Dead Bird

Not a red bird but a robin
resting feet up
on our recycling bin.

Eyes closed, it doesn’t dream
of endless seed-fields,
dry nest shielded from wind.

I toss it over the fence,
but not before admiring
the immaculate theology

of its Trinitarian claws,
deeply bloodied breast,
wings that once stormed Heaven.

Late March Pastoral

Walking home tonight
Under bright spring moon
I paused as I often do
When I’ve forgotten
Which way leads home.

I licked my finger
And held it aloft
The soft night wind
Licked it again
Just for good measure.

diatribe

These words
like worms
crawling
into
a world
where words
prove whores
no one
listens
except
for God
who craves
language

Tonight, Tonight

Everyone thinks
Everything matters
When only a few
Little things do,

Like this crazy moon
Playing peek-a-boo
Behind the high clouds,
This wine, this me,
And this you.

Breaking News

Someone is leaving someone
At the edge of a dismal town
Where the last factory’s closed
And houses fall steadily down.

And someone’s shooting someone
Just because the gun was there.
And someone’s shooting junk
Just to share that vacant stare.

Over across the interstate,
They live behind iron gates,
Count their cash by T.V. light—
God bless the United States.

Prey

Eventually, hawkish, love
Plunges down from above,
Talons poised to grasp.
You’ve no second to gasp
As you’re borne aloft.
Your fingers stroke the soft
Feathers under the wing—
You’ll die this spring.

Something Else

Every breath
you take
a prayer,
every sigh
a meditation,
every sleeping
a little death,
every waking
an awaited birth,
every blink
a willful blindness,
every meal
a communion,
every glass of wine
a draught of life.
You take
every breath.

Confession of a Modern Man

Bless me Mother
for I have sinned
against Thee
and Father Sky

I've neglected
to properly notice
when last-gasp Winter
gives way to Spring

I've quite forgotten
the birdsong language
the melodies of breeze
branching through air

Forgive my inattention
my wandering mind
Teach me Thy wisdom
the child's laugh on the wind

Black Light

Chiaroscuro—
Eater of souls:
Darkness that swallows the light.
From the blackness
A hand, a face, a blunt
Wordless cry of pain.
Fragments, fragments again.
Men seek this madness,
Pay dearly for it.
On the eternal canvas,
The torturous dance begins—
A whirl, a turn, a dip—
A truth fading to the edges.

blue and red make purple

hours arguing politics
as skies surely thicken
thin-skinned people
wearing their wallets
on their red sleeves
everyone I love is here
yet I long to be elsewhere
or if thin-skins
really are everywhere
perhaps nowhere
nobody with Emily
and of course with you
thick-skinned
under thinning skies

Ironic Haiku #1

Your face gravitates
Toward the snow-thwacked windows—
March 21: Spring?

A Previously Unreported Incident

Yesterday
The sky fell
Quite down
Around
Our ankles.
Bits of cirrus
And cumulus
Clung to
Our cuffs.
Careful not
To trample
Astonished birds,
We craned
Our necks
Toward empty,
Where stars
Blazed gigantic.

Analysis 1

What stories have you left, my friend?
We’ve covered quite thoroughly
Your childhood, adolescence (arrested),
Your painful, tentative gropings
Toward something you considered love.
We’ve done the mommy and daddy thing
More than mommy and daddy did,
And your siblings simply don’t matter
As much as they seem to think.
In the end it’s memoir, not fiction,
Which means in the end it’s you.
Well? What do you want to do?

Poteau River Bottom, Scott County, Arkansas, 1976

Two and a half miles from our mobile home
To the old cattle ford in the river,
Which we called “the bottom end,” of course,
Laughing until beer foamed from our noses.
We’d drive my old Ford or Randy’s Rambler
Down through the twisted, dusty ruts
To where the road dipped into the brown water,
And there we’d sit for hours, watching
The phosphorus foam wind around the bend
Toward the Oklahoma border two miles west.
We’d drink our bootlegged Budweiser
While Lynyrd Skynyrd or Willie Nelson
Filled in the frightening silences between us,
Those moments when we looked away
From each other’s acned, eager faces
And stared into the spaces between the trees
Where we all knew God was hiding.
Then someone would say, “Aw, shit,”
Because some one of us always did,
And we’d silently toast each other
With our watery Oklahoma contraband beer
And someone would change the eight-track,
Maybe to Waylon or Black Oak Arkansas,
And we’d fish for awhile or shoot at cans
And talk about football and cars and girls—
The things we knew of and didn’t and never would.

After the Hard Rain

The people have spoken,
or at least some of them,
though they mostly
weren’t listening either.
The people are that way.

Some remembered
with fierce regret,
while others prophesied
foreboding and fear.
People are that way, too.

The hawks, circling
through lower heaven,
noticed no obvious changes.
Some people still remembered,
while others still foresaw.

From the mansions on the hills,
a low murmuring arose,
and slowly floated downward.
Black cars came and went,
trailing fumes and rumors.

