Pushing Seventy

Pushing Seventy
Pushing seventy he acts the boy
Shouts with glee at dancing girls
Withered face beams with joy
Pushing seventy he acts the boy
Like a child with a Christmas toy
He hops, skips, jumps and twirls
Pushing seventy he acts the boy
Shouts with glee at dancing girls

The Face of War

My reading of the poem

The Face of War

Pillow impressions, tank tracks across the face
Deep furrows in the dunes, an army’s footprint.
Plows its way through the desert of my dreams

A flickering television, my sleeping mind dreams
Of carrion-picking buzzards, death’s dark face,
Gnawing on a child’s carcass without a footprint

Apparitions of amputees searching for a footprint
Wandering through a landfill of loss, a dream
Of deliverance imprinted upon bloody faces

The face of war, foot printed in the desert of my dreams.

A Clean Slate

A Clean Slate

No triumph: no defeat
A slate rubbed clean
Of what has been
Not life effete
Who have seen
The end’s not yet

One in death
Do not say
You drew a breath
Each yesterday
So manifestly incomplete
Withered long instead
Opens and grows sweet
When you are dead

Diffusion

Diffusion

Although the moon
Shines brightly here,
The darkness also seeps
Between the branches
Of this gloomy forest

An Old Poets Song

An Old Poet’s Song

I sit and I wait
Like a sentry on my perch,
Watchful and alone,
A stargazing observer,
A poet in the desert

Iraq is a Dry County for Soldiers

My reading of the poem

Iraq is a Dry County for Soldiers

Since the boy can’t go to the bar for a drink, I wistfully
commit myself to the job, returning with two cold mugs of beer
    And so we sit, the mug and I, sipping suds together…
     
    An imaginary afternoon of fellowship, far from the turbulence
of terrorist trauma., thoughts of Iraq incursion lain aside.
    Yet, had I my druthers, I’d be drifting down a river in
Oregon, catching Salmon shouting fish on!

    And so we sit one quiet afternoon sipping suds together.
The mug frothing over its memories, as I froth over mine

Tapestry of Time

My reading of poem


Tapestry of Time (A Gloss)

"Life all around me here in the village: Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, Courage, constancy, heroism, failure - All in the loom, and oh what patterns!"('Petit, the Poet,' from Spoon River Anthology)

Life all around me here in the village
A flash flood- a human inundation
Slovenly surrounds the desert hills.
Old pioneers in air-conditioned
Covered wagons, retired darlings
Life all around me here in the village

Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth
Arrive like hideous gorgons-
Distorted faces distort the landscape.
Weeble-headed Wal-Marters
Ghastly totem pole visages
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth

Courage, constancy, heroism, failure
Four horsemen of apocalyptic bent
Ride progress’s plastic saddles-
Conquer the desert tortoise as
Custer’s army conquered the bison
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure

All in the loom, and oh, what patterns!
In with the new out with the old.
Future Shock, The Population Bomb,
Silent Spring woven throughout the town.
The tapestry of time takes its toll.
All in the loom, and oh, what patterns!

Its Always on the Other Foot

It’s Always on the Other Foot

Young people
Lost and needy
Searching painfully
Like labyrinthine explorers
If only they were old

Excremental Nightmares

Reading of the poem


Excremental Nightmares

Shit inserts itself into the center
Of our tranquility like a bowling ball
Dropped on a carrier pigeon
From a skyscraper.

It must be one of Newton’s theorems:
  An object at rest tends to stay at rest
    and an object in motion
      tends to stay in motion
        with the same speed
          and in the same direction
            unless acted upon
              by an unbalanced force

My rest, your motion, co-exist
Harmoniously with our natures
Same speed, motion, direction
Until the shit of the day
Excretes its nastiness
Like soup de jour in Pierre’s
Café.  Spoils the appetite,
The peace, the brain’s functionality.

A simple question, a phone call
A visit from Adventists, a sneeze
Or a fart, sets the little shit-stirring
Bastards in motion. Today’s no different.
A hot bath and hair curlers
did the trick. My car, your car-
we all scream for ice cream
in summertime rage.
Hell’s fire! Let there be
Peace and commerce between us!

 

Reverie on the River

My Reading of the poem
Reverie on the River

Where the road to the river fades out of view
a rustling sound, the kind invisible deer make
is what I heard in the melting light;
The forest bedding-down everywhere else.

