terminus

outside the dark square
diminishing temperature
stiffens the fingers

a lone light bulb pushes
a half-circle of yellow
off a closed door

all attempts-- feeble
a soul slipping through
absolute zero

out the window of Angela's new home in the city

civilization's rectilinear divisions
nature's naked bifurcation
sharp winds blow grey

Capella

she asks if he's ever been afraid
beneath the thought of an infinite night sky
he says no, unless by fear you mean awe

billions of stars just beyond reach
she replies I had to clutch the ground
and he as if you'd fall away from Earth

he tells her of a scintillating star
he can name it but she's already telling him
a whole landscape aflame with light

ash

leave the door open just a crack
and a cold breeze sidles across the floor
our mothers slip into some mumbling dream
their wax-paper skin translucent as time
that lifts generations of leaves

they begin to speak in a language
they used to know before our infancy intervened
as if they never cut their hair
and it fills a whole room
with the volume of a birth-song

maybe their passing is one gusting exhalation
of light and a vacating of voices
which have been in labor
all these long years
of our wasted lives

even we plant our seed
in the mothers of our children
we are re-born in them
we empty ourselves
sometimes hope is a backward looking

a reminiscence of a future
already lived in some broken revolution
spinning through another universe of impossible
the door flies open
shadows with the force of gales

rattle porcelain heirlooms
a stampede from the pastoral linage
a pail of spilled milk
blood of fowl upon a dulled paring knife
the grinding-wheel's coarse edge

a sun-bleached cotton dress
heather in a garden
a wormy radish in earth-darkened fingernails
the sprouting of a green potato skin
sunlight through corn-dust in a crib

the half-warmth of a blue-veined hand
laid against a cheek
red runny nose
a waft of tomato soup
wet washcloth for sweaty locks

song almost in whisper on the long unlit hearth
darkness of solstice held back by sparking log
when tiny cinders glow they speak a truth
one by one they darken to ash

meal at the bar

I have become unfamiliar with the notebook
once a thing of dependance
a crutch or bridge of some sort.
Now I return to it as a pastime
though I still hope for some conversation.
I am at the age where I can only read headlines.
I've forgotten my glasses.
I have come here to eat.
There is only the putting of food in my mouth.
I am hungry.
This is a fact I keep telling myself
far too long to believe it's actually true.
This is a place I know.
I know what to order.
I know where to sit.
Even if the counter is cold
it's familiar.
I like pita and hummus.
That's why I'm here.
Even if I must live beyond hope
I have a full stomach.
Some possibility of conversation is present
but as with all good things
it slowly turns to dust. 

fade

reaching out for      barkless branch
                             weathered grey touch
                                                       dust kiss
                                                                  white ash once moist
whats left               ?
                             ...brown leaves rattling
                                                                                          rattling

hope

eleven dead birds
each a new color
laid out on a table
dark eyes lost to light

a tuft of chickadee
upside-down in a glass
the sparrow's spiny tail
points to some other idea of sky

cowbirds swept into a kitchen corner
(more numerous than fallen leaves)
clogging the sink drains
plugging the toilet

one of each species placed
in a refrigerator
a robin a blue-jay a cardinal
in separate bowls

crows heaped in piles
atop my blankets
each night I'm roused
by muffled thuds

at 3am these birds are still alive
they fly around in song
whitewashing all the furniture

crowbar

have you really come to dismantle all the machinery?
where did you learn to melt steel as if it were lead?
all that I've manufactured through many hard years
see how you've left me in this pool of black oil?
what do I do with these handfuls of bolts?
even if I could consult the lost diagrams
you'd only work your cheap crowbar
deeper into the mechanisms

walking with my son

There's a trail that weaves through a grove of small poplar
that we walk in the evenings as the sun goes down,
when the young bending trunks take on such a color of pink
I can never remember but always dream,
where we sit in summer as green leaves grow
among the rattle of come-and-go breezes,
and find in the fall the color of yellow against a roaring blue
until one day the nakedness of branches--
a landscape becomes part of you.
Why do I speak of this in the present tense?
They're nothing now
just splinters
a swath of bulldozer tracks
beneath electric lines.

Lovers in a re-run with a poet

We were in a Planet of the Apes movie running from a mob.  You were nursing someone's baby.  Keith Taylor was with us, he wore a white lab coat.  We fled up a high hill along a winding road that had been recently asphalted. The hill had been excavated, a huge gully of bare earth cut a dangerous angle down into the city. We came to a solitary structure, a church without a steeple, an abandoned big-box store. Was the baby an orangutang? The mob would soon approach. I knew this. I had already seen the movie. Our plan was to take the stairs up to the balcony. If we could just reach it maybe the mob would be too lazy to follow. Keith placed himself behind a counter and planned to use it as a pulpit from which to shout, "ape has killed ape!" hoping this would provide a distraction. Meanwhile at the far end of the balcony you began to page through some harlequin novels which you'd found on a small end-table. Things were falling apart fast. I needed to find a way to encounter the mole-men who were supposed to save us. They lived beneath the ruins of New York City with the last remaining Intercontinental Ballistic missile. Though they had plastic faces they were supposed to be helpful to humans. The warhead was still armed.

Root of Njaro

When asked by my seventeen year old daughter
to provide a line for her creative writing class
I tell her to say, I come from banana leaves

which Hemingway used to wipe his great white ass.
Her mother strongly disagrees.  Alright, I say,
just tell them you come from an absence of latitude.

Instead of my sister's for left-overs

I choose a coffee shop on the south side of the street because I like the way the sun illuminates storefronts on the other side. This may not be the primary reason. The primary reason is I want to go somewhere public to write. This might not be the primary reason either.  Maybe the primary reason is to overhear conversation which I can insert at random locations into this narrative and so enliven it. A cup of coffee must figure in somewhere. Somehow it interlaces an image of J__ one night at the bar, though she drank hot chocolate, and I rye beer which the bar does not serve. Or does the coffee, from Ethiopia, take me back beneath an overgrown coffee tree, where coffee nuts on reed mats dry in the sun? Why does it always come down to a vision of small breasts in a mirror? (It's because this vision interjects itself into everything, even if there is no garlic, which to me is as great of a sin as having no tahini.) I use tahini in everything. See how this introduces into the reader's mind a connection between tahini and small breasts? Let's take an erotic leap—picture small breasts smeared with tahini. Note: please do not involve J__ with this connection. I do not intend it. They are not her breasts. She would be offended by this intimation. Perhaps this also offends the reader. This is not about the reader. A haze of cloud has shifted between the buildings across the street and the rays of sunlight that would illuminate the storefronts. Winter is here after all, regardless of how many people came for Thanksgiving dinner, or what size the breast was. The tip of a turkey wing, nearly all crispy skin, was the only meat I allowed myself. I love skin. Take that statement and isolate it. I love skin. See how the meaning changes entirely? Now expand this idea to encompass the whole piece of prose. That's both the trouble with, and the beauty of words. I love the flavor of unadulterated coffee. I am still attempting to ascertain the primary reason for my being here, at this coffee shop I mean. Regarding my reason for existing at all, well... As I drove down here through the early morning forests I concluded that I'm quite useless for most things, but none-the-less, here I am. I've determined I no longer need to justify my own existence, and perhaps this realization might be useful to others. The sun's come out; I'm down to the grounds. See how these statements are loaded with symbolism? I guess I'll come back the next time I'm in town.