Lightning Bug

All of this déjà vu I’ve got.
I’ll get it here or there
and grant to myself
its profundity.  As if
gnostically through me
has come a signal for
some tragic event’s onset—
a terrorist bombing,
the death of a friend or a relative.
A glimpse of a past or future life.

It’s crazy.
I’ll look at the clock
and it’ll be 9:11 or 9:11
and I’ll think I’ve
somehow keyed into knowledge
that something bad
has happened, somewhere.
But then I think about
all the screwed-up
clocks throughout the world,
twenty-four time zones (at least),
the international date line, Indiana—
And, really, at any minute
of the day
any asshole
could be looking at his clock
and thinking the same thing.

Go Home, Ocean

You would think that the ocean
would just give up finally.

The coast is our immovable object,
its sand a sliding ruse selling the waves
on a false hope
that they can take back the land—
stretch their sea legs with a walk in the grass,
rise and fall with the curves of the coastal highway...

At least when the ocean shows up
to our mainland party
uninvited, drunk and stumbling
all over the beach, it’s been so
thoughtful as to bring food
(even if it hasn’t bothered to
wrap the fish in the seaweed).
Like last time, we kindly accept the fish
but have to turn the frenzied tide
away because it smells like
the savage ocean and wears no clothes.
Foaming at the mouth, it drains away,
ripping straight out horizonward with
the hooks of a thousand drowning horses,
taking with it our surf boards and wetsuits,
occasionally someone’s car or sunglasses.

Out past the shelf, the ocean strikes
up a little party of its own
attracting only a few
narcoleptic pelicans, who fall like
feathered stones out of the sky
and crash the barrier-reef buffet
while skittish fish refuse to dance
with smiling sharks...


More of the ocean poem...

There Are No Illusions Here

A triangle      with one long side           and two very short                        sides           is not much of                a triangle It is me           discovering the internet                a fourth line           to double the degrees                to create a rhombus—                one that makes sense                     only in 3-d.                cow angel                clown angels                cow clowns           What I am talking about is                the whole … Continue reading There Are No Illusions Here

My First Allen

by R.L. Wisdom An apparition with quiet steps     throws water on the fire          and runs from the explosion.           In the garage     sitting snuglyon the chair.           A stirring arises          out the corner of my eye          but to no avail. Innocuous or not     the ninja reveals its position          and stomps off.           An abbreviated ending     to a comfortable evening.Things are complicated.

Dial-A-Ride

An insomniatic grasshopperfills the first-fall nightwith an insistent, low telephone ring. I’d like to rip his wings off! He’s out there humminglike the timpani skinat the back of the band roomsinging, “You have no rhythm.” His are the ten-thousand handsthat won’t pick up.