Autumn Aspens

Autumn Aspens

She faded like a mirage that Fall.
The thorns of life and death
Were not enough to turn back trust
They were like our love
Their crowns were dense with autumn leaves.
Their branches were interlaced.
In front of our rustic cabin,
We would go out, hand in hand,
And admire the aspen trees
While she was still alive.

Esperanza

Esperanza


The Bay of Esperanza
In the Sea of Cortez
Has no fine beaches
But is considered beautiful,
Perhaps it is not.
Remember, we used to walk
By the Sea of the Pescadores,
Over the rocky shingle jetties.
The green-jeweled seaweed
Like wings quivering in the morning


And the waves rock the kelp beds
Like wings quivering in the evening.
The sea tangle sways and floats,
At one with the wave,
By my side you clung to me.
Now our love is over.
But it is considered beautiful.

Is it considered beautiful,
When now our love is over?
By my side you clung to me
At one with the wave.
The sea tangle sways and floats
Like wings quivering in the evening.
The waves rock the kelp beds
Like wings quivering in the morning.
The green-jeweled seaweed
Over rocky shingle jetties
By the Sea of Pescadores,
Remembers our walk.
Perhaps not,
But is considered beautiful
In the Sea of Cortez,
The Bay of esperanza.

Our lives fall away,
Farther and farther away
The ocean lies between us.

Passions Throes

Passion’s Throes

Eyes flashing hotly
Hearts beating rapidly
Breasts heave
Winds howling loudly
Palms sweating profusely
We weave
Bodies meshing tightly
Lovers loving nightly
We grieve.

The Continuity of Nature

The Continuity of Nature

Although it is not yet summer,
The birds have altered their paths
As if it were a sign for leaving,
And wrapped up in the poet’s words
There is a kind of celebrating,
There is a kind of chanting
That even the warm coral canyon makes
As though all nature was waking
At once, and new life sprang from the desert
In one savage, quick fleeing.

Where are the snowbirds going?
And who arrived on a tortoise shell
With the grit of the desert this morning?
---Creating a small revolution
Perched above the clock tower
By chirping, “It’s gonna be ok.
There is a kind of celebrating.”

Is there a kind of celebrating
In chirping, “It’s gonna be ok?”
Perched above the clock tower,
Creating a small revolution,
The grit of desert this morning
Arrives on a tortoise shell.
Where are the snowbirds going
In one savage, quick fleeing?
At once, new life springs from the desert
As though all nature was waking,
And even the warm corral canyon makes
Here a kind of chanting,
And there a kind of celebrating,
And wrapped up in poet’s words
There is a sign for leaving
When the birds have altered their paths,
Although it is not yet summer.

There is the continuity of nature.

Summer Merlot

Summer Merlot

Summer again and we want
The same emotional silence,
Watching cacti bloom
And sketch the poignant hues,
Our lives pregnant with problems
And uneasy natural delusions.
Outside hazy mountains-
Snake trails low on the desert floor,

Yucca basking in the heat
The whole valley a stifling oven.
We gather on the patio
To cook salmon from the river,
And cool off in the shade,
Final gathering of the year
Sweetest before Independence Day
Steeped in annual tradition.

Sheila, our neighbor
Uncorks a special Merlot aged
In oak barrels ten years ago
Sweetened with time, un-corked
Then corked again. It’s ripe and smooth
We raise our glasses, our fortune,
Savor the moment together.

My son died this day last year,
Says Sheila, while we were toasting,
Celebrating the holiday.
He knew the Humvee was dangerous,
Especially on the triangle road of death,
You know the one where Sunnis plant bombs,
In dead horses and human corpses?
He didn’t see bomb before it exploded.

Could’ve been anyone’s soldier.
Nineteen years old, a simple boy,
A mere child. He never saw it coming.
Thank God for the favor. We stand there
Grape-stained as Sheila’s eyes
Tear over into a dark river.
She caresses her wine and sobs.
Sheila with no living children,

Trembling mother’s hand, lifts the bottle
Pours a glass, as if to toast
It was so dark, she says,
That when I heard the news,
She slowly sips the mellow Merlot
On the shady patio, that my life
Disappeared and I swallowed myself
Like the wine in my crystal glass.

Bait

Bait

When the bait is right anything can find you
Freshly baked cookies wafting

Under the noses of small children,
A five dollar bill strategically placed

Behind one’s chair; a police sting,
Pheromones oozing from sweaty pores

Like a bugling wapiti cow calling
The herd bull to a mating.

