#107: August 8, 2006

When little Mike was only four years old
he leapt from the rooftop, trying to fly;
and for a while hung cloud-like in the sky
(impossible, but he'd never been told)--

His parents saw him floating near the roof
and shouted, terrified, "It can't be done!"
Poor Mike believed them (he was a good son)
and crashed down like a stone, as though in proof.

We're taught this from a very early age
by well-meaning adults, who clip our wings;
who mistake fear for safety, words for things;
who cannot see the outside of the cage--

Who've forgotten what children always know:
the trick to flying is the letting go.

#106: August 7, 2006

When someone said the autumn moon was full
I crouched and curled my fingers into claws.
My body itched with hair; I stretched my jaws,
a sudden fang-sprung trap. I felt the pull
of tides in veins and rode the shift in phase
into animal realms. The smell of blood
spoke to me in a tongue I understood.
I traded clumsy steps for lupine grace.
And if I'd met an old man or a child
I would have ripped out trachea and bayed
my blasphemy into God's silver eye!
But then I looked and saw it was a lie--
I shrank and slunk away, no longer wild,
beneath a new-moon sky where few stars played.

#105: August 6, 2006

The well is dry, its walls not even moist;
no pebbles to suck, no underground lake
to dig to. If you've got a thirst to slake,
look elsewhere, stranger. Once we had rejoiced
in flowing water, danced on singing stones
that rang with our footsteps like bells of glass.
The stream writhed with salmon, with trout and bass
enough for all. There--you can see the bones
cast in the dust like runes. Now our lips crack
and we read in that charnel earth a curse,
as if the very world had died of thirst
and we, the vermin living on its back
were doomed as well--unless a savior rain
redeem us, bring our host to life again.

#104: August 5, 2006

The shadows in the corner of the room
are whispering tonight. The cold hearth flames
turn walls to water; from that fog-thick gloom
the dead advance and rise, calling their names.

The old inn, empty as cicadas' molt
but for this tired old man, cannot be said
to breathe as some homes do. Behind the bolt
it is, like most its custom, cold and dead.

All through the night the phantoms tell of want
left from their castoff lives, but never lost.
There's nothing to disturb me in such moan.
For if I'm haunted here, I also haunt:
a live man in a dead world is a ghost,
and no one in the graveyard is alone.

#103: August 4, 2006

I don't know where it goes when I don't watch it;
It's tricky and nervous, easy to scare.
Though I strike like a rattler, I can't catch it;
I jump and turn around--it's always there.

I've tried windows, but it's too smart for that trick;
I end up looking like a Peeping Tom.
I've tried the old mirror-stuffed-in-my-hat trick;
It winks and blows me kisses, like my mom.

But still I'm sure the moment my back's to it,
Away it flies on some fantastic trip;
I just can't seem to catch the bugger do it!
But I keep waiting for that fatal slip--

One day I'll catch it, and that will remind me
What pleasure to find empty air behind me.

#102: August 3, 2006

Old Man McReady came out once a day
to check his mail. We kids would watch and wait
to snicker at his robe of gold lamé
and his three wire-black hairs greased to his pate.

Sometimes we called him names--Nancy, Old Queer
--though we had little notion what they meant.
But we saw the man's pained eyes, his quiet fear
as he shut the dark door. Then off we went.

We were young then, stupid and careless cruel
as only children can be. As I grew
I learned about compassion, guilt, and shame.
Too late for Theodore--that was his name.
He wound up at the bottom of his pool
and dead ten days before anyone knew.

#101: August 2, 2006

The king walked the old roads, until he found
the flowered path he'd followed long ago
to his fortune and kingdom. His step was slow,
his visage grave as he looked back. The sound
of songbirds made a heaven of the wood,
and petals carpeting his homeward path
perfumed his very breath, sweeter by half
than other airs on earth. He understood
how lucky as a young man he had chanced
upon the path he chose, how easily
he might have been waylaid or lost instead.
The sunlight rained through budding leaf and danced
on streams that babbled softly through the trees.

"I never should have come this way," he said.

#100: August 1, 2006

A hundred sonnets? Jesus Jumping Christ!
Can you believe that shit? I know I can't--
You'd think that half as many had sufficed
To purge my compulsive poetic rant;

And yet I barrel on, out of control,
Pounding iambic observations home,
Torturing rhyme and stripping bare my soul,
For what? Some kind of OCD syndrome?

They can't all be gems, and alas, they're not--
Quantity over quality, I fear.
But if I reach for stars and miss--so what?
You try a sonnet a day for a year!

No, failure in a grand attempt's no sin;
Even blind hogs root acorns now and then.

#99: July 31, 2006

Maybe, just maybe, plans don't have to fail
because they're hatched by me. Perhaps no curse
sits on my efforts, and I might prevail
the next time, or the next, bad come to worse.

Maybe, despite the way it often feels
I'm no more unlucky than the next guy.
Perhaps the law of averages reveals
only mathmatics behind each failed try.

It's easy to believe your shadowed dreams
are poisoned by mean-spirted deity;
some sin that no perseverance redeems
stifles luck, murders serendipity--

A shame to leave a door closed in despair,
and never know Success was waiting there.

#98: July 30, 2006

Once, long ago, before the mighty shift
That split the continents and disarrayed
The seas, on two sides of a growing rift
Two furry creatures, Okk and Enok, played.

Okk was the smartest of the furry clan
And spent his days devising crude machines;
Enok was dumb as rocks (or dumber than)
And carried all the stupid, violent genes.

Poor Enok neared starvation, till the day
The earth opened and swallowed brainy Okk.
And so the dumber ape across the way
Multiplied, once he got over the shock.

Oh, Chuck--the fittest don't always survive,
Leaving the dumb but fortunate to thrive.

#97: July 29, 2006

Don't move too fast. Remember Damocles,
dining calmly while twisting overhead
a heavy sword suspended by a thread
threatened his instant death. Such times as these
require deliberate movements and slow speech.
The time for bluster and noise is long past.
Learn to slow down, my friend, and learn it fast,
or else learn what that keen blade has to teach.

Perhaps there's not long left before the snap
and flash, the last descent of screaming steel
and final darkness. Still, no need to rush
to fling ourselves into that waiting trap.
It's time we learnt to think before we feel.
You can look up now. Consider things. Hush.

#96: July 28, 2006

I want to stick my fingers in the dirt
as deep as they'll go, drive my knucklebones
through earthworm paths until hard pack and stones
stop me. I want to smear mud on my shirt
and tear it, turn my nails to crescent moons
gritty and black; inhale the rotting leaves
and humus; shuffle out of dirty sleeves
and ring my eyes with earth, like a raccoon's.
I want to be a savage of the soil,
to roll in compost, return to the ground
a lover and supplicant--worship loam
and dance until, exhausted from the toil,
I topple like a tree. Only the sound
of rain will find me there, safe at last, home.

#95: July 27, 2006

He kissed a cigarette and tapped the ash
into the sound hole of his old guitar.
The streetlight down the block shone like a star,
but we were dark. I threw a little cash
into his case, and at the tinkling sound
the old man blew a cloud of ghostlike smoke
that swallowed our heads. I began to choke,
but my companion just looked at the ground,
stomped slow, then faster, like a wind-up toy
reversed, speeding the tempo with his feet
until he seemed to shake that lonely street
and filled my mind with strange, expectant joy--

He played, and that old flat-top laughed and cried
and smoked like it was burning deep inside.

