To you, this cabernet:But not for my walletI couldn’t have bought it.Its complexion of garnet,and suggestion of leather,leave me drunk and unfit,and you light as a feather.
Category: Poems
Poems new and old
things gone without
by Thom Kortkamp endless trains plow underthese hills of rusty clay pulled by a teamof mournful donkeys the whistle bray echoes among black tongue cattle circling turkey vultures tidy the roads,protect … Continue reading things gone without
Burlington Northern
My uncle, a climatologist,
suggests that global warming
could cause the melting of the
Northern Passages once impassable
to the likes of Henry Hudson
or John Cabot or his son Sebastian searching
for a route to the spices & silks
of the East Indies at the behest
of royalty, their county’s or not.
Imagine: the northern passage is a convenient
shipping route from, say, Shanghai
to NYC forget the skinny Panama Canal
or slow trains or coffeed truckers.
More Elephants
No coldnessNo coldness, noHe was cold even as achildHe was autistic, they thought.A problem w/interactions &communication.We drove him to thisWe drove him to this, noWe were the stagecoachThe trial and the plainThe embrace of a coasthappy to seeany human beingWe were all of these thingsWe were behind the wheelWe were behind the wheel, no.
Who’s Counting
youletting your hair growthat urge to be unaccountablecold weather a thing of the pastanother thing that changedthat you didn’t changean ice cube drops to the floorit doesn’t shatterit melts into infinite piecesok, maybe not infinite
OK AK
I’m never amazed by old marketing tools but you can’t garden with machine gun hands. “Hell—you want gardens? Go to the park.”
Self-Portrait at 27
My moon is not my honeymoon.
The real truth about me
is not the wine-induced truth
(98 points) but
instead something dusty in the magazine aisle
with my name as the title
only one issue put out
couldn't sell enough ads.
Stay the night with me, Moon.
Vonnegut breathed the air of Dresden and saw you.
You and the city looked the same.
A man wearing sunglasses
and a very orange cap
looked at it once but put it down.
Was he my father?
Questions, yes, questions.
There will be five minutes for questions.
Help, Freud.
Sometimes a banana is just a banana.
Even when it sells for a dollar
in this convenient store of me before sleep,
six times the price if you bought it online.
I keep thinking about that Venetian
boat ride I never went on, the one
where I’m drinking wine and mingling
with people from all over the world.
As I lie here and tune in Denver
Another night
Another night
And memoirs don’t inspire.
Seedling
like a pocketful of wildflower seed & you’re sitting in the wetting waiting meadow
Rockford
I fell asleep this
afternoon watching
the Senate on C-SPAN2.
When I woke up
Dick Durbin
was talking about
trains & Illinois
and about how lately
the trains have
been passing on through
without even stopping
for water.
Easter Supplemental 2007
It was a bloody nightbombs blew all throughout Baghdadand here at homesomething got at our resident rabbitstrewing its fur all across the yardand leaving it to die, partially eaten, under the deck.We’ve all got wars we’re fightingnot all of them take billions of dollarsor thousands of men.It’s true Mr. PresidentThe end can be as simpleas … Continue reading Easter Supplemental 2007
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