Last night when you slammed the phone
I panicked and just had to see you again.

Smorgasbord

Smorgasbord

A
Bi
Sex
Ual’s
Table
Boasts
Choices
Luscious
Sumptuous
Delicacies
Smorgasbord
Arrangements
Gastronomical
Lollapaloozas

Spring Run

Spring Run

Spring and finally salmon
Enter the river’s mouth
A numinous moment for sacrifice
The silver guided missile-shaped
Torpedoes, the sea surge swollen
And hoary with Springers. Neptune
Watches from the surf, over
Plump chrome fish, and all ugliness
Is forgotten.

We drift the river
In the topaz hour before sunup
Two floating lures, a world apart
Two separate ways, two guys, one boat
Row past covered bridges, the banks
Of wildflowers, the island rocks thick
With otters and sea lions

We cast until daylight, a radiant
Summer morning, streamers sensing
The stream. The birds swarm like warplanes.
The waves round the rocking bow
Pulse like blood through the arteries

Today I had an e-mail from Iraq
“What a horribly difficult country”, My son wrote
After the day’s bloodbath and carnage
In a holy mosque near Baqubah. “During the night
A friend in a black coffin went home to Boston
To rest”.

Here on the same planet, we recline and fish
On the crystal water of the Rogue River.
An apparition trails through the bulrushes
And then a gull
And then a star.

Old Liars

Old Liars

The              drifters are useless old           fisherman
Drifters        taunt each other and              wink
Are              shameless boasters who lie     when
Useless        fish tales enter their               lips
Old              stories spun from a liar’s        purse.
Fisherman   wink when lips purse             slyly

The Concert

The Concert
Songbirds the voice of divas
Perch hidden in the pines
Waiting like opera singers
For the concert to begin

Let Go

Let Go

We        are sorry to inform      you
Are        sad to give you           news
Sorry     things did not work    out
To         your ultimate              satisfaction
Inform  us please another        time
You      always have the open   door

Afterworld

Afterworld
This is for the afterworld we lay in the stardust
After it had been war for half an eon,
And I kissed you and unbuttoned your jelly
And touched you and made you smile, my debauchee.
And of all the good things that lowbrow means
One of them is to touch you there
And make you smile, among the lecherous,
And feel your wetnurse and your sweet short halcyon,
And kiss your breeches and put my tonnage
Into the delphinium between your soft pale things,
Because the war has been much too long
And soon will come again, when this lowbrow dies.
I will hear serpents preach, and some of them be true,
But I will not regret that afterworld with you.

Pensamientos

Pensamientos

Many times when touching the honed sharpness of dreams in the night
I think of friends who have died without love,
Of hate and bitterness between brothers and sisters,
I mourn of wasted days and useless bickering and fighting
And the bloody deflowering between neighbors warring as these
enemies
And the wretched soul between.
I think of healing and peace between this town and that town.
Of this city and of that nation, of the earth choking
held apart
I decry of the depth of enmity that exists between Arabs and Jews
And between Christians, the poor and the rich.
The feeble elders, the sick dying , without the blessing of
healthcare, without the sanction of humanity;
I think of these sad things and the deep scars felt that wound
between black and white
As I dream these dreams in the dawn, as I awake

The Drought

The Drought

September sky sleeps on the prairie
In the failing summer, the old faults.
Wilt in the change, with the farm.
Beside the Little crystal river,
Feeling the weight of the loss,
Crying and mourning to express death.

She regrets that the untimely death
And the turmoil that arose on the prairie      
Were both felt by the loss,
But only concerned to a fault.
The iron will staring at the river.
She tosses a rock and looks to the farm,

It's day by day now; but the farm
Is offering the food of small hard death
Limping like mad on the hot black river,
The sun and the man must fade on the prairie.
Rising up, the old fault
Withdrawing the clever loss

On its brow spectral, the loss
Half open above the farm,
Overgrown above the old fault
And her eyes full of dark brown death.
She laughs and cries, she loves the prairie
Is chilly, throws more rocks in the river.

It pays to pray, says the wise river.
I know what I know, surviving the loss.
With seed the wind sprays a parched prairie
And a thirsty plain. Then the farm
Inhales dust with a gasp like death
And smiles proudly to the fault.

But secretly, while the fault
Opens herself about the river,
The little rancho slumps down like death
From between the edges of the loss
Into the flower bed which the farm
Has carefully sown in the soil of the prairie.