#94: July 26, 2006

Eli's become the most annoying cat,
Constant yowling, twenty-four hours a day;
And while Alexei's dumb as well as fat,
At least he doesn't carry on that way!

He hasn't always been like this, you know.
We've had him now for nearly thirteen years.
There was a time when he would scarcely show
Himself, and his meow never reached our ears.

But now he howls and screeches night and day,
For food, stroking, desire to be let out.
Is it hunger, old age, mental decay?
Loneliness? Fear of death? What's it about?

Perhaps he knows he won't be with us long
And hopes to be remembered by his song.

#93: July 25, 2006

I'm thinking about you again, you fuck.
I'd hoped you'd fallen out of sight and mind,
Become, once so malignant, more benign;
Forgot, if not forgiven--no such luck.

An old wound reopened and iodined
Has two stings: one remembered and one new.
Part of me wishes I could pardon you,
Turn a blind eye--turns out I'm not that kind.

I'm not over it yet. I'm not resigned
To suffer and move on; I'd rather chew
Betrayal and spit venom. None can suck
The poison that still renders me half-blind.
Oh, damn your eyes! My fingers itch to pluck
And crush them both like grapes--just one won't do.

#92: July 24, 2006

"Here's something neat: just hold in in your hand--
you see, it's not too heavy, nicely orbed
and spongy, so your palm sweat is absorbed.
The thing just drinks it dry--you understand?

"Now, hold it up and turn it, very slow,
and in a moment you'll--did you see that?
There, underneath...look, before it goes flat!
That odd protrusion pushing out below...

"There, now it's gone. Don't ask me what it was.
I bought the thing last week in Chinatown.
Get this: the man called it a Devil's Egg.
Strange--then last night I thought I heard it buzz
like a hornet's nest, and dreamed a scaly leg...
Hmm? No, man, just a dream. There, put it down."

#91: July 23, 2006

I'm smaller now than I was yesterday,
When I was smaller than the day before.
I'm worried that if things go on this way
Pretty soon you won't see me anymore.

Day after day I just continue shrinking.
I have to pull myself up on the chair;
I barely reach the doorknob, and I'm thinking
This time next week I simply won't be there.

If you come looking and can't find me, just
Stand very still and whisper out my name;
Check every blade of grass, each speck of dust,
And if I'm gone, I'll thank you all the same--

For as I fall through subatomic space,
Blinking neutrinos will sketch out your face .

#90: July 22, 2006

It's easy to forget how to be moved--
to let Mozart float past as if the air
was empty; as if your unemotion proved
something (you look so cool when you don't care);

You get trained to ignore beautiful things:
paintings--the riot of Van Gogh's night sky,
Monet's serenity, and the bright wings
of stained glass angels, never wondering why;

But every now and then (one hopes) you fall
into a place of shocking loveliness
and it shivers you awake, a clarion call
to daily beauties unseen and unguessed--

Then, for a while, you dance in sound and light,
a lame blind man restored, and given sight.

#89: July 21, 2006

There might be mermaids swimming in the seas
And singing songs to lure the sailors in;
Serpents and giant squids too, if you please,
In those black depths were no light's ever been.

There could be Bigfoots in the northern woods,
Living in caves, eating berries and nuts;
And Yetis, muching whatever their food's,
With thick fur to warm up their frozen butts.

A Loch Ness Monster hid for years? Why not?
Dragon or unicorn? I won't say no.
Although my friends think I've gone off my dot
And that I'll change my mind as up I grow--

I just don't think, because I've never seen one,
That necessarily means there's never been one.

#88: July 20, 2006

Sunset--the dying star had just gone pink
and thrown a fiery halo around clouds
purpled like bruises. Gray light like a shroud
edged our drunk eyes. The sun began to sink,
half-circle on the flat line of the day's
last breath, then sectioned to an arc it stood,
bright as a knife blade in a pool of blood.
The sky turned crimson in diminishing rays.
Suddenly the entire world went red--
my hands, your eyes, the bottle at our feet.
I could have done a murder in that light.
Then finally the sun vanished, and night
descended on us like a sheet of lead.
One breath, and then the darkness was complete.

#87: July 19, 2006

"Sure, Jerry was a ass. But that don't mean
he deserved what he got. There's plenty folks
what take it too far when it comes to jokes,
and Jerry wasn't near the worst I seen.

"But still, he shoulda knowed ol' Ox McPhee
was not the man to make look like a fool.
Remember Ross, that prankster from high school?
There's a reason he limps now, 'tween you and me.

"Yes, I was here that night, and I saw Ox
grinnin' like a grim skull, beer down his face,
and Jerry laughin' while that brew fair steamed.
That poor sumbitch. I bet he never dreamed
he'd end up under twenty ton of rocks
down at the quarry. McPhee's dad owns the place."

#86: July 18, 2006

It's sweat and spit and that ripe carnal stink
that wafts up from between our shaking thighs,
blood rushing to the face, the throat, the eyes,
and also there--the pulse won't let us think
of consequence, just heat, the hot slick skin
and flesh, throbbing and parting with a cry,
heels hooked behind my calves, and I could die
in that wet heart of you--you pull me in
and we are sliding, pulsing, driving deep,
my hand over your eyes, your open lips,
and tongues of fire along your neck and breast,
your nails striping my back, teeth at my chest--
all friction and motion, sunk in your hips,
moments from ecstasy, and hours from sleep.

#85: July 17, 2006

Jared Williams loved animals. Each night,
before he went to bed, he'd set a dish
of food out for his cats, feed all his fish,
and stroke old Rex. Then he'd turn out the light.

And every morning Jared woke at nine,
again stroked Rex, fished out his poisoned friends
and flushed them, before searching end-to-end
his property for newly-dead felines.

This will seem strange, until you understand
above all animals, Jared loved Rex,
whose bloated body still lay on the floor.
And loss sometimes twists love from something grand
to something dead, which no balm resurrects.
Daily Jared visits the pet shop for more.

#84: July 16, 2006

I'd never before held a blue-tongued skink
Till last summer at the new petting zoo.
No one told me how much the thing could stink,
Nor, if it should start pissing, what to do.

So I stood still a moment, paralyzed,
With warm lizard piss dribbling down my wrist,
While the zookeeper, not at all surprised,
Just smirked at me. I was, in a word, pissed.

And then this rank reptile--I swear to God!
Clucked its blue-tongue and sighed, "Ain't that the way?"
His keeper didn't seem to think this odd...
And so I left, with nothing more to say.

I never darkened that zoo's door again;
But I still have the nightmares--and the stain.

#83: July 15, 2006

Eleven years ago the sky was clear
and brutal blue--the yellow fireball sun
melted groomsmen, made bridesmaids' makeup run.
I, sunstroked, watched for my bride to appear.
Even the Baptist preacher sweated more
than normal, staining his button-strained suit.
We'd thought a garden wedding would be cute,
little dreaming the summer hell in store.

But then the music played, and I looked up,
and down she came, with petals in her train
like snowflakes, the garden blooming all around--
My love, delicate as any buttercup,
breathed toward me like a cooling autumn rain,
and I drank in her beauty like the ground.

#82: July 14, 2006

Who had this room before? Last night, let's say--
young lovers, having told their parents lies
to steal off on a secret getaway,
covered by pseudonyms and alibis

And sheets smelling of bleach? And was the sun
blocked by vinyl-lined curtains thick with dust?
Was that star spanked and spurred and made to run,
racing the fire-fueled engine of their lust?

