Fog, manmade and heavy,
settled around the instruments on the roof
and slid into the panels
you couldn’t get a decent reading.
They were also sending out faulty signals,
so the station impersonated
a ranch
a lighthouse
a brothel
a post office
a castle
and flickered on and off the screens of passing ships.
This went on for years.
I’m lying down in the road
trying to grind a smear of
feathers and gristle
into the hollow between
my shoulder blades.
If I smell like death
I can walk right next to you
and you won’t know
I’m alive.
What can we give each other, anyway?
There is nothing we get to keep.
The beer is drunk
the charcoal burnt
and last night is gone, I am
hitting the turf without a helmet
although I was chosen first,
with feasting and rejoicing.
Soon back to being hit, hard.
Do the young have the right idea
go for maximum contact
for maximum pay
and retire early?
This leads to the kind of damage
scientists have found
eats your brain
like a linebacker at a steakhouse
and there is no regrowing it.
There is nothing we get to keep
down after down the same
perhaps the ring will be enough?
The coach tells us to get back in the game
and stop thinking so much
and oh, we will, soon enough, for sure.
Let’s stop dressing them up in clothes
and sending them to school
they bite
and smell
and shit in all the wrong places.
Let’s stop pretending their feelings
are ours,
turn your head and everything;
streetlamp and squirrel
has a soft human face
and says “I’m sorry.”
Let them be wild
and use their own rules.
Don’t lie awake
wishing every creature different.
Posted in poem
The last night
I touched your
too warm shoulder
and didn’t know.
I said
I love you
I said
I love you
What I never said:
I can survive
loving you
after you
are gone.
Posted in poem
Stretch your twenty fingers
like you are about to go on stage,
and dig them deep into
the eggs and flour
on the counter.
A thousand hands have helped
strumming, sifting, stacking, stamping, stirring.
Today and each day after
is both the promise
and the promise kept.
Like contemplating
tortellini
the dough rolled thin
cut square
and clasped carefully
around its buttery heart,
We feel joy looking at you
holding each other close,
more joy in chewing this day
savoring it and swallowing it.
And the lasting pleasure of knowing
joy is yours to remake.
Your twenty fingers will remember
clasped together
strong and steady.
Posted in poem
We all cut our hair
and shaved our beards,
put on uniforms
and moved in together.
Every morning we would
sing a few morning songs
and eat tomatoes and toast.
Then we would go out
pick up the broken glass
and candy wrappers.
Slip seeds into cracks in the pavement
and fill the places someone had
meant to put a building
with trees and lettuces.
We read
and let some kids read to us.
In the afternoon,
we would walk
whole packs of animals
in a parade.
“Say soldier,”
someone would say,
“that’s a fine looking pup.”
And we would sign over her papers,
right there.
When the war ended
we let our hair grow
and we stopped sleeping
in bunk beds.
The city was better
because of us.
Posted in poem
The itch is
irresistable
then forgotten then
accidentally scratched.
Patiently
the heart waits
for stillness
when healthy skin
can grow.
Posted in poem
The moment I step out the front door
my thoughts tear off
like they’re on three leashes
after five different squirrels.
The tulips this morning were
drawn up to their full height
fresh and reckless.
Last night I woke over and over
fuzzy thinking
sliding around in butter and
swilling red wine.
Out of the sun,
junkies and bag collectors
debate themselves and find things
are not where they left them.
Pagans are in the meeting room.
After work
I will head straight home.
Posted in poem
Seeing you the other night was like
sticking both my arms elbow deep
into the bottom of an icy spring
cupping them and trying to take a drink.
My hands went numb holding
sediment and leaf mold,
waterlogged twigs, and moss
coated with a thick brown scum.
A moment before the water had
looked clear and sweet.
Seeing you was also like turning the taps on
after weeks away from home.
The water rushed out bloody and spat rust into the sink
and I stood back and watched it run.
Seeing you can not be like
seeing that yellow afternoon light
that comes in sideways and
reveals the air all around us
is secretly crowded with dust.
Sitting on hard plastic in fluorescent light
I remember how you once bit me
gently on the wrist and
I try to picture clean water rising with time,
coming right out of the ground.
Posted in poem
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