Lullaby

He falls into sleep with the softness of a whisper,
a time of anomalous existence where nothingness
takes shape as dreams and images that shelter him
from the delicate truth of death.

Behind closed eyes he watches me move to
either side like a silent sentry and I begin to
wonder what it's like to be in his dreams
and ponder the places he has been and the
people that exist only in his mind.

The shadows lift from my armchair in the corner
when the sun rises from its slumber and washes
away the dark presence that follows with the night.

The light strikes his eyes twice and once again he is awake,
his limbs no longer numb and void of life.
His eyes, glistening blue and white,
know humanity again for fourteen hours;

he witnesses my smile, and recognizes
the loving sentience of his grandmother and the
steamy greeting of black tea on a cold winter morning.

The Common

Jane and Paul think that farming
is like their college foodservice,
that little lunch-ladies swoop the
peas, corn, carrots and buckwheat
into harvest buckets before marketing
to the general and hungry public;
they believe that agriculture mimics
their elitist collegian multiculturalism,
that it desegregates the 3-field system
into one field that has stopped rotating
and continually loses its fertility, for
separate but equal is inherently unequal
and every field needs a fair chance.

They believe it's that easy.

Children

We ought to have two children,
just enough to replace our position
in the provisional populus;
let them do our should-have-dones,
and settle our old scores.

It costs money to be born, however;
our mechanical midwife that looks
just like a chicken separator
is on a 3-day getaway to
erupting Kalamalooto, Honolulu,
and, after all, giving birth among
the wilds oaks and cedars
was outlawed when a green-collar
Buffalo Bill became the
insemination whistle blower.
He found the sedge grass and the
sacred fallen leaves tossed up
and imprinted with our shapes,
depressed by our naked love-making;

and it's all evidence that somewhere
along the production line, you and I
touched in the simian way of apes,
rolled the conceptual dice of
the great paleolithic game,
rolled in the wet hay,
and avoided the
writhing polymer needles
of the electric gigolo
that is meant to conceive
our one and only
dream.

Marxism

There are famous names on the blackboard slate
that everyone writes down in their college-ruled.

These are the names that haven't faces,
but definitions and little notated renditions.
These are historic lives once lived,
but lives and legacies that will be
buried forever in the philosophy of flash cards
and the pathos of busy-sheets;

Maybe no one will recall them in a few months,
when all of the schedules have fallen away,
when the month of May rushes in,
when noble names and thinkers
become replaced by sports,
scores of canonized T.V. Guides
and a few difficult serious Senior Relationships.

At some time everyone will ask, “Why?”
and finally come to realize that they
once held the answers in the names that lurk
in the back of their minds, in a place the size
of a withered kidney bean called the hippocampus,
and in the disconnected ideas exiled from the
world-wide-web of text-messaging activists.

We live where inequality is constantly realized,
and anarchists work at the global fast-food market;
where everyone forgets what it is to be human,
to calmly and creatively think,
and to achieve something greater than
a few new conspiracy theories or
a high-calorie sauerkraut on rye at
the end of a hard, lazy day.

Huntress

She sat across a clean, white table,
spoke only in her quiet tones.
Her gaze wandered to his own,
watchful like the silent huntress.

She was gathered in conversation
among strangers and smiles,
close enough to hear his resolved words,
but words spoken only to others.

The yearning moments galloped on.
She leaned so close behind him.
He spoke with his eyes,
like the phantoms in her dreams,
and he watched her scribble her notes,
embarrassed.

She sat a bit behind his family at lunch,
and wondered if he could spot her so close.
He rose and poured pungent black coffee,
the same flavor that she often drank.
She imagined all of his glistening facets.

A day transpired into the winterly ether.
Together in a group of youths
swept into a deluge of adulthood,
he stood beside her beneath the eaves
of university, and smiled into the breeze with her.
Not a word was spoken. For that sunset alone,
an eddy swirled them side by side;
forces beyond the watch of nature wrapped them
in the temporary tether of a fleeting moment,
where the huntress could wonder about
her desires and dreams that could never be satisfied,
her languished future never to be seen.

Under the evening sun wilted lavender was
caressed by the wind, and attraction bloomed.

Embla

Woman leaves the audience.
Man follows with his hand in hers.
Woman walks somewhere with Man;
there is determination and purpose in their strides.
Smiles slide across their faces.
Woman and Man are in a dark room now.
They don't speak more than a few words to make it to privacy.
In their long, silent gazes, they know;
Woman is in the arms of trust and
Man has long since been conquered.
Woman knows happiness then,
knows that this conceives in shadows a radiant future.
Woman knows her vulnerable nakedness then,
Man becomes more gentle and loving in turn.
They make love and their bodies meld and
shift into fleshy mountains and smooth cliffs,
pieces of driftwood of ash and oak
steadily sloshing in the red sea.
Woman makes love to Man, Man to Woman,
and amidst the tender stroking and tingling,
they breathe in the sky and know what it is to be alive.