Or did the soap-streaked bathroom mirror see
a pair of children jumping on the beds,
their folks exasperated, old as we,
gray hairs comically windswept on their heads--

Negotiating quiet for ice cream,
and hoping like all hell the sheets are clean?

#81: July 13, 2006

If God were not watching for our mistakes,
And Jesus could care less where mortals find
Their pleasures, and the Holy Ghost don't mind
Your stealing and your lies (just no big shakes)--

If Kharma's wheel don't roll around to crush
The wicked man for his carnal misdeeds,
And good folk aren't rewarded, nor their needs
met, neither here nor in life's afterblush--

How would things change for you? How would you live
With no assured justice, no holy writ
To guide your footsteps? What if this is it?
Would you stop being kind, or cease to give?

Would it be the end of guilt and of regret,
If what you see is really all you get?

#80: July 12, 2006

I was swimming in water so warm and brown,
clouded by the strong sweep of my gray tail,
snapping up morsels at will, when a pale
swift silver streak drew my attention down.

I struck, then pain I'd never felt before
jerked my head up, sunk its fang in my cheek
and pulled--I fought it till I was too weak;
spent, I let the fiend drag me toward the shore.

And then, such light! It dazzled, struck me blind--
unfiltered clarity I'd never seen:
the patched-white blue sky, grass so violent green
that for one sweet moment I couldn't breathe.
Rough fingers in my mouth, I didn't mind...
then one sharp pain, splash, and my dull reprieve.

#79: July 11, 2006

Fact is, everyone's haunted; not a face
that passes in the street but has its ghosts.
Spirits are not confined by time nor space--
only by us, their living, breathing hosts.

They take up residence behind our eyes,
project themselves on every empty wall.
They love to jump and catch us by surprise
with half-forgotten tragedies recalled.

They nestle in our guilt, feed on our shame,
and hide in phrases better left unsaid;
They chill us with a look, kill with a name,
and leave us shaking, wakeful in our beds--

These spirits who still roam where they should not,
Who don't forgive, and will not be forgot.

#78: July 10, 2006

I've never found a hippo in my bed,
Nor giraffes hiding beneath my basement stairs;
And when I go to clean the storage shed,
I've not surprised a penguin hiding there.

I've yet to discover a nest of writhing snakes
In my grandma's old leather steamer trunk;
Not even a lion, for goodness sakes,
In the attic--just piles of dusty junk.

Coyotes in the pantry there are none,
And iguanas are also something scarce;
Piranhas in the toilet? Not a one;
And dust bunnies, not tigers, under chairs.

I don't think I can stay another minute
In a boring house like this with nothing in it!

#77: July 9, 2006

All this will soon pass into memory
My love, and whatever small price we pay
For a moment's fleeting pleasure, who will stay
To accuse us of this petty thievery
Of time? For it's from Time that we must wrest
Each moment of gladness; and we must steal
Our bodies' warmth and pressure, and the feel
Of us locked tight, like gold coins from a chest.

The years stretched out before us may be dry
And bare of the bounty that flowers yet
In such abundance--and we may regret
These instant treasures we let pass us by.

This Summer stays a moment, then it leaves;
So come, my dear, and let us love like thieves.

#76: July 8, 2006

He wants a girl who doesn't ask questions
and takes no for an answer. She should know
that how she turns her gams is just one
thing he'll be looking for. Booze makes him slow
sometimes; that's why he likes his women quick
as racehorses, to take up that gray slack
in conversations--molls who know the trick
of magically providing what he lacks.

They're hard to find--most simply wink and pout,
and drink and smoke too much. In fifteen years,
their looks long gone, their luck long since run out,
they'll blame their fool short-sightedness on tears.
They still won't see him, grinning through the smoke
of his Cuban, as at a private joke.

#75: July 7, 2006

We never said goodbye; because of this,
I find myself watching doorways, stairwells,
for a flash of gold hair. I hear the bells
of tin bracelets I gave you for a kiss
each time the wind startles the neighbor's chimes,
expecting any moment you'll appear,
smile, settling a stray hair behind your ear,
and take my outstretched hand, just like old times.

Even the empty spaces in the crowd
between shoulder and hip, bent knee and shin,
impossibly trace your outline--a ghost
formed by your very absence. If allowed,
I'd dive in between strangers, scattering most
what I long to embrace and gather in--

#74: July 6, 2006

I can't conjure up beauty in this place--
birds detonate, rose petals droop and fall,
and butterflies pop like soap bubbles, replaced
by fluorescent lights and gray, carpeted walls.

Aeolian hymns with their sweet, airy sounds
are drowned out by the copier's clank and buzz;
Euterpe is no longer to be found
down here, and I don't think she ever was.

Satyrs and nymphs are hiding here, no doubt,
and disciples of Dionysus too;
but they cower, afraid to be found out,
and don't frolic--there's too much work to do.

The keyboards clack, the flickering screens entrance,
and nothing here may bloom, or sing, or dance.

#73: July 5, 2006

Give me some breathing space, you thick-browed goon!
Back off a step or two, or else I swear
I'll turn that lazy eye up to the moon
With a one-punch adjustment. Have a care.

Think I won't cross your eyes and dot your tees?
Don't make assumptions you've no basis for.
Want to see some shade-pullers? Look at these:
Five on this hand, and over here five more.

I've knocked to catatonia bigger brutes
Than you, you grinning ape, you bug-eyed mutt!
You knuckle-dragging, pigeon-toed galoot,
Get out of here, before I crack your butt!

Still want some? I thought not. Go on, now, shoo!
Who else would like a little? Huh? How 'bout you?

#72: July 4, 2006

That day Dewayne was digging by the fence--
just eight years old, hair like a tuft of straw
under his cap. On my way out I saw
him crouching there, and haven't seen him since.

Then later on that week, the local law
came by to call. I told them what I'd seen:
the boy, the brown post fence backed by the green
forest, the shadowed path its open maw.

It's what I didn't tell them haunts my dreams:
in the years since, when night closes its claw
around the new moon, out in the intense
quiet of that untravelled wood, the raw
throat of the horned owl startles me to sense
the fading echo of that poor boy's screams.

#71: July 3, 2006

It's easy to perfect a stranger: see,
the girl in the next car, her silent song--
she shuts her eyes, sexual, throws her long
straight hair around in aural ecstasy;

Not hard to conjure up a life, with boys
and music at the center of it all;
no cares but whether such a beau will call
and whom to kiss, and when, and where--such joys!

Hard not to be jealous of one so young,
with freedom spread before her like a map
to be explored, and years yet till the trap
of age, hid in experience, is sprung;

But then the signal goes, and off she flies--
I stall, the greenlight shining in my eyes.

#70: July 2, 2006

The temperature is eighty-one degrees,
but just because we choose to set it there.
I sit with a book balanced on my knees
in our comfy, overstuffed reading chair.
Beside me, my tea glass has got the sweats
(a junkie half-full or -empty of smack).
The weathermen are calling off all bets
for rain, and even inside we are slack
and listless. Were there only a few clouds
we might be drawn outside to work the yard,
set out the sprinkler, mulch it, spread manure.
But what's the point? Hot hopelessness enshrouds
such efforts, dries the topsoil to a hard
cracked slate, on which no marks may long endure.

