Summer Wars

The dust of Summer,
rubber, barbecue and
mT air that I beg might bring the rains, Neruda’s
gold ghost, Las Manos del Dia under an umbrella say
do I comprehend, how much it may mean
to meet a grizzled old tree
hale and green
after the many deaths
of teething Winter,
hollow poems
no justice
they cannot say,
Longfellow is out walking
my cautious light around the park.

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Night Out

The night holds weapons, battlements, arms
how fat it grows, full and strong, with the wooly
thickness of a coat, and the deepness of a well;
down, down, down we both go, holding hands
with exhales flaring up, hot flotsam on the sea.

Clear Day

Blankets are leaving, we are all naked
as newborns, with sunglasses on our eyes.
The bluegreen day with yellow tint
is disguised as grey,
and we can’t blink
until the park is met, until our feet get wet;
it’s a savanna, and the rhododendrons
flare, and my compass knows
the way, the tide will take me out
come noon.

Woman At The Jetty

A blueberry scarf
is the ring of her neck, a promise
to remain warm when clutched by the chills of love – it’s enough.
Enough to block the ravaging eyes, keep her head
snug and rooted on her shoulders,
keep her mouth speaking foreign languages
and her ears keen.

Dusk

Faster, the light docks in its crawl. The hall
between her breasts burns like a lemon. The seeds
in her eyes she veils with her arm, dips
her cherry chin,

Static Force

Our hands have become limp.
I guess this is when the leaves fall off the trees.
The Cascade snow fills the reservoir for my home,
but night and day, all I hear about is our rain.

If You Could Break Me

If you could break me
how many pieces would you strive for?

A split in two,
have me broken down into fourths,
a complete s h a t t e r i n g –

Do I Get Up

Do I get up. What will I have for breakfast.
Should I have breakfast at all. Will I take the bus or walk.
Talk to a stranger, perhaps not. How do I look today.
How do I feel today. What is my neighbor feeling today.
What is the scientific name for the maple tree.
What is the dog that is barking barking on about.
How shall I get on working today. How shall I have my tea.
Where shall I go to lunch. Is my friend swimming in the ocean.
Is my lover at Smith Tower. Is the grass sad.

Westward Window

Sierra, my home. Bedroom the sky. Holyholy zoom, the eagles,
directing my eyes I am a habitué, dawdling gazer with
a wide brimmed hat, flounder(er) with my words I trip over
the too large robe of my praises.

Words

Deeply is the word he professes
in lipless verses, bent eyes and a high collared coat.
The heart is never worn on a sleeve but often
breaks over a lover’s face like moonlight.
We are unconstant, unstable, unmanageable
under the Terms and Conditions of Modern Love.
We check no boxes, gather no bouquets,
make no stringent declarations or mad attempts

Going Blind In The Sunshine

Watch my eyes, they dip and dive, my hand over my mouth,
my chin in my shoulder, away like the cold – it’s spring. Let’s go.
The trees are shaking off their bitter time spent contemplating their
poesy to sing. Now, they begin the music, green notes illumed
lightbulbs, they’re on. Let’s head outside into the ramose sunshine.

She Swims The Night

She swims the night; the street is her sea. The street is her wave,
that clashes and eats at her tired soles. Unmarried women
don’t walk alone, so she dares it – whispers, Come on, breathy anxious
with wheels going round in her inner life. The troglodytes remain
shut up in their homes, rectangular mirrors smiling in their eyes.

Stay Up

They glare, the lanterns of the city, the rooftops lit with minds
that cannot sleep, with eyes

that will not close, and mine are along, the plung
of neuroticism; rest rises up and sudden there’s the tug. We’re
hot, a blade in need of pounding, the urge
to spin, lofty dreams, haggard visions, twisting
our teeth like screws. But the builders build. The makers make.

Grasp

They murmur beneath their breath
difficult woman,
obstinate girl,
opinionated,
shrew,
man-eater,
they shout to my face
unfuckable,
impossible,
what a waste
of a body,

Farewell Poem for Kitchen

House empty, I’m in
the pilot light, an eye unblunk in the stove
that yawns, I remember,
the delicious and burnt feasts I cooked here
wearing only my drawers, small breasts
pulled down by gravity, water spurts that slashed
and sizzled nude skin, split carrots
that thundered in the quiet, in the dead of night
I’d cut chives, brew saffron,
steam would dry out my eyes I recall

Demimondaine

Her midriff is a rumba, she skims the dance club’s lights, flitty beetle
with a hard shell and the taste of vegemite,

and the musk of a jaguar; of all these people crammed here
she has the strongest bite.

I Can

I cannot slice the fire,

I cannot cut the air,

I cannot slit the water,

but I can wound you.

I can.

Mermaids

Men only love us
when they need us, women dip
their babies in, Nereids seeking
to scale their children in armor;
we, ugly selkies, melusines, mer
maids and lads who swim in
black waters, we cannot breathe
the light, merely claw and scrape
at the tops of waves, legs
greeting us with nets and offerings –

Descending

As a youth,
I knew not of crowded city streets,
the smells of compacted people,
all their schedules and goals and jostling.

I loved the woods,
and the lake waters, and the snow.
The many greens of Midsummer:
faded teal, fatty yellow, dark forest, zingy lime;
wreaths of chlorophylls dewed and shiny.

Whistler

Grasses bob, the trees press, expand; press, expand as lungs.
Loyal speaker, who spake the first murmurings – whistler at the window.
What’s that? Faces stack, knotholes of wisps in the darkness,
agape and wakeful just as I, truculent foreheads, lined lips, I’ve a wife
who died, is she there? Another unholy moaner outside, watchful.

Depression

The walls, they are shrinking,
a box I am in folded up,
heavy and looming
are the forges
making all this dark;

The Big Black Storm

Windstorms have battered my life for days, treble the rain,
tintinnabulation on the streets, a highway roaring like a sea of heaves
of grimness, mornings glamsy, murdered pink some dawns, strewn
with hoods and caps and umbrellas, and the grey swallows up
the goldfinches’ wings, the stellar jay sky, it’s hidden somewhere above.

Untouched Earth

It all falls away when building, the mind chiseling
A fever dream starting at the high, never getting down
To the low. And lower is the stair stepping away
Fast as a mare in full stride on open plain, whistling
Grasses notwithstanding, there’s a howl unheard.

Alleviations

Alleviate me, with a foghorn. Swept up compilations hound
and dog me desperately, so maybe extend a forlorn sound.

Unsettled

The misty ridden morning
waits like a pendulum in mid swing,
cross and blue, no longer alive,
leopard printed in death’s oily colors.

I untie the souls, with the windows
curving swards bent under the dewy dunes,
haled by dawn’s wet forehead,
no graves have been dug for this.

Open

Open your footpaths, for are we not all travelers of the road?
I say to death with your walled gardens, to death with your gates,
to death with all the looming towers of 900 rooms for a dozen men;
I say, let’s put back the prairie grass, let’s call home the deer
and have them roam, shoveling the forests with trodding hooves
so we may stroll behind their journeys, hearing trees purr.   

Storms

Storms have no vows to speak,
refineries of ejecta and longing,
streaked with insurmountable ugliness and beauty –
polarities is what I’m talking about.
The voyeur in love with chastity, the bones unhollow
and growing on skin as hair,
light as a panther walking on the promenade.
It’s all to me, quite riveting.

Let’s Light Up

Let’s begin anew, you and I; let’s decide
that the world is not meant for us, that meadows
beneath glass lakes, and mountains that move
and speak, and lions and elk that are of human
physique rule over us, but tend to lax off
their supreme duties; that you and I aren’t