Green

Folded and stuffed into wallets,
Lopped off with saws and piled,

Verdant, lively, fresh, and young,
By Nature, illness, or envy stung,

Lime, forest, sea, pea, grey, Granny Smith—
This Irish hue, environmentally aware,

Color of my mother-in-law’s oldest cars,
Oklahoma skies on spring afternoons,

Yellow and blue locked in an embrace,
The woody god’s vined, knotted face—

Oh, jolly giant, gather your newest fruits.

Early Morning at Kaw Lake

High above, a hawk hovers,
Scanning the morning waves
For bright flashes of breaking fins.

The water wanders under the wind’s
Cool hands, the sun’s eye
Peeking through oak branches.

In such a setting the sick mind
Thinks irresistibly of magic,
Imagines fantastic fossils on the floor,

Dark shadows in the din of trees.
What are these moments of beauty
But memories of dim should-have-beens?

Listening, the trees lean closer.
The sun climbs behind a cloud.
The wind winds down, and so do you.

Two Poems: "Childhood" and "Middle Age"

Childhood

The long slide glistens in sunlight, 
A chute from Heaven to sand.
On the way down, eternity passes.
From the top, you can see the ocean,
Filled with flipping white dolphins,
Above them the cobalt sky.
The marbles are still in your pocket,
A Cat’s Eye amongst them.
You push away slowly, and slowly fall.

Middle Age

The sidewalk shivers, February chill
And the coldness of concrete converge.
You walk up, from your usual station,
Images fleeing the edges of your eyes.
Among those left behind—your father,
Scarved against his own savage winter,
Trudging through the calf-deep snow.
The house key’s in your small pocket—
Open the door to a home you’ve never seen.

Guacamole

How did guacamole come to be? 
Perhaps some careless caveman
Rolled his long-sought wheel
Over a helpless avocado
And found the results pleasing—
A finger in the good green goo.
Who knew to add the lemon juice
To keep the verde in the dip?
Did they try milk initially,
Or fermented honey or beer?
Perhaps they salted the mess,
Or tried to dry it out over a fire.
The point is—it was an experiment,
Humans acting upon Nature,
Same as a strip mall, or an atomic bomb,
Only with a bright face and a funny name
Which my stoner friend Terry
(now an investment banker)
Could never recall when we’d haul
Ourselves to Taco Hut on a munchie run,
And he’s always ask for “that green shit,”
His eyes slitted, tomato-red,
And when the bemused clerk asked, “Guacamole?”
Terry would grow grave and thoughtful.
“Is that the green shit?” he’d ask,
And so it was, and so—no matter
Its origins—it shall ever be.

One of Those Days

There are people who mean us harm.
There are people who wish us well.
Sometimes, they are the same people.
But because their teeth are so white,
We never notice the jaggedness.

It’s just like my dear old Mama said:
“We’ll all die if we live long enough.”
This thought has comforted me
Through many a slack, sleepless night
Under the aimless, distant stars.

Something’s in the water, the sky,
Deep inside my densest bones.
We dare not speak its bastard name,
But go about our petty business,
Rotting in our very normalcy.

They’re coming to take me away, ha-ha,
But they’ll never, never find me.
I’m hiding in the corners of your eyes.

Solitaire

When you don’t know the meaning
Of each moment anymore,
Of the words that are leaning

Away from your lips, so sore
From the efforts of speech, vain
As grace sometimes seems to be,

All that remains of the pain
The faintest twinge, a ruby
Buried so far beneath stone,

Layers of boredom, of rage
Mute as a desert-bleached bone—
White letters on a black page.

The Black Dog Circles Once, Then Settles

The clouds cling to the horizon,
their fingers clutching like love
the sharp edge of the new day.
They mean to do us harm.

The female cardinal, dun and wan,
perches alone on the high wire line.
Across the alley, the bright male
twitters blindly through the sycamore.

Which way does the water
circle the drain? Where am I?
Could this lancing ache in my leg
be that sudden and very last throb?

Whatever gods ignore our prayers
shuffle through their eternities,
ancient mouths wrinkled and red
with the blood of vain praise.

Being Here Now

My tongue awoke to chocolate,
teeth tingling in the sunlight,
the nets of the new day sagging
under so many possibilities.

Your hair smells like chocolate
and rinses red in the sunlight,
and who can say what magic
lingers in my senses?

I’m most alive the moment
I awake to find my death
has yet to discover me,
hiding in such lush beauty.

On Avoiding Symbolism

After we’d made love,
I tore through the tangle
We’d left at the foot
Of the bed to find
My two necklaces,
Hopelessly intertwined
As we had been—
The black dove of peace
From Chartres Cathedral,
The silver Celtic cross
I’d bought that summer
In Glastonbury—
At each other’s throats,
Thick cords binding
Ebon wings, shining arms,
Locked in an embrace
That could mean
Almost anything.

Three Weeks Before the Beginning of Summer

Because this morning sky stared strangely upon me.
Because for me the birds no longer sing

(In fact, they avoid my presence, fluster
Away as I wander near their sullen perches).

Because these buildings hold their redbrick breaths
Whenever I, evicted, touch their silent stone.

Because the ground grows vaguely insolent beneath my feet
(I’m certain I heard a fuzzy snickering).

Because the dirty, still-empty pool
Threw the ripped-up calendar in my face.

Because the clothes go round and round
In a nervous sort of tumble.

Because this wall is yellow, as is my shirt,
But I haven’t seen the sun for years.

Because all your houses have come adrift,
Ballooning into the cloudy, sudden noon,

Stringing their plumbing and wires beneath,
Shadows of nerves, of fierce and former lives.