#69: July 1, 2006

Nectar of barley, happiness of man
(and hoppiness as well), to thee I sing!
Elixir neither glass bottle nor can
may long contain--such joyfulness you bring
to wearied hearts beat down with cruel life's cares,
oh rain your foamy blessings down on me!
Thou potion of forgetfulness, which spares
the troubled soul its mournful memories
and thrills the mind with possibilities
the sober brain would scoff at and dismiss--
if not for such besotted visionaries,
what boons to humankind would we have missed?

And so I tip my glass and tarry yet;
If beer were woman--good God, I'd marry it!

#68: June 30, 2006

"Maybe they help us some way. I don't know.
It seems to me that if God has a plan
He must include them in it. And since Man
Is given dominion, it must be so.

"But if you've ever felt the thorny prick
Of roaches' feet across your sleeping chest--
It's creepy, how the damn things move so quick!
Still, God's wisdom cannot be second-guessed.

"They can live for a week without their heads.
Did you know that? To make things worse, they fly.
They lived before the dinosaurs were bred
And eat shit. We'll understand more by and by--

"Or maybe not. The way this world's designed,
It could be God had them, not us, in mind."

#67: June 29, 2006

Knievel was my first two-legged dog,
Both up front. People found him sad and odd.
Denied the grace of even a tripod,
His nightly walks were slow, ass-dragging slogs.

Then Mitzi, who had both legs in the back:
We invented a harness with a wheel
And strapped it to her chest. That pup could peel
Out like a nitro dragster down the track!

But now there's Ham, whose legs (one at each end)
Present a special challenge--how to cope?
I guess I might train him to walk tightrope...
He could perform at state fairs on weekends.

Yes, Ham's predicament sure is a bad one.
Still, could be worse: suppose he only had one?

#66: June 28, 2006

Young Charles Laveuax would babble on for hours
As a child, conversing in a nonsense tongue
With unseen playmates. His folks said, "He's young,
And not yet master of his verbal powers."

But midnights in his lonely attic room
As the years passed, morose and solitary
Charles practiced his strange vocabulary
In heated arguments with God knows whom.

Till finally, at the age of seventeen,
One night the young man wakened everyone
With awful screams--his parents rushed upstairs
To find the room in shambles, bed undone
As if a frightful fight had happened there,
And bloody bedclothes where Charles should have been.

#65: June 27, 2006

There are days when nothing seems to turn out right;
You wake up on the wrong side of the bed,
Catch your toes on the rug, flop down a flight
Of stairs and land awkwardly on your head;

Black cats know of no other paths but yours,
And mirrors shatter at your merest touch;
Ladders loom ominously over doors
You must pass. Lucky horseshoes? Not so much.

Some days the tales told by those wise old wives
Hold no comfort. No good signs come your way,
And every hour's a trial to be survived--
Good luck is in the end of such a day.

But I, fortunate fool, can take your arm
And thank my natal stars I've such a charm.

#64: June 26, 2006

What do the salmon think, trapped in the jaws
Of angler bears? Do yet-untravelled rills
Rush past unblinking eyes as drying gills
Collapse, and unspawned young stain murderous claws?

While squirming in the bloody robin's beak,
Can those earthworms' dark dreams, unrealized,
Flash by whatever earthworms use for eyes?
Would they cry out "Alas!" if they could speak?

Why should there not be terror in the least
Of dying things? Why should deathbed regret
Be sole province of humankind? And yet,
Death's not tragic for unambitious beasts...

Fitting, perhaps, that man's the only one
Who dies pining for things he's left undone.

#63: June 25, 2006

O glory be to God for poisoned things:
For king snakes carrying slaughter in their bite,
For spitting cobras, murderers of sight,
And scorpions with their elegant stings;

Praise the Creator of the brown recluse,
Whose potent fangs can stop a baby's breath;
The black widow, whose hourglass counts down death
In drops of blood--each creature has its use.

The man o' war, whose tentacles sting, maim,
And ruin nerves; urchins, anemones,
The many-venomed killers of the seas,
And insects far too numerous to name;

Praise this Designer of mortality;
Remember that same cruel Maker made thee.

#62: June 24, 2006

Thea, my girl, my beautiful flower,
amazingly is two years old today--
the sparkle of whose jeweled eyes has the power
to stutter my hearbeat, and make me sway;

Her smile a slice of sweet and fruity pie
that makes me rush to nibble at her neck,
sipping at giggles like a butterfly
(I mix my metaphors, but what the heck).

Daughter, you make your dad so drunk with glee,
so helpless in his sloppy happiness;
an ancient bug on prehistoric trees
awash in sap, but happy nonetheless--

Lucky in this fate he has not deserved:
In amber beauty he may be preserved.

#61: June 23, 2006

Bill had a mistress--hell, everyone knew;
just figured it was none of our affair.
And if Linda knew too, why should we care?
She didn't, though; nor we what she would do.

They had two kids: Joseph, a lively lad,
the image of his father; then young Sue,
as pretty as a China doll--the two
of them life's dearest treasure to their dad.

When Linda found Bill out--no one knows how,
or else won't fess up--something broke inside.
She called her children in to take a bath
and drowned them both like cats. They say that now
ten years since Bill's heartbroken suicide,
only the rain makes Weeping Linda laugh.

#60: June 22, 2006

Bad office coffee feels like engine oil,
As hot as if it just came through the block;
It tastes just like twice-turned, wildfire-burned soil,
Pissed on and strained through a sweaty gym sock.

I slurp it down and shiver as a cat
Creeps over the site of my future grave;
It hits me like a fist, makes my tongue fat
And dries up all my spit. I must be brave--

For the alternative is no caffeine
(Discounting cups of tea and Diet Coke;
Undercaffeination just makes me mean),
And that's no alternative--that's a joke.

So instead of going through life at half-speed,
I suckle at the sour black teat of need.

#59: June 21, 2006

Memo to all employees: as you know,
this morning someone called in a bomb threat.
Obviously the building didn't blow,
and no, we haven't caught the prankster yet.

Also, in the push to evacuate
(and despite warning signs), some workers rushed
into the elevator, and the weight
has jammed it. Luckily, no one was crushed.

Finally, regarding claims for Workman's Comp,
for poison ivy cream and other goods:
Procedure is to go outside--not tromp
like Daniel Boone through the abutting woods.

Now, we don't need anyone to remind us
there's work to do; let's put this mess behind us.

#58: June 20, 2006

"I don't have time for this!" the vampire said,
pulling her skirt up and searching for shoes.
A TV in the background ran the news
while she stomped frantically around the bed.

"Son of a bitch." Still reeling from the booze,
she tried hard to remember what she'd read
in that book--or was it a website instead?--
about the best methods for covering clues.

Later she glanced back from the bedroom door
like Lot's wife just before she turned to salt.
She guessed it was her own damn stupid fault
for feeding where she'd never fed before.

The bloodstained walls, the corpse spread in the buff.
"Like a mortal killer--or close enough."

#57: June 19, 2006

"Well, there she is: Mildred, my second wife.
You can see what I meant about her hair--
wheat-colored, yes? Just as it was in life.
I find it a comfort, having her there.

"When she died, I didn't know how to go on--
so young, so beautiful--look at that face!
A flower, cut before the bloom had gone...
In fact, that's what suggested it: the 'vase.'