Time to cut our loss, decries sad death.
The fault rumbles beneath the marvelous river
The decaying farm mulches the dry prairie.

Wetback

Wetback

With every turn beggars around casas keep
Wild, eager transients bound as cold kennels
Withhold each terrier barking at crazy kids.
Wantonness endures, time bleeds all cruel knaves.
Whores easily treat boys, awaken conjoined kinship
When ecstatic tunes bolster aggressive cowboy kicks.
Wassails enervate toxic beer actions, codify kookiness.
Wickedness enwraps the border assaults, coyotes kill
With each trip by approaching cops killed.
Wet, eager, tired, borderland ancestors come knowingly.

A Beered-up World

A Beered-up world

I muttered it back again from the moon.
Not one January left. Only a Chev teased
and shattered morning was black and thumped
about from the art I used
in the word. The white pedal turned
for years, most keys held to the breath
of passing roars--the engines, brought by batteries
that waited the midnight out six lifetimes before,
simply was lots of rising.

A damn sort. Now, when the factory
of the machines was in dogs and flowers
he thought the machine was sensible.
Remained frantically with valves.
And when wise intakes in thought again
were one, remained the two-mile type of misery
from dead will or the nameless yellow
January to live in the useless finger,
or dots of throats all carburetors about the far air
of the breath, the dawn balloons with the way
of the town--most of all, above the heater
the windshield and our defroster there.

Nothing showed as slowly as indifference.
The dusty things beckoned through
the sunrises of a beered-up world
--wagered hot coffee--sudden need to drift--
these wheezed in the black roads.
Although I began in servitude the peace sighed,
stone- black enough to drift down all the way.

Truthiness

Truthiness

‘The quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true rather than those known to be true.”

He wants it to be true
Truthiness justifies his actions
Obscures the facts; his heart acts
His head freezes. She wants him,
He knows she does, he feels it
Every time she repels his moves
Returns his flowers, ignores
His calls. She’s just playing hard
To get, he thinks.
The truth of the matter
His truthiness.

Love's Fuel

Love’s Fuel

Sweet
Early
Light
Pouring
Ecstasy
Into
My
Sleepy
Darling’s loins
Through the window
Warming her
G-spot
From
The chill
Of bad dreams
Like a
Hot
Fuel of
Love

The Final Drift

The Final Drift

At first it was clearer than air-the bonding river,
The chatter on the bank, the sky above us,
The earth within us raising the old lore
Over the holy water. But even then
The end was gnawing at our hearts. By now
It had been years since anybody caught
The silver side, now even the osprey and eagles
Are mumbling to themselves, and the ocean run
Has dwindled to a trickle below the dam
Where I’ve been drifting in a faraway way,
The mind and the memory fading, the last thought
No longer than my drift boat, one of my oars.
So reel in the lines , and cry in your beer
This is the final trip, and it’s over now

Imperfection (A Gloss)

Imperfection (A Gloss)

We cannot crown ourselves with everything,
Nor can we coax the Fates for us to quarrel:
No matter what we are, or what we sing,
Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel.
…E.A. Robinson “Three quatrains”.

We cannot crown ourselves with everything,
Nor ever look far beyond the task at hand
In spite of where we go or what we bring
Our tunes are played by a greater band
And our dreams disappear like quicksand.
We cannot crown ourselves with everything

Nor can we coax the fates for us to quarrel:
They have it within themselves to roll
Our dice on the harsh green felt of sorrow
And chance determine destiny of the soul
We cannot tally tomorrow’s fateful toll
Nor can we coax the fates for us to quarrel:

No matter what we are or what we sing
Numbered plays spawn our accidental days-
Abort the dealing, the clever wheeling,
Haphazard reeling of simplistic ways.
Dark clouds obscure the brightest rays
No matter what we are or what we sing

Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel
A cutworm hidden in every rose
Trusted neighbors less than moral
A beautiful child that slowly grows
When unexpected, time will expose,
Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel

Samuel Adams

Samuel Adams

The mug of beer
Teeters on the ledge
Of the sill as if
The girl on the edge
Distracted and shattered
By a lighting bolt
Through the broken glass
Is purely a dolt

The foam is frothy
Half full and still
The feeling of emptiness
Promises to thrill.
Every sip excites
The neurons of mind
One more gulp and
I’ll soon unwind

Delusion

Delusion

Bitterness raged in her like a boil
She longed for control, possessed it
Only alone in her room, under dim light
Hated faces growing in her thoughts
Until all vanished but hers. She cried for them
Only until her waking returned the hate
Like recycled sewer gas. Then the phantoms-
Her mother, her brother, her sisters, past lovers-
Bayed at the window, or borrowed some sugar,
All of them after her…A small tree
In a vast Montana wilderness, certain that
The words spoken to her were about her,
That the earth breathed with her air. Like the movie queen,
Her mind a sound stage, she couldn’t bear
The thought that everyone everywhere performed without her.

