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 [...]

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 [...]

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! [...]

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 found [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Simple Things

so we’re not seeing eye to eye I think I’ll go splash around in the tide. you are so beautiful when you’re upset, it always comes to me as a surprise. I’ll watch your face turn red and green and I will listen to what you’re screaming and when you’re done crying and bitching, I’ll [...]

The Beauty of Destruction

The winds of last night have blown the limbs from trees, torn the leaves from branches, and scattered them on the sidewalks like dull confetti and still streamers. The beauty is in the destruction; the tree trimming of clouds breath, shaking every blade of grass, stripping the dew away like pearls silently falling from a [...]

Japanese Poem Imitations

I when flowers bloom in many fiery colors, I imagine the bright sparkles which I, in your eyes, no longer see. II bamboo grows along one part of the lagoon beach where the iceplant twines below it, a dress around the feet of a girl. III at the end of this I recollect the times [...]

The Skeletal Tree

there is a tree at home in the Wooded Area, a community so old that it has no sidewalks, no curbs, and many trees. there is one tree on the corner of Dupont and Silvergate Streets that is hollow underneath its splayed boughs. it is an upside down cup or a limp starfish but sometimes [...]

Searching Still 4 Childhood

a boy with a stick thinks it’s a fishing pole and can catch fish in a puddle. this same boy wields that stick as a keen cutlass fighting his monsters. in childhood, a boy finds a swing as a jet plane, a few trees as a forest, a soccer ball as a championship game, a [...]

MudBong

a seed flexes beneath the soil muddied by the tramp of the feet of the armies of the drops of the rain falling and soaking, slipping through the canopies of trees melting the carpeting of leaves drifted, a patchwork quilt, to molder.

An Imaginary Forest

in the yard of my childhood stand trees that are no longer there, they made way for a deck and some stairs. these trees are ghosts of the wood that supported the planks high up in the air, where Mom would be scared for me, as well she should have been. I imagined tanks and [...]

A Hole in the Sky

I thought I saw a star fall In Sherwood Forest. I wonder what it means About our world. I swear I saw a flame walk Through this grove of trees, Stepping from curl to curl Of the bark on the forest floor. I cannot grasp what my mind Is saying; not yet, Speaking from the [...]

Thee Memorable Ocean of Dream-Boy

steve said C-R-Y [in hidden eyes] thee, tears may arrive. striped little boy I envy your dress AND your innocence. (shrieking) PAINTING, blowing multicolored bubbles through your paintbrush… I Re-Collect we begged lightning with fish from the solstice [once upon a time] when batteries ceased to function drums only drums and howling, croaking, baying; Fucking [...]

Little Things

I think I shall take refuge in my little dreams of apes and frogs little dreams of big-eyed fish, shedding tears never seen underwater. little dreams of stands of trees who whisper together to protect me. little dreams of pools of color that geyser happily when I come to visit. little dreams of stars that [...]

In Sherwood Forest, Santa Cruz Island

I half-awoke, standing in a forest bark peeling in long curling strips from the shivering trees, mist hanging like moss in the higher branches leaves layered thick under the soles of my feet, and I just listened to the dripping of water falling like bullets from the sky.

I Take Time to Tell You

I saw the moon come From behind a cloudbank. It took time to see this; I take time to tell you. My pipe glows cherry-red Deep inside; smoke drifts apart. I watch it fall away, Clasping this time to me. Faces twist in the veils of smoke From the cauldron of my pipe Melting to [...]

Frog Haven

I the splayed hands of the roots stop searching when I walk past, but if I listen I hear them quiver with life blood, holding boulders when I climb down. unwrapping and fanning the wind into life are trees with green springtime leaves. they swept me along like sand in an undertow. I scramble and [...]

Untitled Poem #-17

light is spilling through the clouds, and the whippoorwill wind is getting louder; a storm is coming. I can see the line of rainfall blurring the trees across the way. the dark is rising, and my shoes are untied.

Midion

mud from the river-bottom sieves through my heart and dries brown tile upon the sunny corridors of hope. shaken by the fist of my own excitement I feel my lungs fill with salt left by the cataracts of beautiful plants breathing. to hold all of you for one moment would be to watch it crumble [...]