Chandra Madash (The holy man) Prays
Ganges
My mother
Polluted
Filthy
Woman
Your water
Flows in my veins.
Raw sewage
Seeping through
The core of my
Spirit.
Your timeless
Ablutions
Wash away
The sullied
Sins on my soul.
Your gentle tears
Irrigate my sorrow,
Though dirty
I love you. You are
My mother.
One Good Eye
There is an old man at the poker table
with a wrinkled face and a glass eye.
His hands clutch a pair of pocket aces
One is red, one is black.
His face shows no outward tells.
He bets at the pot with a sleepy face,
but his heart races with a sense of danger.
He means to live on the edge until the end.
Another Wonder of the World
Something exists that doesn’t adore socks
That makes them disappear without a trace
And hides their woolen partners in the night;
And leaves a cohort, upon the icy floor.
The work of thieves is something else:
It can be explained by simple greediness
Why they have stolen things, the this and that
Of ordinary possessions acquired,
To feed their starving brood. The sock I mean,
No one has seen it leave, or heard it leave,
But at week’s laundry time-we find it gone.
Vanished, a UFO without the slightest hint.
Perhaps the answer, never clear, lies deep
Within mysterious air like
Aliens, astrophysics or aardvarks.
Moving Beyond the Margins
Lifting the latch,
moving beyond the margins
of one’s own doors
unfolds a greater paradise-
a river, a place of many voices,
travelers drifting along
in the crests and falls of waves.
None is timeless, all historical.
Everything in the end passes.
We desire to be liked, contemporary.
My words are nothing new. Creation-
an imitation of what already exists,
already admired. To be contemporary
is to rise through the scab of the past,
like fire in the mountain, deepest heat
born to carry a new idea
into the rarified air.
What I’m Trying to Do at
Show the darkness of honeybees,
the brightness of black holes
and light fires for the cold
where the graying ash that gasps its
last breath upon the fire grate and
the graying ember that hears its sizzle,
re-kindles and shines its light into
the dark corners of obscure night.
To release the laughing grass
and boisterous clouds and bury
the dead in living shrouds.
I try, try, and try to hear the shoe
in the closet licking its wounds.
Ms. June’s Daydreams
Shy and bookish
Stacking books
Like cords of firewood
On dusty bookshelves
A girl scout once
Brave and loyal
Selling cookies
Like tokens of love
If only he’d light her fire!
Coup d’ Oeil
a cricket chirped
On the baseboard
right under
my sleepy pillow
and a song
of Pinocchio
entered my dream
Great Falls Elementary schools
At Emerson all the children have
Transparent Eyeballs
At
and gray; December days are brief
At
perfect Junes with golden spurs
At Longfellow They sing of Hiawatha
with simple and fresh hearts
In
school bus with poetic winter spirits
to bardic-named schools, appellations
carved in granite like tombstones.
Caught in the Act
The deer smell me.
They twitch their button noses
into the gentle breeze
of night air. They sense
probable danger. I am
encroaching on sacred ground.
The thoughts in my mind
are to lie still under the canopy
and position the scope of my rifle-
to catch something by being quiet
a little while, but with a sharp
eye of focused attention.
But the deer hoist their white tails and slip
away silent as the night.
And I must leave now-
they've recognized me for what I am-
No lover,
No friend bearing gifts.
Night on the River
At the Rogue’s edge
the moon falling
bumps its yellow nose
on the cattails
and brown frogs
spew melodious echoes into
the deep pools
beneath the ripples.
A blue crane is perched
like a blue cloud---
or a mood of remoteness
in the grasp of some odd power
while all around me the red salmon
are splashing upstream again
from the bubbling beds
of black gravel.
In a while, I’ll think about
what I’ve observed---
what it could mean---
what poetic thoughts I might
write about it, and so I think
I will go sit before my keyboard ---
I shall rest in my thoughts ---
I will reflect
into the vast nightfall
in which I am swimming now,
like a silver fish,
so easily,
so gracefully,
I am almost the salmon ---
almost the crane fading over the river
on black clouds of night.
In Praise of Ms. Moore
Their voices sound
like replicating memes-
dissonant as barnyard
roosters competing for crumbs
of stale bread, envious of free
pheasants foraging in fertile fields
beyond the fences.
Better to be a chicken
with ones head
cut off than to be
derivative, unintelligible.
Autumn Pastoral
Lowing Angus in the valley
Lend excitement to the fall;
The brilliant colors of autumn leaves
Flood the black pasture.
Within a portrait such as this
I still feel your soft thighs.
Rousing
Without eyes, the forest is dark
Without voice, the lake is silent
Without love, my heart is stone
Without that spark, my life is bleak
What compelling power in the stars
ignites us before we wake up?
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;…Shakespeare
Henry V
It Ain’t Over Til it’s Over Baby!
On the flattop’s deck
Bowing his neck, George
Said “Heck, it’s over!”
As helicopters hover like
bees in clover overhead.
Declares victory, “They’re dead”
The terrorist dread done
The task won. Wars
are fun. Silly grin
upon his chin amid
the din of cheers,
mugs of beers and
loyal seers shouting praise,
hallelujah-hands raise high,
a maze of American pie
as mothers sigh relief
and cry with joy,
while hoi-polloi-common
men enjoy the win,
the smug sin of pride-
the thin red line
grapevine of cold, lucid
premium wine from dross
Like a true boss
No loss of flavor
But to savor inexcusable
Horrific behavior while dead
Strewn about, lead coffins
On beds of sand
honor a band of
brother's dance to a real end.
Abreaction
They went too fast that fateful day
The car sped over clay and rocks
I saw her pray beneath the wreck
and pick glass from his neck. Sliver
shards , bloody specs like ladybugs
mixed with tears and hugs spackled
the tire’s lugs. Beneath the crush
a soft moaning, a flush of air, and then
the siren’s rush above the spill
the penetrating chill of fear,
certain thrill from death’s allure-
a gruesome guided tour of circumstance
like some poor pilgrim’s first sighting
of a scalping, bone-biting fear,
transparent lighting that reveals
oneself in dark that heals panic
against turning wheels of self-doubt,
glad when able to shout, It’s
not me!. It’s about the living-
alive, among the dead and dying.
The Resident Dissident
His words become cliché
with each day, promises
shaded gray like clouds-
obscure shrouds blurting
out loud –false alarms
voodoo-like charms, curses
of harms way. Content,
a politician’s bent, his
time spent spinning tales
and covering trails avoiding
strong gales. We present
The President- the resident
dissident of the house
that Thomas Jefferson built.
Emptiness
Heartsick
wrenching pain
tightens
its vise grip
lovingly
around
the dying
soldier’s
final sip
of fresh air.
Frozen
the hard ground
resists
the gravedigger’s
cold shovel.
A void
replaces
the heart
once filled
by the dawn
Granny's Advice
By the side of my bed,
an antique old bible,
a gift from my granny,
long dead and buried.
I held it to my heart
and could almost hear her words
pulsing through my veins.
Remember, something told me,
remember, and keep reading.
Bird Song
The leaves shimmered like diamonds,
each with elegant ice crystals
woven into their branches,
as the wren skated around the forest
searching for seeds, singing hello
to winter in high soprano.