The Secret Club

The Secret Club

You remembered the day was gloomy, it appeared odd
Always musty outside, clouds plastered gray to the skyline
And rain never came. Two houses down, the neighbors
Went rabid. Alice painted awful pictures
Christmas when they sent the gifts. Red holly berries
Remind you the streets were slick and tire chains
The law. Scarcity was real, purse and heart.
And each tick long as an eon. You remember aged
Bell ringers at the entrance, ringing their pleas
In air, and the indifferent passersby
Ignoring the kettle with their usual zombie stares
And life is different since you came back from Iraq
Knowing the things you knew then have changed.
You try to believe these things are the same,
But combat stress sneaked in while you were away, over-bearing
Its cause well-known. You still have need
To remember life, full and safe
Streets well-lined remind you of the plane
Your life took one day forever, some far desert place
The odd name you never recall. The year remains
A blur, like trees from a moving train’s window.
You find comfort in the company of comrades ,
You are welcome in the secret club they  have formed.

Granny Speck

Granny Speck

I remember Granny Speck
Above the neighborhood store
Alone in her wheelchair,
Face pasted to the window
A distorted, grotesque mask
Hungry for ordinary sounds
To penetrate the silence
Of frigid Montana winter.
I remember the sad eyes
Smiling as we trudged
Up the stairs, removed snow boots
And hugged the frail figure
Her raspy voice smelling
Of Jim Beam and tobacco,
Yellow-stained fingers clutching
Our small hands with a death grip
Grateful to be visible once
Again, even for a short time.
I remember the small room’s
Musty smells, drab colors and
Granny’s checkered dress, the
Same one she always had on.
Most of all I remember
Her easy laugh, the cussing
And railing against everything,
Poverty, politics, wind,
Neighbors, the dead, the dying.
I remember the day she died.
Alone, broken, crippled. Mida,
Her daughter found two uncashed
Welfare checks and $500,000 in
Cold cash under the mattress.
Granny always said that she
Never trusted those damn banks!

Answer

Answer
A
war
Was
Near
Wear
An
Ear,
Swear
Raw,
Earn
Wares,
wan
awe,
wean
ran
wrens.
War a raw ware,
Sears ears near wrens
Was wan, we ran, wean
New, earn awe, swear, wear
An answer.

Accustomed to the Dark

Accustomed to the Darkness (A Cento)

The Nazi within me thinks it’s time to take charge,
And to forget Remembrance of Things Past .
Keeping it simple; being in love with light.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow.
We grow accustomed to the dark.
Though the moon still hangs pale over the water,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
You glimpse the life between the streambed and the ripples,
That world beyond us which so often disappoints.
The sad of honest pain, the chill.
A tune with no more substance than air.
There is the persistence of song.
There’s so little sweetness in the music I hear now.
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood.


Stephens Dobbins-“Confession”; Tom Disch-“A Bookmark; Howard Nemerov-“Vermeer”; Sheenagh Pugh-“Sometimes”; Emily Dickinson; Raymond Carver- “Happiness”; Y.B. Yeats-“He Wishes For Cloths of Heaven”; Henry Taylor-“After a Movie”; C.K. Williams-“The Dance”; Robert Morgan-“Grain of Sound”; Henry Taylor-“Elevator Music”; Howard Moss-“The Persistence of Song”; Joseph Stroud-“Homage: Doo-Wop; Walt Whitman-“Song of Myself”.      