"The dress? It's silk, I think. Faded a bit,
but then that's unavoidable. We've tried
other fabrics, but nothing weathers it.
It's hard on evening wear, formaldehyde.

"Still, the effect is worth it, don't you think?
Ah, Mildred dear...enough. Another drink?"

#56: June 18, 2006

My daughter, Thea, two years old next week,
is trying out new phrases. In the yard,
balancing on retaining walls, the hard
new words crinkle her nose and fill her cheeks;

Like "Lissen too me now!" which she will say,
and then say nothing, lacking all context;
or "Do not argue me!" to her perplexed
brother when he is asking her to play.

She gets the tone right, though--the lowered brows
and stern frown (comical when writ so small),
demanding attention, brooking no guff;
I hope she won't forget, as age allows
her wisdom and restraint, the way to call
for respect when she's not given enough.

#55: June 17, 2006

My birthday: if I've threescore years and ten,
Now fully half of them are in the book;
Time to stop fretting over how I look
(For indeed, now my hair is growing thin).

I guess I never will build up my chest
With weights the way I'd planned once long ago,
And always hoped to do--nope, let it go,
And age with dignity. It's for the best.

The secret to it is just not to fight
(No comb-overs nor tummy tucks for me);
Wave bye to youth and earthly vanity,
And so go gently into that good night.

Top of the hill now--it was quite a climb.
Ease off the brakes, relax--it's coasting time.

#54: June 16, 2006

The knucker curled around the village well,
Its orange scales taking fire from the sun;
It tasted the air with its black forked tongue
And on the stones sharpened its talons fell.

Its belly full of suckling pigs and sheep,
Fangs dripping venom to the poisoned well,
The dragon slept; meanwhile, the Old Kirk bell
Tolled souls of missing children to their sleep.

The villagers all thirsted and despaired,
For none were strong enough to slay the beast,
And knights were scarce. And so, the following day,
They emptied their houses, said their last prayers
Over their family graves, then slipped away
Before the cruel dawn bloodied the east.

#53: June 15, 2006

Days like today could make you take up smoking;
The workplace stress can do that do a guy--
To contemplate the benefits of choking
Down a deck of Luckies between eight and five;

To chew on butts like pale dead severed fingers
And grumble 'bout the job, the boss, the wife;
To breathe fire, let the acrid odor linger,
Lengthen your breaks while shortening your life.

But such a life as this, perhaps no loss there--
No big deal to shave hours off the end;
Trade moments free of sweat beneath the boss' stare
For long dull years--a tempting trade, my friend.

Too bad they're so expensive. Plus, they smell.
I guess I'll stick to coffee then. Oh well.

#52: June 14, 2006

Oh Country Girl, dressed in your frilled white skirt
at this year's Riverfest, in calf-high boots,
whose boyfriend wears a rebel flag and hoots
for the fat man dancing without his shirt--

Whose shoulder-length, loosely curled hair cascades
in dark brown waves around your pillared throat,
whose black lace thong shows through (I think you know't)
that cotton ruffle of much lighter shade--

I wonder, when you go home burnt and tired,
and drunk too, maybe, on four-dollar beers,
with Dwight Yoakum echoing in your ears,
and wander toward the shower, hot and wired--

As you peel yourself out of that black thong--
will you and I be humming the same song?

#51: June 13, 2006

"You'll never get away!" the mayor cried
(the gag had slipped), "The Crimson Bombadier
will track you down wherever you may hide
and send you back to prison, never fear!"

A shiver jittered down the Cutter's spine
and his ribs rattled with an evil laugh
as he took out his Negaforce Turbine™
and sliced the shocked mayor neatly in half.

"The Bombadier is dead!" the villain hissed
(to no one in particular, it seemed),
"For even your hero could not resist
my cyanide-laced triple-fudge ice cream!"

So what's the moral? (Grandpa Richie said)
'Don't take treats from strangers.' Now go to bed.

#50: June 12, 2006

Every night before I came to bed,
when Sarah had already been asleep
for hours, I'd shut off the hall light and creep
into the nursery. Our son's nightlight shed
a honey-colored glow across the floor
and bathed the crib in shadow. Quiet, still,
I'd watch his face and padded quilt until
I caught a movement, or heard his small snore.
My legs would cramp, my forehead sweat as I
waited for my sleeping baby to breathe.
Not sure yet that this fragile happiness,
nestled like a young starling, would not fly
the moment I should lapse in watchfulness,
I stood there, staring, too afraid to leave.

#49: June 11, 2006

Grundy fell for Petunia on a Monday:
Wooed her, but the shy girl said not a word;
Tuesday he swore he would marry her one day,
Or end his woes by falling on his sword;

Wednesday she told him of her father's curse:
The witch, the cabbage, the whole stack of bricks;
By Thursday he'd put the hag in a hearse
And broken her enchantments like dry sticks;

On Friday she picked out her bridal dress,
And sent announcements to her closest friends;
But Saturday young Grundy felt much less
Like settling down, and so our story ends:

Sunday Petunia hanged herself from grief,
And Grundy snuck off silent, like a thief.

#48: June 10, 2006

Thick glasses; jutting teeth like nibs of corn;
The nose twists left, broken once and healed wrong;
A square, patch-bearded jaw; hair greasy, long;
Sweat-stained tee-shirt; blue jeans knee-patched and worn.

A nasal voice that sets the teeth to grind;
Laugh like a gobbling turkey--goblin-kin;
A glittering stare that pimples female skin,
Wondering what thoughts are scuttling through his mind.

The kind of guy you try hard not to see--
Invisible, or easy to look past.
Talks to himself, for he's always alone.
Because he's slow, and the world is so fast,
He fades daily toward his nonentity--
The ugly and unwanted and unknown.

#47: June 9, 2006

The setting sun was mirrored in their eyes
and its light, strewn on atmospheric dust,
chameleoned from rose to red to rust,
the way a cup of blood darkens and dries.

They sat and watched, stone-faced, astonished, still,
dangling their naked feet over the cliff.
The far waves in the bay tossed a small skiff
as the sun dipped behind enclosing hills.

Their nostrils smarting from the salty tang
of seawater, they heard the roar of waves
like some great beast, the rocks its gnashing teeth
set to devour. They stood and kissed, then sprang
into the air, hand in hand, to their graves,
beyond the reach of faith, doubt and belief.

#46: June 8, 2006

I used to get so angry looking back
And watching through the lens of memory
My young self--quiet, chubby, dressed in black--
Wallow in self-made sloughs of misery.

I used to spit bile and choke on the wrongs
That stung me still across so many years--
A pain like ghosts of hornets, which belongs
Elsewhere, forgot--and yet remembered here.

But now, older, I come to know the truth:
The past is just a house where no one lives,
Its cobweb-clouded rooms and sagging roof
Haunted only by hearts that can't forgive.

Look back and smile, but let the past decay.
Now move toward the light, and fly away.

#45: June 7, 2006

The sun beat down and burned the Preacher blind
In those five days he scoured the desert sands
For signs and portents; through his blistered hands
The grit slipped, leaving bloody cracks behind.

On the sixth night he came upon a grand
And solitary rock, eight feet or higher:
Orange and blood-red, like a pillar of fire
The Devil set alight and God had fanned.

The Preacher knew then that the Lord was great,
And split his sun-baked lips with songs of praise.
The light was dim. He missed the trail of ants
That smoked out of the rock till far too late.
Only God heard his screams and watched him dance;
And morning blessed his bare bones with its rays.

