The Famous Cloud Formation of February 28

High above us
the night sky
became an x-ray
of a smoker’s lungs
(perhaps mine
from 1979),
ribbed and ridged
with darkness.
I inhaled by moonlight,
blew away a memory
of my father wheezing,
sputtering, spewing
mucus and phlegm,
his sunken eyes
rising to seek
his promised god
hiding in the night sky
high above us.

The Newest Widow

Her face
That damned day
Dipped and dwindled,
Fell into her shoulders
And lay still.

All around her
The room grew
To enormous size,
Telescoping
To fill our eyes.

The mirror
Reflected her back,
Its heaves and shudders,
The way every pause
Collapsed to pain.

A small woman
In an impossibly large room,
Shining like a target
In a polished glass surface—
The memory of a moment.

All around her,
A small woman,
The mirror—
Her face.

Dilemma

We don't understand.
The world's dying continues,
through cycling seasons.

After the Concert

Humming
my ears are,
thick from
drumming,
bass bump,
from guitars’
siren song.
Driving home,
I'm deafened
by this silence.

Global Warming 1

The skeleton of a mastodon
was found in a frozen teardrop.

The scientists scurry
to measure the saline levels.

The teardrop overlooks
a glacier’s snail-like recession.

From the glacier’s sweating peak,
if you crane your neck, you’ll see

the setting sun go prism
off the tip of an icy tusk.

And On the Eighth Day God Laughed

The fields open
Into more fields,
Stretching space
To four horizons.
Above, birds
Surf the waves
Of the blown sky.
Sometimes
The earth moves,
Or seems to,
Beneath their wings.
Beneath our feet,
The fields open.

And Then

Skies the color of Gatorade,
And what we’ve made of life
Mocks us daily. We wonder
At the turbulence, though

In the end we settle
Into comfy questions—
Better the ambiguity
Of what we don’t know

Than the angst
Of unwelcome answers.
Most days we smile
And think we mean it,

Until the horizon,
All straight, smug certainty,
Swallows our hip ignorance,
And all our questions cease.

One Perspective

The narrow window
Opens on a church,
A small revelation
Through diamond-
Shaped latticework.
At night I watch
The spirit of nothing
Touch the white walls,
Wrap itself in darkness,
Melt into moonlight,
The lonely, only light
Ever shining down.

Fog Haiku

The sky has fallen,
Heaven’s water’s all around—
Here, we see dimly.

One Friday Downtown After Rain

The old men in the coffee shop
Bitch and moan, bitch and moan,
Damning to hell the excuses
They hold for their lives’ failings,
Convenient-through-distance targets
Framed in their caffeinated sights.
Sunday they’ll all thank Jesus
For whatever shape they’ll be in,
And the old coots will mean in,
The way they mean the way they laugh
At the blonde-haired, freckled girl
Who suddenly walks though the door,
Her smile exclaiming, “Grandpa!”

Late February in a Promised Land

In the fields the birds cluster,
Black clouds moving as one
Amongst the pale winter wheat,
Short, methodical hops
Of beaks, feathers, and wings,
And eyes like those of snakes,
While in the empty village,
Deep within the hollow church,
The old priest with trembling hands
Places upon the simple altar
Our offerings of birds,
And grain, and our selves.

Late Night Last Chance Party

“Where’s your blue monkey?”
Yes, that was what she said.
So I wasn’t sure if she meant
Some kind of exotic drink,
Perhaps something with rum,
Something that comes on
So sweet, so delicious, so demure,

But often leaves you lying
In a movie-set downpour
In someone else’s underwear,
Or maybe, maybe she meant
She wanted to see some part of me
She’d already cutely named,
But I’m quite happily married

And not one part of me’s blue,
Except sometimes my eyes,
But only in hazy, lazy dreams
That seldom involve monkeys
And from which I awake
To face the strangest questions,
Rubbing my eyes with answers.

Double Life

If Job had told God
To kiss his tired ass,
We’d have no martyr
With which to compare
Our long-sufferings.

We’d ask each other
How things weren’t going,
Thrill to invective
Hurled to the heavens,
Absence of judgment.

But he praised instead,
set the bar too high.
So for forever,
Or what seems like it,
We fake forgiveness.

Malignancy

Craven coward creeping
Into the body’s bits,
Full of fancy cell work,
A slaying sleight of hand.
You show up in shadows,
Gaunt and unwelcome guest.

