April Haiku

Two straight gusty days,

Two nights of sleepless clanging—

God’s restless breathing.

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.

And You Shall Know

When you’ve been down

Amongst the lowly

Who dwell along

The Lord’s river,

And when you’ve seen

The tight faces

Wearing blankness

As a taut mask,

And have then gone

Deep underground

Where rough diamonds

Lurk under foot,

And you have then

Stumbled and lurched,

But your balance

Has rescued you,

You’ll then emerge

A metaphor,

Legendary

Tabernacle.

On the Day After the Day of My Failure

Monochrome the message in her eyes,

And distant the datum in my heart

As that particular part of us

Shriveled like tinfoil in the camp fire

We vowed we’d keep burning until death.

Later, turning and sifting the ash

Drifting eastward on the drowsy breeze,

We avoided touch, and even words

Lay as useless as love on our tongues.

What’s There and What Isn’t

See the shadow of a shadow

Distinct as a chisel on stone,

All gouging and sparking to form.

Now see bodies throwing shadows

Awkwardly into the sunlight,

Where they become whole new beings,

Sailing through the bright grass like ghosts

Seeking, poor exiles, fleshly homes.

One Winter Night in 1979

The night Big Jim flashed back to Vietnam,

We’d chased bar beers with shots of straight Jack Black,

‘Til five of us—all gone by then--remained.

We huddled round a table in the den,

And no one spoke for quite the longest time.

I looked at Jim to see if he was cool,

And saw instead a deadness in his eyes.

He reached across the table for the fifth,

Now empty, which explained the stupor-calm,

And grabbed it by its neck as if to choke

Last amber drops from out its drying void,

Then swung it down upon the table’s edge.

The shatter startled all of us alert,

As did the words Big Jim snarled out at us:

“I’m gonna cut you fucking V.C. pigs.”

And then he lunged, and then the chase began:

The four of us were out the nearest door

And in the freezing early morning air.

For some odd reason, I recall the stars

As seeming nearer than they’d ever seemed.

Then Big Jim screamed as Tracy’s cousin Lou

Axe-handled him down to the sodden grass,

The stars retreated up into the sky,

And we all lived, and Jim would live on, too,

To see his sons go slowly, surely blind,

Divorce his wife, a casualty of war,

And disappear into this poem’s lines,

As distant and as futile as those stars.

Stars and Bars

In the southern forest
Grow magnolias and moss,
The kudzu--mad tourist—
A memory of loss,

Bark-bandaged bullet holes
And blood-besotted ground—
Everywhere, grey souls
March around and around

Under a shadow moon,
Under the owl’s death-gaze,
Whistling that Dixie tune
Through ghost lips all their days.

The Last Nymph

Below the blue-gray clouds

The April landscape crowds

In clumps of gracious green.

A multitude unseen

Is peering from the wood

At one who thought she could

Remain invisible.

Slowly she’ll rise, able

At last to see she’s known

For what she is—alone.

In Spring, with Storms to the West

I thought I heard the wind inside your voice,

A breeze as soft as branches under rain.

Perhaps it was the memory of a choice

That we made once, and then we made again.

In any case, the morning’s yet to come

With crises which we can’t imagine now.

With luck, at least a few will be the same

As yesterday’s, and we’ll remember how

We saved the world a dinner at a time,

A glass of wine, a dance, a simple word.

Let’s pull our memories tighter, close to home,

And listen for that wind I thought I heard.

The Insomniac

Darkness inching toward light

Only in her slow, tired mind—

Outside the sluggish wind

Rattles and slaps the night.

The little bitch beside her

Breathes obliviously on.

Above, the ceiling fan

sets the fetid air astir.

No use looking for clocks,

Watches, phones, LCDs.

She knows none of these

Can tell her why she blocks

Off sleep, cuts off dreams,

Stares into nothingness.

The answer’s something less

Than the question seems.

Near dawn she drifts off

Into a restless reverie,

Remembering every

Morning of her life.

Arrival

The quiet of the night

Arrives as a stranger,

Face familiar yet unknown,

Drawing attention

From the hovering stars

And a few homely eyes

As it makes its way

Down the dark streets

To the last house

That you’d expect.

The Trouble with Memories

No one reaches out of the shower

To grab her towel from the shiny rack,

And no one wraps a turban

Around her dripping black hair,

And no one wears a blue velvet robe

With a sash with a double knot,

And no one saunters down the hall

Whistling a naughty striptease tune,

And no one comes into the room

Where you wait alone in the bed,

And no one ever will.  No one.

April Observation

Rain for three straight days—
The doorjambs are swollen.
Birds huddle under canopies,
And most people drowse.

The dog’s slept for hours;
The clock seems rusted still.
The smooth clouds stretch away
To meet at the horizon.

I’m pretending all responsibilities
Have been swept from my life
By the rising brown waters.
They’re towns away by now.

Rain for four straight days—
The dog’s slept for hours;
Underground, I hear the rustle
Of many dark roots rising.

For a Seeker

And if the light that shines so brightly
Turns out to be merely afterglow,
And the truth that has sustained you
Reveals itself as one more dead end,
Don’t despair, my pilgrim friend. You
Will go back to the beginning again,
And relearn there how to walk,
The way to lace words into prayer,
Off-key notes into joyous hymns,
Stumbling acts into graceful works,
And another light will illuminate
The Truth already deep within you.

Life on the Road

She didn’t recognize the whys,
The whats, the all-important whos.
Her vision blocked by blasted love,
She too long growled a lonely blues.

The rain was made to fall on her,
The snow designed to block her way,
Wrapped in her rancid angry shawl,
Stumbling and mumbling through each day.