#44: June 6, 2006

It was the first time I French-kissed a girl:
the wet parting of lips, tentative push
and probe; the soft-strong slide of flesh. The rush
of electricity made my toes curl
and cramp. I was surprised there was no taste
except her breath, so hot and slightly sweet,
flavored with her lip gloss. It was all heat
and pressure, arms tangled in teenage haste
to rush after pleasure. And such a shock,
to find myself suddenly not alone
in my body--sharing my mouth and tongue,
my inner space--and all sensation locked
in touch and smell, and hearing myself moan,
so happy to be clean, and loved, and young.

#43: June 5, 2006

When I get home he pounces, eyes alight,
arms wide, teeth bared in a young tiger's smile;
we roll through grass and leaves, a tumbling pile
till my fatigue and tickles end the fight.

Right now he bounds out of bed set to play--
"No time for coffee, Dad, let's go outside!"
I protest, half asleep, too tired and fried,
but that stubborn boy drags me toward the day.

One day he won't come to my room at dawn
to wake me. Soon I'll breakfast on my own.
When I get home from work, I'll trudge alone
unmolested through the leaf-littered lawn.

I don't know how I'll make it past that day.
Till then--the sun's out. C'mon, Son: let's play.

#42: June 4, 2006

On Saturday my wife gets up at six,
mere moments after our young daughter cries,
and makes pancakes from scratch (not from a mix)
while TV keeps the children hypnotized.

On Sundays I wake up while it's still gray
and do my best to entertain the mob;
I cook waffles, serve cereal, and play
until eight-thirty or nine--that's my job.

The weekends used to mean we could sleep in
and stay up late, no worries about rest;
we would go out and drink and dance, and when
we got home, we could sleep. It was the best.

When I was teenaged I would sleep till noon;
my children's teen years cannot come too soon.

#41: June 3, 2006

Upon a time once there was a princess
Who lived in comfort in the land of Growse;
And everything that could delight the senses
Was hers just for the asking, on the house.

She grew up without hardships, without wants,
And if one must be truthful, somewhat jaded--
For even the most fragrant flowers of France
Become noxious once that first bloom has faded.

But luckily for our highness (queen next year),
There's always new sensations coming in:
S & M, tattoos, piercings, fetish gear
Kept her from getting bored and sad again.

She's marrying her prince next month in Spain;
Her subjects send their prayers, and whips and chains.

#40: June 2, 2006

Sometimes I want to step off of the ledge
and for a dizzy instant feel the air
filling my shirt and touselling my hair
like a lover as I hover off the edge.

Sometimes I want to close my eyes and go
off into space, weightless, suddenly free,
and before giving up to gravity
exult in universal ebb and flow.

Of course it's what comes next that keeps you from it:
moments of flailing arms and kicking feet
as the earth drags you screaming to the street,
and mocks you with your own weight as you plummet--

But still, I can't help thinking of these things:
Dreaming of, at the final moment, wings.

#39: June 1, 2006

"I'm learning to forgive," she said, and smiled,
looking almost beatific with the light
behind her. Almost saintly, dressed in white--
her halo of blonde hair, her voice so mild.

She picked an instrument up off the cart.
Sparks glinting from its polished edge beguiled
her eyes, and made her giggle like a child.
"But then, forgetting is the hardest part."

She pulled the leather straps and buckles tight,
then placed the scalpel just over his heart
and pushed until it popped. His blood defiled
her smock; yet as his screams rang from the tiled
and soundproofed walls, she knew that she was right.
"Oh yes--forgetting is the hardest part."

#38: May 31, 2006

The worst thing was, we knew when it would hit.
astronomers pegged it down to the hour:
a million metric tons of killing power,
just two weeks distant, and no help for it.

The churches overflowed, but prayers were vain.
Liquor stores gutted, fires bloomed in the streets
while mothers stopped their children's mouths with sweets
and clutched them close--for how could they explain?

Then, in those last few days, the earth grew still.
Those who could stayed inside and made their peace.
Otherwise everything remained the same.
The crickets chirped, the owls hunted until
sunrise snuffed out the stars; and from the East
the destroyer drew nearer, slinging flame.

#37: May 30, 2006

Best way to eat a rattler: lop its head
well back, then gut and skin and serve up fried
in cornmeal, like a catfish; once you've fed,
you'll know you did it right if no one's died.

Hot, it's like froglegs (that old Southern dish),
but once it cools the taste grows indistinct;
a bit like chicken, but also like fish--
perhaps a fossil flavor missing link.

It's good, but something primal still recoils
as from the buzz of bones upon its tail;
fears venom in the veins, hears hiss in oil,
sees ribs all curved like fangs and sharp as nails.

What is it thrills your heart and steels your breath?
The courage of a pagan, eating Death.

#36: May 29, 2006

There's too damn many poems about writing;
Each self-appointed poet seems to think
His thoughts about his thoughts are worth the lighting
Of the oil, and of the spilling of his ink.

And when the subject's lack of inspiration,
a non-subject, God damn, that's even worse;
It's masturbation sans imagination,
A one-man circle-jerk, tugged out in verse.

Don't tell me how your soul's springs have gone dusty;
Put down the pen and slowly back away.
Go for a walk. Get drunk. Pull out your trusty
Black book, and get yourself something to say.

But if you're whining 'bout your poet's spirit
Gone slack--shut up. Nobody wants to hear it.

#35: May 28, 2006

In summer Jimmy's belly would get tan
from lazy afternoons of drink and dance
without his shirt; you never saw a man
so joyful in his cups, and any chance
to shed his top and gig under the sun,
cap clownishly turned backwards, chest two slabs
of meat atop that gut, Jimmy would run
to meet it, trailing buttons and beer tabs.

No fear of melanoma, nor the frowns
of neighbors, nor cirrhosis could dissuade
Jimmy, beer-belly-full, from getting down
half-naked whenever the music played.

If there's a heaven Jimmy's dancing there,
drunk on glory, his chest and belly bare.

#34: May 27, 2006

Not even June, and already the heat
oppresses movement, depresses desire
and ambition; we half-expect the street
to bubble, smoke, and explode into fire,
coating our lungs with tar; we'll sit indoors
with glasses full of ice against our cheeks,
sweating like we do; the drops will stain the floor
like tears shed in the face of coming weeks.

We'll keep watering our lawns until August,
then give up, sun-defeated once again,
watch grass wither to ash, soil bake to dust,
and all go brown and sere like the world's end.

We'll hide from dead earth and scorched air that kills,
in fear of death by fire, and water bills.

#33: May 26, 2006

The noises never stop in this old place.
Of course at midnight chains drag down the halls,
The ghost of Farley moans behind the walls,
And the attic suicide begins to pace;

At four a.m. the murdered maiden screams,
And in the courtyard horses paw the grass;
The bishop, hanged, intones his solemn mass
In his own crypt, for his lost soul, it seems.

All through the night the spirits groan and creak;
The heartbroken bride takes her sunrise leap,
And whispers haunt the dusty bookcase shelves
At dusk. No hour goes by that doesn't speak.
The living, cranky from the lack of sleep,
Wish the dead would keep their damned deaths to themselves.

