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?