A small fir laden with cones
rustling momentarily where the trees
cover the bank, some late swimmer
rising right there for a quick meal

(Or my imagination playing a devilish trick?)
silver-side rolling over, soon to rise
it turns on its back, letting
the dry fly take it where it wishes

beyond the last riffling eddy
to where the pool settles
clear as the water over its silver fins
in the solitary night, solitary deep;

Passing clouds like curling cigarette smoke
even the wood owl oddly withdrawn
While I strained to hear a splash
Or glimpse it rising to the sumptuous offering

and when I did not; I just listened-
The same noise through the branches
Still tricking me now and then
until the wood owl’s cry awakened me.

Louise and Rulons Montana Homestead in Augusta

Louise and Rulon’s Montana Homestead in Augusta

On the billowing, russet prairie
Stands an empty farmhouse-
Windows gone, doors sagging.
Wind soughs mournfully under eaves

Stands an empty farmhouse
Russian thistle tumbles past
Wind soughs mournfully under eaves
To the murmurs of dead voices

Russian thistle tumbles past.
Desolate, silent grim witness
To the murmurs of dead voices
Gone the kerosene lantern-lit faces

Desolate, silent, grim witnesses
Gone the herd, the flock, the field
Gone the kerosene lantern-lit faces
Tempered by tough Montana times

Gone the herd, the flock, the field
Gone the bison who roamed
The billowing russet prairie
Where the empty farmhouse stands.
.





  

Dreams Cannot Undo What Deeds Have Done

Dreams Reading


Dreams Cannot Undo What Deeds Have Done

Round as a pumpkin, rolling,  tumbling like a fat gymnast,
For days, carcass rotting on the West Bank,
Gross as old garbage, stinking, reeking  like a fish rotting
No one knows the old derilect.

Quick as a bird fleeing, flying like a unicorn aloft
The parishoner scampers inside the mosque
Holy as a pale nun kneeling, praying like a prisoner afraid
of confession and forgiveness

Sounds like war drums pounding, deafening as Volcanic lungs
Reverberate over  Cedars of Lebanon
Sharp as a spear, flying, soaring like a hawk hunting
The Star of David exacts retribution.

Detached as a retina, squinting, refracting like a lens breaking,
I gaze at the media miracle of television,
Transparent as thin vapor, inhaling, absorbing like a prophet seeing
The unraveling, the beginning of the ending.

Pearl of Wisdom

Pearl of Wisdom
     
Wise pearl
A gentle pause
punctuates the frigid
air between the said and the done.
Your anger, my response
diffused by time.
Wisdom

After

After

the small fir is stripped
of its splendor
it leans in the corner
lonely like the family
you needlessly abandoned

the children’s love
for you, their mother fades.
Holidays come and go,
Simple checks on a calendar.

your wake, an undertow
of regret, lives broken,
possessions scattered-
a hurricane’s carnage

Ten years have passed
Since the unnatural disaster.
Christmas has left, Easter
Is gone and Thanksgiving
Is an apartheid revolution.

Today, July 4th 2006
I celebrate my country’s
independence

Artists Vision

Artist’s Vision

Artist’s brushes
color dark edges
frame God’s hands
into just, kind
love, merciful numina
of passion.
Quaint ridges shadow time,
Undulate Visions
with XTC’s yellow zenith.

Alien Invasion

Alien Invasion
Collectors of sorts, sisters
Candy and Pam resided with
3 dogs and 100 cats- all between
the walls of a small brownstone
in Delaware township. When
foul odors wafted from within,
neighbors called Captain Boney
about the blatant balm. There she
was , wrapped in plastic- mom,
rotting away in an old barrel.
dead for a year.

Candy, Pam, 3 dogs, 100
Cats, and mom decaying
in an old barrel. Aliens invaded
Delaware Township last year.

Keith Reads

4th of July Reading

Well Always Find a Way

We’ll Always Find a Way

Except for animals
In the pasture, men
Snoring from the
Farmhouse below,
And the cool breeze
Across your face,
The night was still.
Wally the Bull, bedded
With his lowing mistresses,
Done for the day and
The big cat purred against
Your leg.
Like a smoke signal
Your call from atop
The hill through
Crackling static
From the Wyoming
Meadow bridged
The distance between us.
We’ll always find our way.
Even from the farm.

.

North Town Folks

North Town Folks

Over in North Town where folks say they stay
(They don’t say “live”, because they don’t),
And labor at jobs that others won’t,
Shiny new busses carry them away

Across the boundary where white folks play
In the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas town--
Gambling city turned upside down,
To clean and sweep and earn some pay

All those neon lights and cash to be made,
A dream of riches, deliverance and hope
Magnetic attractions stronger than dope
Fervent desires to join the parade-

Not to labor in drudgery and strife,
But to get some joy and song out of life.