Awkward Encounter in the Afterlife

Brush of eyes over the rustle of wings,
A restless turning away into a self
You thought purgatorial penance
Had so surely thoroughly erased.
Could it be him? Here?
Your mind staggers, stumbling
Over his obvious redemption
The way you stumbled from the bar
The early morning he followed you,
Beat you, raped you, murdered you.
You, you, you, you—gone, not forgotten,
Eternally begotten of the moment
His knife opened your aorta
And you learned somehow nothing
And absolutely everything was true.
You walk the winding, ancient paths
Daily for several thousand years
Before you forget you again.

In the Middle of Nowhere at All

Sounds like a country song, except
without the sentiment settling
at the bottom of every verse.

The horizon harrumphs flatly away in
every possible permutation of north,
south, east, west—testing distance and time.

You and I stand at the steady axis
of our grief-stricken lives, watching
our children stumble, fall, rise to fall again,

like mother, like daughter,
like father, so—so—like son.

Blank Document

And there you have it,
Two words tormenting
In their willful challenge,
Sassy and streetwise
Beyond their limited
Number of characters,
Cocksure, strutting,
Very much in your face,
Ace, turn up the bass
And hand over
The damned microphone,
You’re about to be schooled
In the fine old-time art
Of saying nothing (for,
Really, what’s left?) but
Making it sound so good
The pixels cling to the page
In something very much
Like love, like meaning,
Like a momentary, though
Fragmentary, stay.

For Pam, Up at 5 a.m. Against Her Will

Sunrises are overrated.
Their rosy fingers
pry apart our eyelids
before we’ve adjusted
to still being alive,
had a first stretch
or a cup of coffee
to prepare us for joy.

Sunsets suit us more.
We’re by then ready
for the salmon swath
across the western sky,
this signal of cycles,
of eventual endings,
this lingering of the light
descending into night.

The 112th Congress

They said I shouldn’t be angry,
I should simply go shopping,
perhaps take a pill, watch TV.
So I carved up my credit cards,
shot some Robitussin and rage,
put a harpoon through the Sony.
Then I led a march on Washington,
but all we saw were empty suits
bulging with Bibles and I.O.U.’s
we bluely burned for nighttime fuel
before Honest Abe’s dirty statue,
sudden screams of dreams
lurching into drunken nightmare.

Sometime after the end of most things

And then the sun returned

and the people resumed

the jets marred the skies

which might have been blue

hearts beat, feeble organs

playing predictable dirges

but from an abandoned bar

a piano stubbornly played

an ecstatic boogie-woogie

all the way ‘til certain dawn.

Black Coffee & Red Wine

So swirl on, Cosmos, smug in your speckled, insolent skin! 

We’ll be fine—really. 

We’ll do our parts—rising & falling, living & dying,

Loving & unloving until those damned cows return

Festooned with leis and garlands from some Hawaiian Hindu romp

And full of fine milk from the teat sweet as ice cream.

You go about your business, & we’ll go about ours.

We’ll strum our guitars & arrange our materials,

Compose our stories & movies & poems & essays & plays,

Pretend to be people made of these words & others,

Spin on our toes until an audience’s heads spin but

We find ourselves at the center of a turning world,

A world that will hopefully go on—please?

Cosmos—are you still there, and listening?

Of Winter and Ordinary Time

The sycamores haunt me,
Bleached branches
Like dead gods’ bones
Flung into starry nothing.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Forgive us our belief,
As we forgive our doubt.

Wine and bread weren’t enough,
So I chose fine white cheese
And a thin slice of silence,
The breathing of the dead.

Bless us, Oh, Lord,
And these thy gifts,
Bruised and broken as they be.

Sometimes

Sometimes an orange football rolling across the floor.
Sometimes a sycamore, thrusting its barren branches into the winter sky.
Sometimes a small white dog, yapping through a colorblind dream.
Sometimes a documentary on Andy Warhol playing unwatched in a room full of
             people.
Sometimes they’re the wrong people.
Sometimes you are.
Sometimes all of us agree to just be sad together.
Sometimes we can’t stop.
Sometimes things move in the corners of my eyes and I hear choirs of sexless angels.
Sometimes I’m a sexless angel and I’m singing and I move in the corners of
             someone’s eyes.
Sometimes the world’s a scratched record and the needle’s leaping, and heaven’s in
              its landings.
Sometimes I think I’m dying more quickly than usual, and I buy myself flowers.
Sometimes I see God hiding in the tiny spaces between these words, between our
             bodies.

The Day After The Day After the End

The clock is stuck at five to twelve.
The rain comes relentlessly down.
Outside the windows, light fumbles
And stumbles into the distance.

Inside the windows, we just stand.
The clock is stuck at five to twelve.
From another room, we hear sounds
Such as we’ve never heard before.

The roof leaks over the table,
Where we’ve placed a battered bucket.
The clock is stuck at five to twelve.
It’s been perhaps that way for years.

So I’ll hold you if you’ll hold me
Until the rain stops or we do,
Until the sounds or we have gone.
The clock is stuck at five to twelve.

Eldon Thigbee

So we’re at a conference

on some windy plain

wearing aboriginal bikinis

provided by some child

with faraway eyes,

and I’m concerned

for my laptop,

which is lost in a crowd

that conveniently disappears

before the first session

on teaching the conflicts

to those already conflicted.

We don’t remember

quite how we got here

but over a torturous route

from a forgotten cheap motel

where I may have left

some of my clothes

(maybe this explains

this damned bikini).

Oh, yes—there was

something about a dog.

Outside the open window

(which conference

opens its windows?)

a country & western band

in Gram Parsons-Nudie suits

plays a song called “Eldon Thigbee,”

and we’re farther from home

than we’ve ever been

though we don’t know

just what that means.