poem

Maybe something like
“Winter Haiku #2”?
Wait, how many syllables
Is a number sign?
Oh, shit.

Maybe “To My Dear and Loving Wife”?
You know, like Bradstreet?
Of course, I’m no Puritan,
Though I sometimes drink like one.
I’m not damned, merely confounded.

Maybe “The One About the Parrot,”
Something flip, arch, and sly,
Early Ashbery crossed with Tom Lux,
a little Collins and Hoagland thrown in—
Something for the cheap seats!

Maybe “Untitled,” admit my defeat,
My utter inability to do like Adam
And give words their proper names.
Wait, he was doing animals…
I can call a horse a fucking horse.

“I Don’t Know What to Call This Poem”—
I like the rollicking almost-metered beat.
But this act, too, admits defeat.
I meant to write something serious.
So. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death.

Near Midnight

We kneel into the night’s darkness
With humble, bashful hearts;
Our baskets of simple offerings
Hang easily from our hands,
And our eyes accept the black
As our skin accepts the wind.
We hold our breaths briefly,
Listening for the gods’ bright sighs.

The Evening Before the Day After

Those geese may be
Lost in the fog,
Honks circling
This little world,
Dimly seen
From down or up,
Fading to white,
Distant, feathered.

Haiti

A loving god
Picks the poorest
Place in the hemisphere
And rocks it
With 7.7 god-power.

His eye is on the sparrow,
Which apparently
Isn’t black.

The Drunkard to His Glass

In wine we find
Our reflection—
Bloodied, ruddy face,
Eyes bright and wide
Taking in our gaze.

In Middle Age We Lose Our Way

A man meanders at times,
Climbs whatever tors
Or hills he may find,
Restless, irritable,
Angry at the flatness
Between dawn and dusk,
The husk of the night,
Its numbing dreams
Of forever falling.

Black Mountain

Barren branches--
seen sky through them
high and white
no one’s in her right mind
painters mow the lawns
composers thicken stews
a poet signs the few checks
and balances the books
on the end of his nose.

This One Begins

How many poems
Can you begin
With “The sky…”?
The limit, it seems.
Nothing else
So vast, so clear
So everlasting.
Nothing so distant,
easy to never reach.

Celebrity Rehab

So I’m watching Dr. Drew
And I’ve never heard of these so-called “celebrities”
Though they mostly look fabulous if
You don’t look too closely at their eyes
And everything around them, like their bodies
Which resemble well-tanned mannequins
With very heavy eye shadow and attitude
And they’re all drunks and addicts
And I’m wondering what I am with my wine
And my popcorn and my late-night fixation
On the dreaded but beloved Dr. Drew.
And why, oh Lord, do these people parade themselves,
And why, oh Lord, am I watching them die?

Global Warning

Oh, and by the way
I’m cascading
Like a melting glacier
Down the mountain
Of myths we’ve built
Around our fleeting selves.

You are too.
You just don’t know it
Yet. Oops, I told.

Don’t reach for a handhold.
It’s already gone.

See you at the bottom.

After you.

The truth and nothing but the truth

I swore I’d write no more
Poems about poems,
The ways they elude me
When I need them the most.
I swore a sacred oath.

Never trust a poet.

The Last One

Will seek the sacred heights,
The Lord’s God-awful face
Indistinguishable
From his haggard own.
He buried them both
Just before the black snow
Smothered the grey hills,
Still missing, still loving.
Perhaps he’ll finally leap
Into his beloved oblivion.
Or perhaps he’ll lie and curl,
Damned, unanswered question.

Poke Salad Blues

Two types of folks—
Those who eat poke
And those who won’t.

A third I’ve heard of—
City dudes and princesses
Who don’t know poke from pot.

My poor parents—
“poor” is literal here,
Not a bit sentimental—

Rinsed and boiled that weed
Once—twice—three times
Purging the deep poisons

Then served it up with eggs
And crumbled bacon bits—
My dad’d whistle “Dixie.”

Me, I’d miss that meal,
Ramble down the riverbank
To where the poke patch grew,

Piss on those damned toxic weeds,
Singing something subversive,
My empty stomach drumming.

The Woman on That Hill

No one ever went up there though
everyone over forty had been,
had seen her face falling away
until her cheek bone shone through
the hole the cancer had carved.

That’s what everyone said, anyway,
Even those of us too young to know.

When my father caught me smoking
He told me that she had loved Camels,
Still sucked on them, unfiltered,
And when she exhaled her face-hole
Blew gray-black oval smoke rings.

She smoked often in my dreams,
But her face always turned away.

Though I never saw or knew her,
Her rotting skin still burns my eyes.

An Old Southern Tale

Go down in the river bottom
Where the rutted, muddy road
Twists into the shaded shallows
Where wagons used to ford.
None but hawks and crows
Will see you then (it’ll be too late).
Perhaps a fox will peer
From withered, stunted shrubs,
Or an ancient owl from a limb
Just strong enough for wisdom
And the knowledge of death.
They’ll watch you disappear
Under the water’s black hair
Your last words lingering
Like smoke in the autumn air.

After Many Days of Snow and Cold

On this day you stand in this place
Sun in your face, staring
Into the mouth of the dawning day.
Above, the play of a few, high clouds
Prisms light into your wide eyes.
O seeker, O wanderer, simply be
still in this moment and finally know
this place is all, and fully enough.

New Year’s Day 2010

Breathing in the morning sun,
Distant fire surging through my lungs
As I chant and let everything fall away
Into this first day of the new year,
This day when everything entering my body
Is holy, and the love you and I make is holy,
And each and every memory is holy, also,
And I’ve never seen such a sun,
So bright, so large, so close to being
An ancient Greek in a flaming chariot
Or a dragon spouting fumes and fire
But instead it’s just you and just me, in love.

Post-Solstice Haiku #2

A new year begins—
Sun sliding over the land,
A god’s warm, bright hand.