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.

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.

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.

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.

After a Long Monday

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.