People were born and died.
Some regretted, some feared.
The hawks circled, high and aloof.

another moment in a quiet life

and there you are, sky,
right where I left you,
trying to fly away
but stuck in gravity
as much as I am,
both of us pulled
toward the earth,
our clouds and stars
eternal yet drifting

this spring

and one day
like the day before
the tight bud
on the branch
bursts and unfolds
like a fist
becoming hand
green fingers
grasping at sky

Mood Poisoning

This afternoon
a fine film
about Dachau,
madness,
and death.

Tonight,
stomach cramps,
fever, and
never-ending
stars.

Tomorrow
no doubt
more—then more.

Love and Death in the Natural Order of Things

How can it be
that so much death
lives between
these moments
of senseless glee,
these snapshots
of animal joy,
spontaneous
as sex or violence?
Between each orgasm,
a graveyard fills,
bodies parting,
now departing.

A Large Glass of Red Wine

From California,
Just as I am,
Still wet behind
Its bouquet ears.
A subtle hint
Of salt water
And warm sand,
Redwood bark,
Barrios, realpolitik.
Swirled like Listerine
In my middle-
aged mouth, becoming
every fat grape
and every fat dream
I left behind
In the sunny courtyard
Of Clement Jr. High
In May of 1971
When I became
An expatriate,
An ex-prune picker,
“C.C,” “California Cool”
To a clique of
Arkansas clodhoppers
Who’ve also now
Long faded into
That curious residue
That persists
At the bottom
of the empty glass.

The Way My Morning Began

Ladybug on a shot glass,
I think you may
Have a problem.
The way you hang
So prim on that rim,
I suspect a contact high.
Do your simple feet sip?
I thought I’d left
No drop of cheap vodka
To tempt you, but alas—
Here I am, now sober,
Talking to you, dear
Ladybug on a shot glass.

Thin Dilemma

Somehow
it escapes
me, no
matter
how hard
I focus
my need
to know
upon the
question.
‘Tis a tough,
resilient
quandary,
and much
like the
last one,
which was
just this:
“What shall
I write
today?”

A Matter of Fact (With Thanks to Carson McCullers)

Nothing tonight
about the sky,
no ode to moon
or brazen wind.
Nature died
in 1989 but
no one noticed.

Mobile lumps
of tainted clay
lumber through
what remains,
sifting the ashes
in a pathetic
search for god.

A vague rumor,
urban legend
lurking often
in the corners
of consciousness,
God was a tree,
a rock, a cloud.













 

 

Oklahoma Sonnet #1

Sky the color of cancer,
malignant clouds clustered low,
black streaks southward
toward Texas and the Gulf—
so much attention paid
to the meteorological
here in Tornado Alley—
where a green sky
sends some to cellars,
some to the shadowed road.
We live in God’s Petri dish,
puny specimens,
spellbound by angry Heaven.

Barrett

Sometimes
I understand
you, Syd--
at least
I think I do.
I've seen
the photos:
you, a guitar,
a naked girl,
the three of you
in a naked flat,
or nearly,
mattress on
the bare floor,
ashtray, bottle,
cosmic rays
storming
the windows.
You stare
into the lens,
sullenly void,
man retreating,
receding, really,
into an asterisk
on an album's
liner notes,
and as I hold
that album,
I realize
that was it,
nothing more
needed, so
you could
excuse yourself,
recluse yourself,
get bald, fat,
fade to legend,
early in the '70s,
when both of us
were young,
and mad,
and so often
laughing
at nothing.

Something Theatrical

The man in the back row
had the best seat
in the crowded house.

Every hair on every head
lay within his purview,
parted, curled, or spiked.

He saw the unlucky
who slinked out the side
under peers' withering stares.

Those on the stage
gesticulated just for him,
projected toward his seat.

Afterward, he gave himself roses.

The New Downsizing

Diminishing
Means finishing
An age of affluence;
As we shrink,
We think:
Enough will do us.

language poetry

Words—troublesome
things, sticking
to tongues like wax,
then tumbling into air
and hanging there
for forever moments
while feet shuffle,
glances exchange,
clocks tick off
lost opportunities,
and arteries harden.
In the spaces
between vowels
and consonants,
we miss them.

Witch Season

The cart’s wheels,
Caked with muck,
Crunch over limbs
That snap like bones.

The devil-whores
Keen and wail
At the very sight
Of the sacred rood.

We herd them in, and
the examinations begin.
Some float.
Some don’t.

The red-tressed one,
With the cat scratches
Across her vile back?
She burned quite blue.

Afterwards, life resumed.
We planted by the moon,
And could hide in the corn,
Which rose like dying curses.

so tropical

the island sleeps within us
within the sea of our lives
and we’ve never been there
though we’re all around it
in the same exact way
we’ve never been in our hearts
and we’re out of our minds
so much of the time
but the island is beautiful
and filled with talking birds
who all tell tales
of yet another island
that’s even more beautiful
and has even more birds
and that lies even deeper
in the marrow of our bones
where the ocean slowly
lashes the sandy beaches
where we live forever
until we die

ennui by any other name

Everything seems
nothing some days,
massive totality
wizened, shrunk,
sad little raisin
stuck in the bottom
of the battered box,
bearing the label:
boredom.