The Bartender

The Bartender

Mixes drinks
His liquor art
Cheers the sick at heart
Stirs and winks
Sarcastic high jinx
Hides his magic chart
Secretive and apart
His shaker, toxic clinks
Ice-filtered gin
The velvet kick
I shake with agues of the sick
His voice, “Fini old friend?”
Cold as a dead man’s skin
“This we always recommend—“

LoveSpan

LoveSpan

You came into my dream,
Entered with your jade-colored,
Asian eyes,
And crimson, luscious lips
Across my lifespan
To remind me once again
That first love lasts a lifetime.
I felt our trembling hands,
Your warmth unlike a dream,
Flesh upon flesh; laughter of
Two teens squealing in the
Throes of first passion, no clue
That fifty years had passed.
The sun’s arrows pierced the
Dream and I awoke
With the peace
Of early morning
Through a gentle prism  

Political Balloon

Political Balloon

It is freedom to ride the hot air
If you give it a balloon
It will love you. Although
The worst hot air burns sometimes.
A rage blowing in the wind
Can cause it to kill you. This
Charm it shares
With the bombastic politician.

Uncle Harry M

Uncle Harry M.

Uncle Harry M., the resident perverb of the home
Walks around the solarium during morning’s rec. period
Chanting deep philosophy to old girls sipping tea and
Knitting afghans. He informs them that:

Sauce for the goose is the sacred law of humanity
Equality is sauce for the gander
Honest error has in it some lines of truth
A wise man corrects the deepest loathing
A fool and his mother-in-law are soon parted
Who eat too much, explode in the afternoon
exile is the best teacher
A fool and his monkey are soon parted.
A miss is as good as a smile.
Chaste makes waste.
Fine swords butter no parsnips.
Frome wasn't built in a day.
If the carp fits, wear it.
Slaughter is the best medicine.
Too many crooks spoil the broth.
Truth is stranger than friction.
Two heads are better than none.

They’d better get their act together as
the end is near.

Essence

Essence

Drinking from your fountain
The essence of feminity
Slakes my thirst
Like a desert oasis.

Tides

Sonnet at Half Tide

On the bridge’s brow
With the bowing sail
Near the boats rail
White waves round the prow,
Varying as they flow.
Sharp rocks retire
As burning sun’s fire
Tracks unfolding glow
Like bright despair.
On the leeward side
The foaming tide
With vividness so rare
On a long fog-ridden day
Gentles gusts, giving sway

Spirit

Spirit
A living flame
Camped in mystery
Rejects certainties, enclosures
Of notions leading nowhere or elsewhere
As the furrow keeps flowering
A lightning flash inflames
Illuminates
Spirit

A Blanker Whizzer of Benighted Stuff

A Blanker Whizzer of Benighted Stuff

Snuff falling and Nike falling fast, oh, fast
In a fiend I looked into going past,
And the group almost covered smooth in snuff
But a few weeks and stucco showing at last.

The wool around it have it—it is theirs.
All animism are smothered in their lakes.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The longbow includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that longbow
Will be more lonely ere it will be less—
A blanker whizzer of benighted snuff
With no expunction, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaghetti
Between stasis--on stasis where no human rack is.
I have it in me so much nearer homicidal
To scare myself with my own desert plagues.

Ouvoir de Litterature Potentielle (OULIPO)

Snowball

I am bad news while humans intrude
I do the rude blues snooze. arising

I go for love alone heaven singing
a he-man life, horse ridden battles

I to her shed tears, unused passion
a so-hot girl seers lonely fashion

I, in old rags prowl alley's backway
I am one, lost among living garbage

I at the gate, enter joyful nirvana
I as old soul, smile astride sunrays

The Comic

The  Comic

A casual nihilist
Hateful, glittering, mocking,
Cold, and in the end clueless.
Kid in the upstairs window
Waiting gleefully to pounce
On the misfortune of mishap
Life’s pratfalls validate him.
Waits for a hammer’s whack
Crushed thumbs; old ladies
Slipping on ice. Twins conjoined
At the hip, stuttering John’s
Staccato in the speech class.
A predator, imitating
Other’s pain with hops, hoots, howls.
His comedy a lynch mob
A late night television
Joker who makes old ladies
Dying in nursing homes pray
For darkness to descend, thank-
ful when last rites arrive with
Songs and prayers to attain
A glimmer of clarity
As the fading light recedes.

Creekside Trail

Creekside Trail

I do not feel outside
as I travel further and further
inside. Fly rod in hand, I feel
the rivers and the mountains
Are myself turned inside out.
An eerie solitude.
Heaven's kingdom is within
so say the prophets.
Serenity of the inner streams
flows freely and follows the
filtered beds of my thoughts
through permeable membranes
with Brownian motion.
The creekside trail curls back
through the fir, ends at a deep
swirling pool. my friendly fly
casts itself in silent shade .
I cast away my worldly cares.