#32: May 25, 2006

When I was young there was a copperhead
lived in the drainage ditch beyond the fence
in our back yard. Summers among the red
clusters of young blackberries we could sense
his ageless eyes upon us, so we thought--
We'd hear his evil hiss in every breeze,
and quaking we would glimpse him on the hot
flat rocks back there, warming his coils, at ease.
One day he crawled through chainlink gaps to sun
himself on our gray concrete patio.
He lay coiled like a noose, his flicking tongue
tasting my childish fear; inside I hung
onto my mother's skirt, too scared to run,
while Daddy lopped his head off with a hoe.

#31: May 24, 2006

He stands unmoving, more shadow than man,
Against a skyline pointillized with light;
His cape spreads out behind him like a fan,
Serrated silver, billowing in the night.
Below, the humans' screams are like a prayer
And he, their gargoyle god, waits on his perch
Deciding which to bless; his black hole stare
A benediction, the city his church.

Somewhere behind his mask the memories stir
Of past wrongs unforgiven, loved ones dead,
And sins as yet unpunished, unredeemed.
He wishes things could be the way they were
Before--but so does everyone, it seems.
He leaps into the city's heart like lead.

#30: May 23, 2006

At LSU, a tiger's in a cage
behind the stadium. Mike is his name.
He paces his enclosure like a stage
and seems indifferent to his modest fame.
In summer his fur blazes like a flame,
and bars like hash-marks counting out his age
enmesh his stripes. Always, before the game,
they print programs with Mike on every page.

And all night, like a madman in his cell,
the tiger paces, tracing out the same
figure-eight path, imagining Indian sage
in the cheerleaders' perfume--such a smell!
Thinking of student bodies he would maim,
Mike walks in majesty, seething with rage.

#29: May 22, 2006

It's summer, and the ants have come again.
Red ones molehill the yard; the black ones too,
That breach our house like Harry's happy few
At Harfleur, finding secret pathways in.

They burrow under joints in the windows
And squeeze through seals that stop the winter wind,
Then march in single file, though to what end
I wonder whether any one ant knows.

Somehow they find the food, though--bowls of milk,
The bloodstain spill of our kid's sugared drink;
A smorgasbord of leavings in the sink
Draws thousands of their single-minded ilk.

We crush and poison, drown and trap and kill;
But evolution rules under the hill.

#28: May 21, 2006

She smoked like Raymond Chandler on a tear,
With lips like she'd been eating cherry pie
Real sloppy. I could smell the rotgut rye
Behind her ears, and lilacs in her hair.

Her eyes were working under half-dropped lids,
She took my measure--call it forty-long,
That leaves room for the gat. She hummed a song
Under her breath; we mooned a while like kids,

Her hand in mine like feathers off a dove,
Her voice a tenor sax. I'd like to say
She played so sweet I never felt the knife
Till it was in. But nothing works that way.
At least when she kissed me it felt like love.
I've never been that drunk in my whole life.

"Noir, #28," selected as a finalist in The Formalist's 14th Annual Howard Nemerov Sonnet Competition!

#27: May 20, 2006

Look, all I want from you's a little praise--
A job-well-done, good-work pat on the back.
It's not like I don't cut you any slack,
And I'm not asking for some kind of raise.

Tell me I don't deserve it. Go on, try.
You can't; you look around, see what I've done--
The garden, animals, even the sun
And every Me-damned cloud up in the sky.

What's that? The Evil? Baby, that's all you.
I will not take that heat. You had your shot.
I mean sure, I knew you would--you couldn't not,
The way you're made; still, you do what you do.

But enough of that. Get praisin', kids, or else
I'll spend the next six days refining Hells.

#26: May 19, 2006

I chase Euterpe through a shadowed wood;
The lyric eludes me, and now the sun sinks low.
My arms outstretched, I jam a tree--no good!
The falling dark leaves me nothing to show.

Erato teases with her breathy sigh;
I glimpse her as if through a sheet of gauze:
Her full, seductive breasts, a naked thigh--
and then she runs. "Why, Goddess?" "Just because."

Frantic, I seek stately Calliope
To bless my poet's prayers. Still as a stone,
Memory's eldest daughter does not flee
But scatters like a mist. I am alone.

The girl I lust after always refuses.
Why should I expect different from the Muses?

#25: May 18, 2006

I get in about seven after eight,
Drop off my notebook, grab my coffee cup
And fill it full of wakefulness--then up
The stairs for morning meetings on the slate.

Ordinarily it's hurry up and wait;
Meaningless small talk with department heads.
Finally the tech guy unravels the threads
And gets the presentation up. That's great.

There was a king named Sisyphus who fell
Afoul the gods--the reasons are obscure--
And for his mortal sins must now endure
Eternal futile toil on hills in Hell.

My boss tells me to think outside the box,
But all I see out there are other rocks.

#24: May 17, 2006

There's something at the bottom of the well.
I hear its voice when everyone's asleep
and shadows from the forest stretch and creep
across the yard like spirits out of Hell.

It sounds like water gurgling over stone,
and forms words I can almost understand.
One day, turning, I saw a gnarled gray hand
clutching the lip--it wore a ring of bone.

I do not know what moves in that dank hole,
what churns the brackish water into steam
that billows forth at midnight like a dream--
a fog that dampens prayer and chills the soul;

I only know the tale you heard me tell--
There's something at the bottom of the well.

#23: May 16, 2006

Please hold my hand if I begin to sway;
I might not get up once I lose my feet.
The light has thrown a cant under the street,
dazzled me silly as a popinjay.

There's something in the motion of the trees
that sets me spinning--whispers in the creak
of branches. Sibilant leaves leave me weak
and breathless, balancing on liquid knees.

Things underneath my feet are not so strong
here at the last as I once thought they were.
The meadows buckle, hills roll like the sea,
and I am lost here. The stones are tearing free
and drifting at our heads. What can't endure
will float away; what can, flew all along.

#22: May 15, 2006

This hissy fit is going to be a bad one;
I can tell just by the way it's coming on--
The kind would run a wife off if I had one
And piss my friends off cryin' once she'd gone.

This fit'll be the kind of one they write of
In colorful Southern-fried picaresques
Where the hero's a drunk who's never seen the light of
Seven a.m., and hangs out in burlesques.

This fit could be the stuff of legend, truly:
They'll say I must have drunk a hurricane
And spit tornadoes--got so damn unruly
I scared the rooster off the weathervane.

Yeah, once this fit gets started, son, you'll know it.
It's a shame that now I've lost the will to throw it.

#21: May 14, 2006

Please point this bird toward Little Rock and fly
Me home, 'cause I've been gone away too long--
I'm on the ground, I should be in the sky
Like any mockingbird--tell me I'm wrong.

Oh pull this string as far back as it goes
And shoot this silver arrow to my girl--
Put thirty-thousand feet under the nose
Of this here plane, and spin round this blue world.

Now sling me at my baby and be quick
To it, 'cause you know Sloth's a deadly sin,
And speed's your virtue--show us all the trick
That Hermes taught the Wright Brothers back when.

Now set coordinates to Sarah's bed--
Let me float down like feathers round her head.

#20: May 13, 2006

Ted Smith was thirty when he choked and died
(a turkey sandwich on rye was the cause);
The grief drove his wife Jane to suicide
(two shotgun barrels applied beneath the jaws);

Their children, understandably upset
(Nellie was nine, poor Josh was only four),
Entered a pact--they'd show this cruel world yet!
(It wasn't going to hurt them anymore.)