Real Omelets

Curiosity splits the eggshell of your inhibitions;
Desire draws out the wriggling slimy yolks.
Wonder asks if you'd like it to be over-easy,
Scrambled, or just premature.

The Organic Ideal

Coil, beat and slip;
mound it on the wheel and
watch it skip
     across the floor.

Spin it too fast, feel the cracks.
Comb and coil, burnish and toil,
beat on the textures and reinforce
     the organic ideal
               with marble mixtures.

Seat it in the kiln --
cone ten to broil.
     Raku
and magnesium salts,
liquid silicia, molten and glaxed,
fire will bring out your faults.

Untitled #3

Blue,
     blue nights.
Burnt orange on the unmade
polyester bedsheets.
Blue,
     blue nights,
wondered away out of a dark window
     while watching passer-bys,
imagining
where they were going and what was
     on their
     minds.
Blue walls and cheap Picasso prints --
     Dali is standing over the bedposts.

     A guitar sits in the corner;
     it hasn't been played in a few nights
by anyone but the moonlight.
Blue,
     blue nights,
lonely like reading newspapers in the bathroom,
or playing chess alone in the summer breeze.
Blue,
     blue nights;
the blue that only shows itself in the few moments
before the sun goes to sleep in the bedrock
     and color no longer exists.

Boot Days

Sun removed the chill
of frost that iced over will.
Brown boots crunch through snow,
cold cars pass by slow.

Feet cross those snowy old roads;
blackbirds sing and chrip.
Crows are perched up high
on an aged, wiry white pine.
They croak and swoop low.

Brown boots slide and step.
Ice and slush. Not quite there yet.
Steam glazes the sky.
Hello and goodbye,
then winter wanders away,
and life trickles on.

A Brother in Arms

I wear a suit so that nobody knows what's
     beneath the khaki merino wool;
That way, everyone may taste the gourmet of my
     everyday elitism.
I take care of my little brother with the
     power of positive thinking, denial
and the fantasy that it's still 2003,
     that he's just quiet and infantile.
He'll grow up to be just like me.
          Five years ago, that might have passed inspection,
but now I have an overdue parking ticket,
the miles have transpired and my hope needs an oil change.
I take out my pocket change and mound it
     on the table in front of him.
In the year that we're counting our nickels and dimes,
     he just looks at me and cries.

Threshold

There's someone ahead a ways,
who crosses frozen cascades
and jumbled frost-heaven roads.

A swift gait leads her forward,
chancing strides, yet quite stable,
led with her quiet intent.

Birds rise on the icy air
beyond the dying maples.
Cars sputter and clunk by her.

She reaches the gray glass gates,
just a dozen steps ahead,
and holds open the cold doors.

What does her smile imply,
her curious countenance
and that silent youthful gaze?

I may never understand,
but still pass her with a nod
and wonder about her world.

Twenty-Somethings

What really depends on the first twenty-something years?

Thirsty for an escape but working up to a career;
It'd be a lie to say there isn't any irony here!

The elite school makes you the slave:
the driver of Blue-collar furnaces,
of those struggling in the golden fields of wheat --
or it places you on the hill of success,
North of the land of opportunity,
but it's not for you.

We were too afraid to run away from our day jobs,
so we got married, tied the noose,
read the newspaper
every morning, went to church on Sunday
and we settled for a career.

Year after year we took a vacation in May,
watched the farmers hay our fields
and didn't have anything to say.
You read Huck Finn to Jim, little Jim.
Secretly we hoped he'd escape our life of worker syndrome some day.

One day we skipped church and drove to the coast.
We tried to get the most out of our love,
to suckle from the forbidden beehive,
and smiled,
then turned back and broke our own spines,
broke in a new pair of leather shoes,
went light on the polish,
and tried to get little Lucy into college.

We gave money to her college fund,
and Jim ran for some high-seat.
Then she was in heat.

But in the long run, as we know,
when our grand-grandson came,
he was mean, and we looked off into the sun
and succumbed to the light breaking over
a far off horizon, across the mountains,
over the islands, and let our sightless
Bodies return to infantile mirth,
and re-enter the
womb of the Earth.

The Dewey Decimal Complex

I want to be a librarian;
I want to have my social groups
consist of books,
not jumps through hoops.

I want the dust I brush off shelves
to mimic a woman's smell,
and a lust for knowledge replace
the need to breed.

I want to write like I'm a competitive fighter,
and recommend books because
I actively read them.

Calm and succinctly sophisticated,
I want to be a librarian.

Common Sense

I stood in a bathroom stall for a long time, today,
Dripping for inspiration, under those fake fluorine lights.
This poem is a product of my plight.

Rain

Lit up in the rain,
Smiling shivers, warm goodbyes;
Run away with me?

Office. Complexity.

The great judgment halls are empty at night.
The carpet is a dirty gray. The empty space is musty,
And the raw air in the old office buildings
Stings the lungs with formaldehyde.