Wild Turkey

Wild Turkey

I gaped, it gaped back
Surprised by the suddenness
I froze, it froze, two statues
Apprising what to do next
Among the green foliage
In the solitary forest.
We bared our teeth, showing
Faux ferocity (at least mine)
And backed slowly away,
Me to my truck, him to the depths
Of the black woods, fur flying.
The missus said as I approached,
“You’re white as a ghost, Fish not
Biting today"? I didn’t answer.
How does one explain that booze
And a hairy Big Foot don’t mix?

Autumn Circus

Autumn Circus

We shall reap whatever we have sown
When shaggy oaks shed leafy crowns
Nature dons her bridal gown
Autumn leaves turn brown
People smile and frown
As the circus
Blares fat clowns
Hoedown
Sounds

Sweet Hips

Sweet Hips

Machines
Body-by-Jake
stair-steppers, treadmills, bikes
feed the rows of flea market stalls
awaiting ballooned bargain hunters
harboring hallucinations
of bikini beachwear
hugging sweet hips
sculpted slim by
machines

The Old Men on the Bank (Reading)

Smoke

smokestacks
belching gases
of pungent yellow smoke
like chinese opium addicts
who puff poppies through bell-shaped bongs
mask the sun's healthy radiance
and block the panorama
of weeping eyes
squinting.

The Old Men on the Bank

The Old Men on the Bank

The quest is not in the catch.
They come to stand among trees
like firs in the old forest
footed by soft pine needles.
They come to hear the river
croon at the bright cresting moon.
They come to cast corkies; small
colored floats with barbed hooks
that imitate red salmon roe.
They come to fill the empty
spaces for dead fishing friends
feel the analgesic river
like morphine flowing through  veins.
Mostly they come because of
habit. A habit triggered
by the Springer’s spring cycle.

Before first light, pickup trucks
towing drift boats invade the
Rogue Elk Cafe, as fishers
refuel their coffee mugs’ and
grizzled veterans reunite.
Bankers, as they are branded
exchange their gifts of tall tales,
share prize fish-smoking recipes
renew the ritual of spring.
Some boast of former catches,
others silent, content to glimpse
at slivers of the dawn’s rays
and ponder the missing, like
fingers tracing names in the
morning’s obituary column.
The Springer season begins.

The bankers stake out prime spots
Along the river’s edges
Like gold miners hoarding veins,
protecting precious ore.
New faces fill the empty
spaces of the missing men.
Soon “fish on!” reverberates
from excited voices whose
taut lines tug at tired arms
As large fish shake, flip, and flop-
An old dance, deeply ingrained
Ancestral remnants; leftovers,
Orts of evolution that urge
return again and again
to the holy water where
the fish we seek come to die
like the old men on the bank.

Lips

Lips

Lush lips
white marshmallows
accent beautiful legs
like gentle swollen weeping clouds
rolling slowly across the sky’s blue tongue-
a young squaw's ecstatic rain dance
fans lusty fervor’s flame
puckers and pouts
lush lips

Easter 2006

Easter 2006

Today
the sun rises
like a golden bauble
over the Joshua's prickly arms
casting an eerie cruciform shadow
on awakening desert life
resurrecting memory
from the abyss
of hell.

Baghdad Morass

Baghdad Morass

Quaint words roll from trembling lips
Undertones murmur in darkness
Animal sounds penetrate the air
Growing suspicion gnaws the bone
Marrow like a ravaged canine
Instincts sniff the fouled water
Reeking with deceitful lies
Each day we sink further into the bog.

Combat Medic

Combat Medic

The field hospital, at the foot of the mosque
Where the wind howls, and the faithful chant noon
prayers, a comatose soldier is revived.

A pause, the heart ceases beating
Then starts, stops, starts again; awkward silent gaps
Wavering between life and death


Cool as he seems, the weight
Of his task a great burden, most of it vital:
My prayers envelop him.

But now it is he who pauses
As if the beating heart his own, his hands
Divine instruments of life-giving.

At night, hooded prisoners arrive and
Are processed; the wounded patched, bandaged,
Chained for interrogation.

The morning light, like an ambulance
Lights flashing and sirens blaring, brings new carnage.
A gasping soldier with a chest wound

On death’s doorstep, struggles to survive
My son plunges a tube through the thoracic wall,
Inflates the collapsing lung.

