Poetry
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Call Out to God
How firmly we love the Lord how many sacrifices we make to prove it though internally we scream out to Him externally we pantomime sobriety for polity and stand outside the church door holding large neon signs condemning SIN working as hard as we can to prevent the believer from coming in The end result…
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Day at the Park
We’re prepping the land for the next generation knocking down the brick walls and excavating the basements pulling low-center of gravity concrete chunks out by the roots and dumping soil back into the hole. We’re playing favorites saving the perfect circles and the best perfumes rolling them up into satchels and dropping them off at…
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Intensive Care – A Tragicomedy
The Prime Minister is dying they’re spraying down the door of No. 10 with a mixture of Lysol and bleach they’ve taken all of the dishes from his study and broken them into small pieces to be buried in a cairn somewhere in Wales to be found 1000 years from now by strange, dark little…
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On Ice
Simulate a cold November evening in New York City imagine rolling clouds of icy fog chilling exposed skin and long legs dressed in nylon stockings listen to ship’s horns in the harbor they’re echoing off of art deco fenestrations feel the buffeting from soft vibrations of deep-running subway cars and the honking of taxi cabs…
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The World Alone
The pope walks empty streets He walks like a toddler Wobbly, but dedicated He sees the people that aren’t there He holds them in his head Like a card counter does numbers And hopes to break the bank with his prayers Down alleys he turns to find A church But now the whole world is…
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Age of Plagues and Worse
So you ask yourself, is it all too much? Are we just little meat-sacks running around the surface of a 4 billion year old rock, our lives meaningless? I don’t think so. I think there is so much more for us to know and see. God still rules the visible and the invisible. He sees…
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Conserv-A-Tiv, Inc.
A few enterprising folks from AIPAC found the spot where the original manger Jesus was born in stood they raised $1.1 billion in capital and built a Trump Hotel on top of it. The neon sign on the 50th floor flashes “ISRAELI/AMERICAN LOVE” The capitalists ride the elevator to the penthouse suites drink out the…
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Inspiration
I had to buy some inspiration the well had run dry the go-to stash was Poe in macabre navy blue an old print, just a fancy cover to make it new the pages crisp as fresh twenty dollar bills the little red ribbon bookmark starched like my father’s old button-on collars. There goes the ramparts…
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Croz
Joni sang in longing the dirge-like hymn about Woodstock. Billion year old carbon stardust and echoes hovering like a fog over an inlet of sea with half a million molecules of flesh and blood swelling like water. You took her at her word enhanced it with experience and renewed the promise of what eternal youth…
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Theme Song
Every day I think about writing a song being played on a piano with some interesting lyrics about Southern California in a rainstorm and a little boy waving goodbye to his red bicycle. It will have several verses to help accentuate the loss, maybe it stands for the loss of his innocence I don’t know.…
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R.E.M.
I had that dream where I was falling the one ubiquitous in us all, that brief REM engagement where we can remember holding onto the branches of ancestral trees – and letting go, embracing our subconscious flexing metaphor for our genetic fractalization. Even when the Australopithecus first walked upright, she remembered too. Remembered the small…
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National Poetry Month: “Joni”
Her voice was strong and husky the effect of smoking a thousand cigarettes over as many nights. In front of a canvas in her gray room a paintbrush in her hands, the palette skewed towards ocher. she dipped it in to make her mark signing softly to herself a song she didn’t write, but loved. Then she…
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National Poetry Month: “St. Augustine in Love”
She was so beautiful. She vibrated with life. I tossed her an apple from the neighbors orchard she reached out and caught it one-handed her skin honey, her hair like burnt offerings. I needed her like I needed reed and ink. Soft belly and taut breasts held high on her frame like melons fresh from…
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National Poetry Month: “Good as Gold”
79 protons and 118 neutrons arranged in a sphere. It doesn’t rust, it doesn’t turn to dust unless you dump it in acid. Its calculable value is far outweighed by the vast sums of human life spent in order to obtain it. Beyond the binding power of rings or necklaces holding fast the cross or…
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National Poetry Month: “New Energies”
Chernobyl had its time as a beautiful thing, until its fragile steel and ceramic tile broke under the strain of concussive rebirth. It had its time when the Soviets came rushing in wearing nothing but rubber boots and cotton sheets. It collected souls. It swallowed them whole. It made its own power a new machine…
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National Poetry Month: “Credulity”
It takes a lot to believe often there is nothing but the desire to believe. I know that the Teacher was a man of God. He healed, I saw it happen. I could smell the festering lepers, but after he touched them I could see their flesh renewed, revitalized. Pink and healthy. I watched the…
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National Poetry Month: “Love Poem”
She asked for a poem. “When will you write one about me?” In my head I know that all of my writing is about her. Or for her, even if tangentially. I know because there is nothing unique without her. When I go to bed, I give her a goodnight. When I wake up, a…
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National Poetry Month: “Leonard Cohen Sees a Miracle”
You see my little darling that the moon and the sun and the stars all fell at His feet. The Prime Mover shaken taken in the flesh of a man. The statue of the Virgin stepped off her perch, bowed in genuflection before proof of the resurrection. I saw the stone rolled away and beings…
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National Poetry Month: “Bob Dylan has a Vision of Jesus Christ”
Its hot in the desert. The air conditioner is pumping in microscopic sand particles. I’ve got the blackout curtains drawn but the light creeps in through the gaps anyway. I’ve drunk 2/3rds of a bottle I’m sweating Jack Daniels and the walls are moving in inch by inch. I don’t remember who I am anymore.…
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National Poetry Month: “Richard Nixon Asks for Forgiveness”
I told Pat the other day that I was a proud man. Too proud. I had many successes. There are events I regret of course. But I do want to say that I seek forgiveness. You know my mother was a devout Quaker. She was what they would call a “true” believer. She would sit…
The Numinous Cosmos 