Blab, Blab. Give the correct answer. Praise. It's the
Critical phase. Mr. St. Hilaire? The peer group is a pecking order.
Success rides the wave of grades, and all insights are like grenades
And must be revolted against. Write poems on your test and, for
A moment, forget grammar and the granite rules of verse.
Write to free onself from the human condition – it's all so complex.

Colors illustrate in my mind's eye the ganzfeld field
That exists just beyond my field of vision.
Here I come, listen to our collision as the steel framework
Of buildings fuses with our musings and social rules.
Listen to something new, then turn off your iTunes and think.

Dissonance of Seasons

Another human life washes in with the
Cold confusion of the misty universal tides.

Her infant body has been broken over the spines of
The ocean's rocky protrusions, burned by the brine,
And beached on the sandy illusion of safety.

Shadows and dust are all that she may be,
A complex driftwood husk, Ash or Elm, lifeless until
The moment she breathes her first earthen breaths.
Her skin seethes hot with life, and is fused with color.

Her thoughts begin to analyze, and to imagine.
She witnesses the clockwork strife of things.
When she draws the first longing sip from her
Generation's naked breast, she begins to understand all the rest.

She is exposed and sensitive, a chickadee with her mouth ajar.
She is a child who abides only by the moon-tides.
She sleeps at night and awaits the break of dawn,
Hungry to witness the human fray that preys on what is natural.

Courage becomes her only hope along her journey through life.
In the sky suspended on high, she finds her father,
Smiling from the iridescent infinity of space and time.
Immersed in the wonder of such beautiful things, she pauses,
Then begins to travel again, to wonder and ask, “Why?”
When she meets the lonely sundered woods.

The forest has had its defenses breached;
Slowly, utterly, it shrinks and then falters.
In her lifetime, the wilderness mounts its final resistance;
It is folding and buckling, churning and chuckling,
At the slash-and-burn persistence of the greatest predator.

The child continues on, and finds her mother among the desolation
That is in all the ages and in all of the places on this Earth.
With the wisdom of the sages, Mother gives consolation,
Meaning to the isolation, all life now stripped of what it was once worth.

On the damp soil that lies beneath her feet and
In the quiet shelter within the shade of the trees,
She finds solace in Father's timeless embrace,
And courage in Mother's nurturing whispers.



She has become a woman now, and with pride and
Intent, she walks and strides to the rhythm of the wind.
Her shadow is the darkness that creeps across the falling leaves,
That bluster past us in frightening, frigid blasts.

In the short moments between the shifting dissonance of
Seasons and societies, ages and phases,
In the time it takes for our ashes to become oaks,
She has found her home, her heart, and her reasons.

All that this Earth once was is now fleeting,
Save our remembrance of the smell of the endless sea,
The pang of salty brine, and the cool turquoise breeze.
Our woman watches and waits and we take the bait.

Above the splashing waters and the groaning waves,
She waves her reverent farewell to us and notices
The color when it drains from our drooping faces.

Death relaxes each of our hallowed forms in time,
And lays us first to bake and broil beneath the sun,
Somewhere among the universe of our forlorn things.

Then the rope slips and the knots come undone --
She lets us make our plunge back into the sea of fire.
Her watchful face wavers and then fades into the light,
As our lives vanish beneath the waves.

Aurora Pond

That evening three dead men were swimming
Under the sunset, silhouetted by where
The horizon waned to a warm black.
That evening their feet were wrapped
In milfoil and in muck, itchy from the
decomposing leaves and the sulfuric heaves.
The sun set and for for a moment there was twilight;
Their bodies sank beneath the wavering water and
As they descended, became shadowy, pallid, and quite
A grim sight.

That evening that the three dead men were swimming,
You and I could go skinny dipping without worry,
For the leeches were preoccupied by the reddening rush of fluids
And the buoying bubbles of postmortem exasperations.
And the lazy fish swam about in shifting circles,
Welcoming us to immerse ourselves within the cool liquid
Of their aquatic domain.

That evening that the three dead men were swimming in Little Pond,
We mistook it for the ocean, the blast of polluted air as the sea breeze,
And the toxic sky as the greenest Aurora Australis

We laid together on our bare backs and bottoms in the cold groggy sand,
And gazed up towards the milky way.
We made the radiant stars our lovely children;
Alpha Centuari had epilepsy, and Polaris was our little politician;
And then we laughed in a gaily way, and made the ethereal arms of
The far-off galaxies the boundaries of their cosmic playpens.

Granola

Stop tossing away
The bananas, the granola,
The raisins; Stop wasting
What your taste-buds hastily
Reject, like it fell on the floor.
It's not fashionable or trendy
To treat it like rubbish because
We've got so much of it, so
Stop wasting more and more.
You wasted more than your meal
Pays for and bolstered the carbon
emissions up to a full stomach.
And in the corn-fields run by
Slaves and those who wonder
About the glorious days of
Marxism and the green hospitality,
You'll be remembered,
When someone starves but
Could have been nourished on your waste –
You'll be remembered.