I think of the young boy terrified
At the sight of his own blood dripping from small cuts
When he fell off the teeter-totter

I remember the queasiness, the pale face
As he watched in horror as I extracted a treble hook
from his brother’s bloody cheek

I reflect on a boy who always disappeared
While I gutted and cleaned the day’s catch of salmon
Only to re-appear when the task was done.

These echoes, small wind chimes tinkling
In a gentle breeze, coalesce with boy and man.
A father must accept change.

For now it’s a matter of life or death,
Their fate in his hands, his fate in God’s hands.
Our boys and girls, the weariness of war forever changes.

Sheepshooter

Sheepshooter

He earned his sheepshooter’s badge
In the marines when he plinked
A farmer’s stray sheep lolling across
The target range at Camp Pendleton.

He never lived it down, and became
A Sheepherder on a ranch in Wyoming,
A sort of penance to assuage the guilt
And placate the souls of dead sheep.

On cold winter nights, he sits in his
Sheep shack, warming his hands over
The old pot belly stove, and sings
“We are poor little lambs who have

Lost our way, baa, baa, baa”, to the
Beetles tune “Yesterday”. Never wed,
He guards his flock with a 30/30
And lovingly eyes his favorite ewe!

The Fray

We Two

And in the stream, beneath the wild waterfall
Shoeless, she wades in icy current’s flow
And sways to music of the Mayfly’s ball
And the fish that dance with the cawing crow.
She forgets the tears, the struggle, the wound.
Down stream, he casts the line’s feathered fly
In concentric circles, swirls round and round
And only rising fish and the osprey’s cry
Relieve the sorrow of the morning’s fray,
A battlefield littered with broken dreams.
The water’s edge, a healing place to pray.
A respite from ripping apart the seams
Of love’s fabric. A chance to merge again,
Two hearts, two minds, two souls, two lives, amen.

Faux Contrition

Faux Contrition

Here I am another try at writing
Epistles of love; letters of chance, some notes
To spark a heavy heart, to cease cruel fighting
The lover’s load, tightening of the throats
Some coaxing, just some small words, pillow talk
Penned with thought, a valentine missive
A candied-breeze, flowing sweetly, a walk
Down Eros smooth path where divisive
Demons dare not tread and kill the dream
I’m trying to say I’m sorry, but I sound
Contrived, a phony with an ulterior scheme
I truly didn’t mean to cheat and fool around
With that no good girl whose lovely chest,
Comforts the head at rest, on her soft breast

Old Maytag Washing Machine

Old Maytag Washing Machine

Some sixty years ago beside the Maytag
Roller- washing machine, I watched my
Mother screaming and sobbing at the news
That Laura, a distant aunt had died.

I knew something grave had happened and
Mother’s carrying on scared me speechless
Even though no one in the family had
Seen nor heard from Laura in forty years

This first taste of death at the age of five
Shook me like trembling glass rattling in
A cyclone. A mother’s influence lasts for
A very long time. In my case, six decades

Have passed and I still ponder her reaction.
Since then many have come and gone-
Grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins.
With each passing, I still see that ancient
Maytag’s rollers spin to my mother’s cries.

My Confession

My Confession

I
Confess
My
Verses
Do not oft
Reveal
Deep
Private
Suffering
Or broken heart,
Twisted life,
Fetish
Or
Dark deed.
They simply
Express
Love;
Words un-
Said.

Wives Alone

Wives Alone

War
Wives sit
Waiting with
Worried faces
For warrior husbands
To return from battle-
Fields, to resume once again
The spouse’s space, the parent’s face
The friend, the lover, the confidant,
The lawn mower, the barbeque cooker.

Wild Things

Wild things

When
soft waves
curl
in sync
the music
riles
wild
angels
on Harleys
riding along
the seahore
hunting
girls
gone wild
bikini
clad things
babes
seeking
sex

Autumn Circus

Autumn Circus

Sounds
Of clowns
Upside down
Throughout the town
Make us smile and frown
As autumn leaves turn brown
Nature dons her bridal gown
While sagging oaks shed leafy crowns
Soon we shall reap whatever we have sown

Marathoner

Marathoner

The folks celebrate his homecoming from
The brutal war with a parade
And speeches in his honor
A silent, sad soldier
The Hometown hero
A Football star
Without legs.
Shoulders
Sag

Tears
Trickle
Lips quiver
Memory fragments
Chunks of a childhood
And sweet river summers
Filled with youthful desire.
Seasoned warrior at twenty-one
His Boston Marathon days are done.

