Pug's Dilemna

The reflection of skin- I, aging
Battle-worn fingers and bones agreeing
Teeth and hairless and oh, eyes all but now used up
Who’s teeth are these in this weary windy plane?

Without planning it
it came unbidden

the grooves are deep and soft and easy and round
at the edges- it would be so simple to simply
fall out and wash away with a tide
but fear and fatigue and simple samesame
keep me here, always.

or maybe, we are just afraid
of disappearing all at once
instead of gradually.

Stateless Itching

On our way toward mediocrity
(not the meaning you want,)
we start to itch.....

Birds fly from our mouths
tongueless, as if it was a joke
laughter taking the place of breath.

shall we continue on toward our destination?
(all signs are encouraging!)

How to Make a Bird

fingertip to your lips
the long trip now completed


I am enfolded

To make a bird
One starts by rolling
The dough
The beak takes shape
Then feather then wing.
The thing of it, though.
Is to give it permission
To fly away .

The leaver, therefore, unfolds and rises into the wind.

To make a bird
One thinks about what it means
To be in free air
While never mistaking falling for flying.

Varieties of Air

Morning Sonanta
Lecturing the dawn
a throat may be left afire
before someone notices the smoke

The squirrels chatter in
in argument with the crows
over the seeds in the sunflower down the street

- breakfast is served

all manner of music
just tuning
before the sun rises

Stardust

Angry planners, stateless, roadless,
Sleep through their rage
For now.

Not even the crunching sound
Of stars being crushed can stir these heroes
Whirling in empty orbit.

Anyday anyday anyday

The dreamer will rise to
A hollow sound-a blown horn
The desert wanderer blows
To call her dreamers home.

Risks of Disappointment

Some
A few
Who risked disappointment
Rose from the clutter
And tried to make history

The rest
The many
Who remain safe
(though they dream or so)
Become part of the dirt

A voice
A shadow
A shade
The color of loam
The color of air
Asks a single question

inspired by Jeremy GILBERT-ROLFE- a short poem about Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime

You decided to go swimming
But soon you were detained
in the shadowy territory
By shadowy men
in fantastic paper hats
With lines of poetry written on them
Yours was the crime of the cynic

Nothingness is probable :
A hoax for our time.
But Everything is promised
and the game is fixed

Beauty will not be overlooked.

A Poem Constructed by Re-Writing Writing on Marlene Dumas

An Act of Seeing as with
The lost practice of ecstasy
Almost never makes a point.

Ever-evolving you never
wade in the same idea twice
But to focus on the difference
strips out the indifference
and once clearly stripped of its meaning
meaning goes waiting.

Suggesting but never confirming
Perhaps the group is
A common disease made up of
Endless descriptions of color
Explicit bodies in identity
And kind descent.

Some are known
Some are not

Some are believers
And some are pilgrims

These are the ways
To many small burials
(“I am who does not know”)
Obliterated birth
(“Because, in death, one is permitted to see”)

This is a concealed post-mortem
Hidden by careful beauty
(the text cleverly becomes the Author)

Gradient Breath

Those of us who fancy
Ourselves as wolves
Are probably really pigs

Great eaten godless
Heads on sticks
At the shore of song

Even now,
In the presence of such beauty
I am happy

Conformity is a Wolf*

You don’t need to name everything.
But sometimes we need
someone to know us

(she could tell he was not listening.)

She fell
He shivers

Centrifugal feelings
Anticipating nature
flinging
Outward from the middle
Toward the edge and over

The Sun wishes it wasn’t here

*Carl Van Doren

With This Chest Full Of Feathers How Can I Possibly Draw the Moon?

Alive at the end of the world
Perhaps a blessing, but mostly
A moment so perfect that I can barely breathe

An imprecise lightness, but with no witness
An argument with the sky, maybe.
Surplus is no longer a benefit, abundance is shed
For fallibility
and the god of certainty is finally
Shown to be a goofy charlatan,
A charmless hoaxster with no real power here.

At the end of the world
Mister Death arrives in an Oldsmobile
His wife nattering at his side.
He takes a walk in the evening around the neighborhood ,
without her,
So he can sneak a cigarette or two,
And he comes in, smelling of tobacco which
She takes for brimstone- the tool of his trade.
His secret is safe.

Life is a River

You are a worm, Marengo
You are a worm at the end of the world
And at the end of time

In the book of dreams
Your name is written in
Some strange perspective that, when chanted aloud
conjures a glimpse of a world to come

Searchlights on the shoals of dreams
Only partly illuminate your design
As you hover somewhere slightly above
The darker water.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Coming to you
While looking through
The other end of the glass

A slight itching
Which begins in the throat
But finds its way to the heart
Starts to make a way around
A bigger problem.

That is, the work of
Sleep that first leaks
A poor substitute for attention.

He kept wanting more of me, she said.

Saturn

Saturn

Crouching in the dark and smoke
eating our children
we eaters of the dead

The dead are not understood
Nor the lessons they have to tell
They have secrets for us
How to turn ones skin inside out
How to sleep without dreaming

Only the living can dream with their eyes open