The siblings propped each other up quite well
(they made it through their twenties with a pulse);
Though not without a cost, I'm sad to tell
(they seemed such normal, likable adults):

Policemen found eight heads beneath Nell's floor
(and in her brother's backyard thirteen more).

#19: May 12, 2006

It pulled a ragged tongue across its teeth
and growled as if the trooper posed a threat--
thirteen feet long, black hair wiry and wet,
spiked quills above, ebony claws beneath.

The trooper's gun hand shook like winter leaves;
the moon above looked down like God's dead eye.
The stars were buckshot holes in the night sky,
and Death was watching from the house's eaves.

The monster pulled itself up to its height
and cast its shadow down upon the man
who stood between it and its rightful prey.
Three sharp blasts cracked the belly of the night--
the child screamed, the trooper raised his hands--
and then the Shadow fell like Judgement Day.

#18: May 11, 2006

Now, I don't want to sound like Mr. No--
I don't go in for negativity
for its own sake--but still, you ought to know
something, and best you hear it now, from me.

Don't look at me like that. I know it sounds
ominous, especially introduced like that,
but it's really not that bad. Trust me, no grounds
for getting all upset right off the bat.

All right, enough's enough. Let's have it out
and have it done. Bad news is best served hot.
Besides, you probably know what it's about--
or imagined something even worse, if not.

All right--the thing I've been trying to say:
I could not come up with a poem today.

#17: May 10, 2006

I'm not a very handsome guy, it's true.
My nose is flat, for starters, like a pug's.
I've got the kind of voice that sometimes bugs
a person. And my breath can be bad too.

My figure is rectangular at best;
at worst, a pear. There's no need to dissemble.
And my butt may kindly be said to resemble
two hairy saddlebags when I'm undressed.

In fact, I'm so relentlessly repulsive
I don't know how my mirror doesn't crack,
nor how my coworkers maintain the tact
required to see me and not go convulsive.

And yet, Beautiful, you don't seem to mind.
How fortunate for me you are so blind.

#16: May 9, 2006

Why do you have to talk to me while I
am standing at the urinal trying to pee?
I think unspoken bathroom courtesy
demands your silence, and averted eye.

Can this not wait? What urgent piece of news
could overrule such common etiquette?
Good Lord, man, concentrate! Or else you'll wet
your shirt tail, to say nothing of your shoes.

I do not mean offense--what I mean is,
Give me some peace! Look only toward your feet.
I do not wish to speak while I excrete!
I do not talk while holding my penis!

I cannot think of any situation
In which I'd mix my piss and conversation.

#15: May 8, 2006

Well hello, there. I ain't seen you before,
and I come in here nearly every night.
Can I get you something? Yeah? Barkeep, two more
on mine. Hey there, let me give you a light.

It's good on you. I like a girl who smokes--
woman, sorry. Just something in the way
the light plays on the whorls...Hm? I guess jokes,
instead of this, would be the better play.

Truth is, it's been a while since I got up
the nerve to come and make a play like this.
My wife Anne died three years ago. Cancer,
it was. God damn, I feel just like a pup
findin' his tail. What's that? Your phone? Don't answer--
I'm lonely, and I thought maybe...wait! Miss?

#14: May 7, 2006

Come the weekend, I feel I've earned the right
to drink too much. So don't get on my case.
It's moderation every other night
(or most, 'least ways), so if I got a taste
for a third beer, a second glass of wine,
a whiskey chaser, a tequila neat,
a G & T--the damage will be mine
and mine alone. So come on, it's my treat.

Tomorrow it's back to that slow dull grind
that inches us toward our long-promised rest
eight hours at a pop. So let's not mind
too much to put our livers to the test.
Livers' for livin', so the poet saith.
Here's to long life, good drunks, and quiet death.

#13: May 6, 2006

The monkey on the Ferris wheel displayed
the most audacious set of teeth I've seen
on any primate. Far down below, ducks played.
The Dog-Faced Girl, resplendent in her green
and gold dress, somehow managed to retain
a stately diffidence, befitting a queen.
(It turns out she was sixth in line for Spain,
and tenth for Portugal.)
                                                  But what I mean
to tell you is, I've seen it all before.
The circus comes, the Man Without a Hat
slow-dances in absentia with the cat
who won the beauty pageant. That's the score.
You can't surprise me--so let's just start again.
There's a coffee shop next door. You feel that wind?

#12: May 5, 2006

So this is it. It's time to settle in.
Get used to these three gray cubicle walls,
the tasteless coffee, the recycling bin
Beside the coke machine; the bathroom stalls

that never close just right. In twenty years
you won't even notice the keyboard grit.
By the time the burnt popcorn odor clears
in the break room, you'll be done with this shit.

I know: blear-eyed hours with a flickering screen
were not part of The Plan. Still, who's to say
it could have turned out better? Chase some fool dream,
chance is, you'll fail. At least this place is clean.
Benefits. Two weeks off. 401K.
Put in the time.
                                Stay Safe.
                                                      Try not to scream.

#11: May 4, 2006

The Monster Men are coming to your town
With hollow eyes and teeth like molten lead;
They're coming in by train, the preacher said,
And they'll be here soon as the sun goes down.

The Monster Men don't hide under your bed--
They batter windows in, then take the glass
And slice off pieces of themselves to pass
Around for snacks. They smell like moldy bread.

The Monster Men have risen from the dead!
The Devil summoned them with his own Mass.
They're crawling round the house--their laughter sounds
like falling trees. They won't stop till they've found
a child to eat, a juicy lad or lass--
The Monster Men are coming for your head!

#10: May 3, 2006

I don't know whether I'm cut out for this.
It's something with my eyes--the way I see
things. Too plain, hard edges. Prosaically,
not like a poet. Something I always miss.
I'm trying to teach myself--learn to connect
the concrete and abstract, the way the sky
looks with my childhood, search for that dry
faint line where sense and meaning intersect.
And fail, day after day. I puzzle out
the rhymes and iambs, turning lead to lead.
Alchemy in mechanics. What comes out
does not speak well of the elements in my head.
I guess I'm after magic. But this puff
of smoke tells me my words aren't strong enough.

#9: May 2, 2006

Bastard! How do you fucking sleep at night?
You toad-brained butt-lick, spittle-spawned disease!
Disloyal dung-heap denizen--may a blight
of righteous nits necrotize your knobby knees!

It's cocks like you give humans a bad name,
amphibious fuck-stick, cunt-lapping CHUD!
Basalmic bugger--how dare you even frame
in friendship, lies--lung-sucking King Crapcrud!

You sputtering fudge-flung waste of toilet roll,
may syphyllitic jackals eat your balls!
I'd like to post your pig head on a pole
and use your guts to decorate my walls.

Shit--a shingle--shinola slobbering suck!
It ties my tongue up--shibbitz--GAH! You fuck!

#8: May 1, 2006

When he was three, my son's favorite game
was throwing rocks in water. There was a creek
that ran beside the playground; three days a week,
in summer more, would find us at the same
slow pastime. I, big and clumsy as an ox,
would pull the big ones out and make a pile
from which with that miraculous small smile
all children have, Will took the choicest rocks.
With fingers soiled, my pantslegs stained with grass,
my back popping, I crouched there among
the sun-flecked trees and shadowed underbrush,
watched tiny fingers sail their stone. In the rush
of tumbling water, the rock would hang, too long
almost, then shatter the creek's surface like glass.