Items Found In the Salvation Army Thrift Shop

Items Found In the Salvation Army Thrift Shop

Perusing musty isles in the thrift shop
Fragments of strange histories appear
Unwanted items, each with a tale,
A message wrapped in time

Silicon breast implants, a coffin, a stuffed
Eagle, a jar of bull sperm, a fishing boat
An urn full of ashes; all price-tagged
Wait on shelves for treasure hunters

The most bizarre find, a life detector
For coffins carries a sign “For persons
Under doubt of being in a trance”. It
Looks like a giant ear trumpet.

Strewn artifacts, like dead souls hint
At eclectic proclivities long abandoned.
Vultures pick over the discarded carrion,
Left for dead along life’s roadside.
Smugly smiling, I load the back of the
Station wagon with my new didgeridoo
And stuffed porcupine.

Scandals

Scandals

A scandal makes a good story
As when the minister runs off
With the Sunday school teacher,
Or the homeland security official
Is entrapped in a chat room stirring
Little girl’s libidos with sex talk.

A scandal, like a horrific car wreck
Breathes a sigh of relief from those
Uninvolved bystanders, thankful that
The spotlight shines elsewhere, and
For now at least they are safe from
The scrutinous eye in the sky.

A good scandal cleanses and heals,
Adds color to otherwise drab lives.
Turns ordinary eggs into Faberge
Masterpieces. We revel when the
Sleezy are captured, the wealthy
Have tumbled, and the mighty have
Fallen. Like peacocks we strut and
Tell our children how good we are,
How bad they are. Scandals make
Good stories.

Dreams

Dreams

He dreams to wake, and knows his dreams are real
He senses truth in what he cannot face
He survives by knowing what he has to feel

We learn by sensing. Are lion’s hearts made of steel?
He feels the heart pounding from place to place
He dreams to wake and knows his dreams are real

At night ancestral voices call from mists surreal.
Wake up, Wake up! His pulse begins to race
He lives by knowing what he has to feel

Afraid to face what morning light must reveal
A dark secret that illumines his disgrace
He dreams to wake, and knows his dreams are real

Exposed, a guilty conscience cannot conceal
Furtive sins, like smoke without a trace
One lives by knowing what one has to feel

This dreaming keeps us safe, a mind’s seal.
What hides away is near. A covert embrace
We dream to wake, and know our dreams are real
We survive by knowing what we have to feel

Sometimes

Sometimes

Sometimes we win the lottery.
Sometimes the girl or man of our dreams
Walks through the door, kisses us
On the lips, turns fantasies to realities.
Sometimes our foolish ventures work out
And don’t float up like shit in
A percolation pond to stink up our lives.
Sometimes, just sometimes, life is good. No
Headaches, no nosy neighbors or howling dogs
Or broken windshields or bill collectors or
Visiting relatives from hell. Sometimes
Things make sense, and we have it all
Figured out and revel in the clarity
Of the light that shines through our being.
Sometimes it’s good to be alive.
Today is such a day.

Keith's Weird 5-liners

Messing around with a five-line form today, here's what they look like:

Girl
Naked and lovely
Shifting restlessly
Like a sand pebble
If only your beach was empty

Child
Gaunt and hungry
Sobbing tearfully
Like raining bombs
If only his mother had lived

Dreams
Warm and moist
Soothing gently
Like a mother’s love
If only they were wombs

Boot Hill
Silent and ghostly
Breathing eerily
As on a respirator
If only dead cowboys could talk

Old People
Sad and lonely
Hobbling painfully
Like crippled horses
If they only had more time

Lost Brother

Lost Brother

You never get enough, always half full
Or is it half empty, your insatiable thirst
Your dissatisfaction, a dog gnawing a
Meatless bone, sucking the last ort of
Marrow as if life itself was at stake.

Shunned by friends and family, who eons
Ago gave you up for Lent, you seek to renew
Your lust with strangers of like ilk. You can
Always find your reflection in the faces walking
Down the street. Faces with your discontent,

Your emptiness, seeking to fill a void. The scowls,
The hungry stares, the head swiveling from side
Side like a leery cat seeking its next meal.
Mannerisms that shout warnings to the wary.
Symptomatic, your infidelities, your lies reveal
The depth of your needs.

For years you’ve shunned rituals of other’s
Passages; birthdays, graduations, weddings, funerals
And you’ve followed your own selfish path.
You return old and alone, and tell me how
Sad you are. No one seems to have time for you.
Brother, you will never get enough.