She thought just once she’d found magic,
But that had flown so long before.
She keeps on singing and running,
Seeking another open door.

The Day Before the Day the World Ended

When the earth began to bobble
Beneath our gallant feet,
And the tall stars staggered
Through a comet-clotted sky,
We scanned the clouds’ edges
For strange, familiar lights,
Each other’s eyes for hope.
But no savior hid behind either,
And so we clung together
Through the shaking and the fire,
Our shattered eyes fastened
On a half-forgotten promise
Somewhere high above this death.

The Day at a Play

The shadows lingered far too long,
Past the point of subtle taste.
The light waited in the wings,
Tapping its foot, checking its watch,
Occasionally clearing its throat
Loudly and quite brilliantly.

The stage manager, white beard
Tossed over his broad shoulder
Like a fine albino sweater,
Motioned and faintly hissed
At the recalcitrant darkness,
Which finally slunk off-stage.

Not to Be Reproduced

Did René M. don a bowler
When he strolled Brussels
With his black suit and smile,
So transparent you could see
Right through him to another
Landscape lying just behind
Or perhaps identical, pulsing
To the pump of the blood
In the soles of his foot-boots?

The Last Day of the Rest of Your Life

You finally see the jays for what they are—
Squawky, tiresome, beautiful provocateurs
Ethnic-cleansing the branches and bushes
In search of some fair-feathered purity
You imagine must, if it lives, be most like
That first night you kissed her, both drunk
But sober enough to know this meant business,
This was no mere merging of lonely lips
But the beginning of an all-new eternity,
With a cosmology and physics all its own,
Laws of attraction and gravitational pull
Previously unknown and uncharted,
So that the momentary brush and press
Telescoped into past, into this future
Where you shoo the petulant jays away,
Watch as they merge with the sky.

Once in a While

Once in a while,
when I’m home
and all alone,
maybe only
the dog and me,
I imagine
the whole world
has disappeared,
and we’re afloat,
in the house,
like Noah’s boat
upon the flood.
Outside is dark,
and void,
and deep,
so we wait,
and we sleep,
ready to awake
at the rumble
of God’s sudden
and angry voice.

Observational

And who knows the hours
For what they really are
Like those who have died?
They watch from afar
As we scamper through,
Trailing latte foam and chaos,
Certain everything depends
Upon what we’ve still to do.
They shake their dead heads,
Sighing without breaths,
Watching their clocks,
Which never move, lamenting
The haste of our living.

After the Gig

Another woman of turning
Into the face of the night
No regrets no not one
Save that time has no time
To simply let the blues
Ride and slide along
All the way back to OKC
Watermelon Slim on CD
Smoke fading from her hair

Out-of-Mind Experience

For the NOC Jazz Combo, Spring 2010

No thinking when they’re playing
And the moments elongate
In blessed-mad syncopation.
Eddie’s on the ivories,
Riding gently as on a young colt,
While Victor thumps the bottom
And Chad’s brushes caress
Those shy cymbals as softly
As a morning breeze through clouds.
And Jerry, Kyle, and Ben
Lean lips-first into the microphone,
Lights prismatic on brass,
Blowing a wordless prayer.

Averting

The moment it happened
We were all looking away,
Lost in another moment.

We felt regret immediately,
Guilt almost Catholic
In its habitual weight.

We tried to laugh it off,
The way people do who
Fear they’ve lost their ways.

We couldn’t even meet
Each other’s eyes for days,
Imagining what we’d missed.

The Searcher

Someone somewhere has seen truth,
But she can’t remember where.
Each day she wanders the district
In which truth is rumored to dwell
Only to return late, discouraged,
Subject to sudden fits of questioning
Followed by prolonged hunger.
She writes down each day’s itinerary
In a well-worn purple notebook
That’s always quite never full.

Cosmology, with Merlot

Almost eleven-thirty
And this day has passed
Like this wine from this glass.

The stars proliferate,
Though some no doubt die
Millions of years before this moment.

We all leave something
Behind, some shape in air,
Some last blazing before blackness.

All that ultimately endures
Lies in mysterious spaces between,
Pauses between this breath and that.

Easter Night

Oh Lord, forgive my poor unforgiveness,
For I do truly hold a hellish grudge
Against You, Oh God, in all Your wisdom.
You never should have trusted me so much.
You’ve given me ample chances to doubt,
And doubt I have, and doubt I no doubt will.
You’ve answered my prayers before I’ve said them,
And each answer has confounded my soul.
Why would you grant my sinful petition,
Given my mocking, my scorning of faith?
Yahweh, is this some sort of sacred trick—
Blessing a fool who only curses back?

Oklahoma Haiku #1

Redbud trees bursting
Through an early April fog—
Strawberries and cream.

Upon a Good Friday

Where once we needed to name
The nomenclature of nature,
Delineating fir from pine from spruce,
Where at a glance the dance
Of prairie grass denoted
Breeze from gust from simple wind,
Where we searched the clouds for clues,
The cumulus, cirrus, ominous walls,
Telling us all we needed to love or fear,
Where even then we envied the silent,
Those few who knew the secret codes
That made them quiet together,
Like pines blown by wind under clouds.

Diagnosis

You’ve more than a touch of the blues, my son—
Someone has sand-blasted deep into your soul,
Where no one—especially not you—has gone before.

We may have to call in a consultant.
(This could get expensive; you’ve covered, correct?)
That’s good; we must prepare to be prepared.

I see from your history how many of your people
Drop dead after only seven or eight decades.
This indicates an inherited trait: you give up.

I’m going to prescribe pills better than prayer.
Take four or five per day of these until gone.
What? Of course, of course I meant the pills.

What kind of a doctor do you think I am?