Walking Song

Everything must rhyme
today,
 for everything has a beat.
 
Much too much walking
astray,
and too much time on feet.

Laden

Laden is an inert verb when laid upon your back, the eaves trough, a pine branch. Always it implies snow, at least at this latitude. I imagine you bent with the weight of my ardor as though two buckets of water hung from a pole across your back. Even the word is heavy and hard [...]

Same Sailboats

The story of his life
is the story of mine.
                -Anne Sexton “The Legend of the One-Eyed Man”
 
He lives the here and there
of a travel job, making acquaintances
forgotten past Tuesday,
collecting matchbooks
with stranger numbers
 
than his own.  His colors
ring metal, sob silver, dull
brown, same sailboats nailed
to the wall.  They do all
 
look alike, he muses and fancies
himself a doctor [...]

Moon Cabbage Moon

the wee children screeching in the summer  woods
doesn’t end under nightly nine.
that’s when the zombies
arrive.  their unstuffed grunts of hilarity
in the piney poplars
precede the bonfires, prelude
the beer bottles,
and preface the singular dirty sock
found on the pathway next day
as an exclamation to the moon cabbage moon.
 
we’ve tried calling the cops.
they tell us to keep our children [...]

Seizure of Snow

As waves pounding this shore
of unrelenting mountain, foothill and field
I am the valley reciprocate
of this white void.
 
Channel 83 tuned in to the weather
comes up with nothing
but blank stares. 
 
It is an avalanche of emotion
just opening the curtains.
 
I am ploughed swift into a vast
refrigerator with a burnt-out light bulb.
I will scream mutely for any breath
only [...]

While Travelling Through Nevada

I don’t have the feeling I have been here before but
I have been land before.  Cactus spine,
my seeing eyes,
a craggy of rock, my ear.
To hear that melancholy wind blow
as a ship yet unseen.  Oh water,
 
even you remember being here,
of being desert.  You mourn and wail
when the clouds are low
wanting to excavate the fish bones
 
that [...]

I Might Jim Morrison

The guy next to me on the train
is listening to Nirvana
and sticking out his chin
in time to the bass drum
quite like a rooster does
when he’s looking to mate.
He smells like deep fry and ashtray
and has dog hair on the thighs
of his stone-washed jeans.
I wonder if he thinks Cobain
would be his friend
if only he could [...]

Wisdom is a Watermelon

Teenagers are nectarines
who think they are peaches
without the fuzz.
 
Love is a blackberry
that bursts before you taste it
and leaves a stain all the same.
 
Old people are kiwis,
donned in fuzzy sweaters
and sour in the middle.
 
Wisdom is a watermelon,
lovely to look at
but hard to carry home .

I Won’t Pay for You to Read Me

even if you’re paramount.  What am I saying
about myself
if I have to bribe you
to consider I’m worth your time?
 
It’s not going to happen.
 
Now,
when you will have to pay to read me,
the world is as it should be.
I won’t pay for you to read me.

An Orange for Buddha

 
It is too cold for frogs to jump in September,
                for pussy willows to show their fuzz.
This month is iron and steel
and giant winged lions standing guard on either side of the doors.
This month is caught between an open hand
and a sore throat.  Even the leaves run in a confused circle.
 
It is hard to remember [...]