Haiku

Skylight frames the night
Black and white beneath my knees
Moon beams on futon

Through the Fire Exit, Down the Rabbit Hole

Kickoff 2013

May You Always Find the Way Out of Locked Places

A Gerbera daisy dropped

On a moist forest floor

In the lateness of your night

In the morning of my day

Hands reach across sheets

Hands reach across states

Fingertips touch sun-tanned skin

Bathed in Mother Ocean

Dried by Brother Wind

In the early pre-dawn

Before roosters crow

Or owls fly home

I know you are awake

Next to nothing between us

Before the map of a planet

Our earthen nature absorbs

The shock and terror

We know capable of love

Your grotto filled with water

Once empty the day before

The fire pit spat ash

Burned from dead flowers

Covered us like dust used to find

Crime scene fingerprints

Pilfered bamboo survives

Huddled in a clump

Plot of dirt saved for flowers

Chairs circle sacred space

Guarded by the old woman living

On the wild corner of the lot

She stirs her iron vat of brine

Boils down our bone baggage

Until the yellow marrow melts

Wheel barrow the color of rust

Mixing bowl for bloody mortar

Bonds your flat rock children

Wall sloped for sliding rain water

Sets pumice cinder-blocks in cement

Sharpens the corners around my heart

Trees with poison ivy spread red pain

Tree with chain embedded in bark rind

Trunk absorbs pain and strain it survives

Tannenbaum thanked three times

Held green bushy needles close

The pine surrendered to the New Year.  

 

The Winter of Sweet Potato Spirits

I waited twenty-five years

For the moment when

The earth stilled its tilt

Waited for an axis pole to shift

Waited for bodies’ ascension drift

Waited for Armageddon encampments

Waited for brothels to serve tea with sugar

The Golden Age arrived

We were alive to witness

Time lines not yet converging

Like a time lapse photo

Forgetting the moment of a camera click

We drank to the Winter of Sweet Potato Spirits. 

Poem for Palen

Betty Lou was behind me driving a hard bargain I could not afford. Forty-five minutes ago, Chew-Bacca roared like a Talking Head.

"What's Vegas say about the game tomorrow?"

Loving your lead balloon & black dog, the one Jimmy owns, howling in the night behind the Marshall speakers, you called me home....bring me home.

Christmas 2012

Santa asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I told him a Country Squire Station Wagon with wood panels.....thought it safer than saying I wanted a Woodie.

Sunday Morning

tobacco stained fingers

dipped in red lacquer

paint my matted hair
dark clots of burnt umber

clump us together

molten lava air-dried.

For April

Action
Reaction
Restart
The engine,
Full speed
At half-mast,
I want to take
A bath
Enjoy the salt
In the soak
Draw out
Toxic clutter.
My head is full
of One-
Two praise,
I love
April's
Joy.