1Hello at the margins.Hello Inuit suntan.That feels very dense to me, water.Grilling heat, goon of history.The ceiling fills with iceBut falls as rain.Oil is the new old gold; again. 2My legs acheWith the memory of beerThis time last night.Altocirrus when I close my eyes.In October it's still too hotFor a comforter. 3Man has changed the … Continue reading Icebergs
Tag: poem
Ezra Ain’t Easy
1
I could’ve gone
to see Pound while he was
still in the hospital.
But my mother-in-law hates him
and it would’ve killed her.
So I just let
the crazyman be;
him & Fords,
Jags, Land Rovers, etc.
2
One of the
must-read poets
said he couldn’t write
with stubble on his chin;
called for
a holiday for writing.
In other words,
a good time
to swear off coffee,
not to get too gassed.
3
Ezra Brooks
bourbon you say you
were drinking.
But why then
do I smell lime
on your breath—
I am not a teetotaller,
not a prohibitionist. I know
there is no cuba libre
for whiskey,
none for fascists
the world around.
I Am Backyard
A fish jumped and
I remembered
what it was like
jumping off
the low-dive and
landing on my belly.
Over yonder a tree
on its side
that the beaver hauled down.
A bird.
Until it drops,
until it alights silently
in the extended arms
of the willow.
A thousand lightning bugs
once invisible sting the
twilight like branding irons.
Soon it will be dark,
though the moon
(I’m sure)
grows brighter.
Dear God
Here I am hanging onto your wretchedly wonderful world.
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.
Prime Meridian
There is a fifty-two watt bulbin Indiana.It has nothing to dowith Eastern standard time.In Louisville for New Year’s the ball dropped one hour ahead of time.Honestly, I never even knewthere was a mountain timeuntil Colorado joined baseball.An act of aging is nicotineso don’t talk about what’s opposite the International Dateline.Just fire it in there,let ‘em … Continue reading Prime Meridian
Acer Rubric
When he shook
the once-sand bottle
what was left made the sound
of a maple leaf growing
It is not possible, he thought,
and it would not be appropriate
for me to shake hands
with a leaf’s three jagged hands
Who needs leaves anyway?
Nothing but the fruited conspiracy
of seed and soil repetitive, hogwash
But the aging leaf in the bottle
interrupted him saying,
Leaves run their veins in all directions
hoping to report most sun
They are green when they need to be,
and red in their rest allegiant to none
but the season
When he finished drinking the leaf
he searched for a sunrise, any sunrise,
his head tilted back,
in sun-loving obeisance
A Natural History of the Indoors
let me check my e-mail
real quick
an eclipse of time & temperature
—you’re right.
It was in
Graham Greene,
Our Man in Havana.
If you don’t think I love you,
then I don’t
Highway One Across
I rolled into the pocket of
that eight-ball-sided dream.
I bumped out with the poetry heebie-jeebies,
crapulous and reeking of split-end angst.
I could not sleep until I brushed the clues away;
it was only then I’d filled the crossword in:
as quiet as the heron fishing
reluctantly in a culvert along the bleeding interstate;
as solemn as the screeching hawk perched in a sunset tree
meditating keen on its blind, nocturnal dinner—
At home amongst the long-legged power towers,
changing colors like a leaf, not afraid to fall.
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...
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