20-20

I.
There was a woman
Who I loved with all my heart.
It’s the only way
I know how
to love.
The problem I have
With falling in love
Is that I just keep falling
And falling on through.
It’s a perpetual autumn;
Storming leaves of memories,
Possibilities,
Skeletal trees.
And turning my collar up
Against the cold of this world.
Holding my hands out
To the warmth of the fire
That we [...]

Crown of Twelve Trees

Returning from the western desert oasis,
I have found the autumn fading
Gone into the palest blue sky of grey vapors.
I smell far off snow on this blustering wind
Spraying the later leaves from the hardwood branches.
Twelve trees are a protective crown around my cabin;
She’s enchanted to see me back again.
Fill the heart with hot soaking embers
And sign [...]

Target

Look around you
at the wrecked shelves,
the damaged or opened merchandise,
the floors littered with tags,
sale shelves half-empty
with slower-selling items or
taped up single boxes
priced as marked.
See the hanging advertisements,
the red and yellow eye-catchers,
the signs leading to popular departments:
Toys, Electronics, Sports;
Christmas Trees in our Garden Section!
Follow the heavy traffic lanes
by the shopping cart wheel skids,
the grease marks from [...]

For Your Majesty

I
I can imagine a perfect spot
to have a picnic with you today;
the sky is a wee bit grey
at the edges –
I caught as many clouds as I could
with my butterfly net
(I came in wet
early this morning from the rain-dew
on the unmown grass stems).
II
I’ve [...]

Humbled in an Easy Chair

Tonight the old feelings
come back;
the old feelings
of enemies — long ago
when humankind believed
and could see their mistakes
unclothed as Demons.
They crouch in tree foliage
and prowl like cats
or gargoyles on the roof;
they know they work through dreams
and they know we have forgotten
our humble beginnings
in the depth of an easy chair.
They come to crack skulls open
and to tinker [...]

A Private Poem for Me

Sometimes it’s hard to find myself,
camouflaged and hunting fears by
hiding underneath the lilypads.
Like fear is going to to assassinate the Froggacuda?
But the memory is that if that is what it is:
a feeling lost and sunk in the swamp it was born in;
a beautiful first and last of its kind,
bred from books and desires and pirate [...]

Lincoln Logs

One blank piece of paper,
ruined by the Poet,
using whole trees to push my craft
on you like your first heroin fix,
or that coffee you can’t do without.
whole trees; I throw them at you
like lincoln logs or tinker toys
from an irritated baby.
eat them.

No Trees

he started to dream less
of landscapes
and found himself
a city that was tall
and bleak with
ordered rows of houses
and buildings to support
the orangish skies
of perpetual twilight,
one with distant violence
that would echo through
the straight streets,
cries of hope being lost
in a concrete strangulation.

Musings in the Night Aire

perching like a poet -
I found a table and a bench
tucked away on a second story walkway
of the Arts building
just for me.
a yellow magnesium light
shines down on this paper
turning letters into dancing figures
that say something important to me
so I can pretend I am a poet.
a walk in the dark
took me silent and alone
wandering eccentric between [...]

The Memory Tree

I don’t have very many pictures of my life;
no cute heart frames around me and my brother,
no portraits capturing me with any of my friends
so I can reminisce about them.
nothing but my memory is left
of the times I’ve spent with some of them
whom I remember but have no proof
that I knew them at all
except for [...]