You never have fought fair,
Guerilla guerre’s your style.
Hiding in the hollows
where no one notices
your masterly mischief,
wizard of waste and time.

God damn your gauche method,
Rancid, rapt, and measured.
What Hell hath spawned your ass?
Bastardly, broken bile
Flowing into flowers
Blighted but beautiful.

Saint Valentine’s Day 2010

I’ve no flowers to offer, love—
None but my buried, grubby bulbs
Which each day you freely water,
Arrange, and so proudly display.

I’ve no chocolate for you, love—
None darker than your eyes and hair,
The sweetness of your aftertaste
Upon my so unworthy lips.

And I’ve no card for you, my love,
For you to read and to discard.
Read this, read me, let me read you—
But discard each other? Never!

The Revolution of the Flat

Sometimes shadows
Cast themselves
The entirely wrong way,
Facing rather than fleeing
Their bright source of life,
Standing in unison,
Shaking their black fists
Toward the tyrant sky,
Shouting derision
on depth and substance,
us their counterparts,
smug in our bodies,
untethered and free.

February 12, and Things Have Changed

The first warm day in weeks,
Drunk on the very air
Rustling my arms’ hair,
Giddy with the light
Bright in my eyes, so bright
I can’t see the cold anymore.
On such a day I wander
The streets of my town,
Daring the sun to go down.

Chicken Little Was Right

Sky lying
Above us
Suddenly
Falls down
Around us
And we laugh
As clouds
Tickle our
Eyelashes

By Odin’s Beard

Snow gone, the cold
Settles down into the ground,
Blue roots probing loam,
Rock, ancient mold.
The moon, frigid huntress,
Throws her runic owl light
Over the barren fields—
Look, the gods arise
Clad in their threadbare motley.

Vermeer

Awash, light spreading
Like air across a face.
A hand, a saucer,
The turn of a head—
A universe contained
In the depth of a breath.

And I Can’t Feel At Home in This World Anymore

The swivel-necked owl
high in the barren elm
just might be God,
yellow eyes sharp
as memories of Eden,
watchful gaze pivoting
over all the earth,
hanging in a tree,
our ready savior,
ready—when he sees
a streak in the field—
to drop like hymns,
crush faithless bones.

The Old Country

There, they fold the days neatly away
like freshly-laundered, ironed sheets.

The women are tall, but the men are taller.
Morals flourish between corn’s straight rows.

The sun lingers longer than anywhere else
because the girls are so beautiful.

Neighbors raise each other’s barns
in timed competitions for schnapps.

Each genealogy is read in the face,
births, baptisms, weddings, funerals.

The steeples outnumber the shadows,
though folks avoid the full moon’s glare.

There, your passport is stamped in blood.

Briefly

Your tongue at my throat,
Stench of honeysuckle,
River bright under moon,
Watching fireflies--
High on tequila and youth,
We flared one summer
Before the long, slow fading.

Toast

Singularly black
When time slips away,
A tawny, naughty brown
When attention is paid.

Crumbled into buttermilk,
Soggy little croutons
Navigating cruel curds
Heavy and hefty as icebergs.

Slathered with honey or jam,
Butter as the scolds wince
Tightly as their pedometered butts,
Taut as their scowling jaws.

Assisted down the gullet
With strong black coffee,
Inexpensive, simple
As a first waking breath.

Absence

The world is wet
And filled with fog.

Into the night,
I and my dog

Venture in vain,
So out of tune,

Again—again—
Missing the moon.

Death in the Inland Empire

Southern California sunlight
Knifes the clear windows
Of the Redlands Church of Christ,
Burns my grandmother’s coffin
Bright at the alterless front
Of the Puritan sanctuary.
Beside me, my mother,
Tall and thin as a knife herself,
Keens and wails, animalistic,
While my father looks simply on
With the stunned helplessness of love.
This is my earliest memory--
I’m four, and have one life less.

In a Fog

Once,
Scenarios stood
In bright relief,
Backlit by the white
Light reflection of

Your smile.
Dreams danced
Across your brain,
Flashy flamencos
Sparking their taps.

Now,
Crowded, obscured,
You strain against
Tomorrow, fumble
For a futile key.

Once, your smile. Now.

Snow Melt Haiku

When the snow’s melting
In February sun, find
Spring in the puddles.