Thursday, September 22, 2016

Our Exquisite Corpse

Lids lifted to reveal darkness inside,

bloodless and blank-eyed, a void where
life once illuminated
a world we’ll never know,
now null, flatlined,
fallow, forgotten. Nothing

left but lips opened for an oh of horror,
gaping where a last spasm
shuddered forth and
screamed silently,
exhaled what thin reed
stood against the banks
of an arid rill, a final
stand undermined as sand slid
where roots once held
with a rotted parchment claw.

Colorless and cold as porcelain,
twisted fingers clutched
as though scratching
lichen from stone, nails
filled with filth gathered from
petroglyphs scrawled into

the face of rocks.

Friday, September 16, 2016

I Miss My Ring

Muted peel, forgotten bell;
the broken seal
of a shotgun shell.

Skin unbound, denuded, free;
a bloodless sound
where your ring would be.

Empty pall, a phantom limb,
where leaves that fall
sing a dirge-like hymn.

Though the sting is fresh and new,
I miss my ring

but I don’t miss you.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

3 Doors, Closed

Door #1


When you smash the pots I made for you,
put the shards tip up in the dirt, so they
look like the sails of small boats or
sharks’ teeth in a ravaging maw.
Arrange them in a way that you’ll never
see the pieces as they originally were,
an assembled whole where roots struck
bottom but pushed stems to air and light.

Door #2


If we’re too stiff to dance,
to move without arms
pinioned to priorities
and everyone on our Friends list,
then what the fuck are we doing with what time we have?

Door #3


In the end, you left me with nothing but
          an unsigned card
                     molding in the drawer,

mawkish tropes, doggerel, words you
         scanned and assumed
                      held weight or meaning

(or at least might mean more to me than you).

As days passed, memory decayed in dirt,
         too late for burial,
                     the card's sentiments

an afterthought with a very short shelf-life.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Mr. Todd's Yard of Charnel Horrors

          We’d buried our Comet in the Square Hole, under rocks, bits of broken concrete and clumps of grass ripped from the surrounding field. We pulled the wheels and Suzie pried off the silver Comet emblem that had managed to survive all the damage we’d done. Billy added a snowglobe to the grave, stashing the others into the sack he’d made from a coat he’d found. Everything else went in the wagon so we could take it all back to our fort. Then we just stood and looked at the mound, silently, as though honoring a fallen comrade. 
           “I wonder if someone will dig that up in a thousand years and ask why it was given a burial? Maybe they’ll think it was some kind of primitive robot that we loved enough to bury in a grave.” I had thought about saying something inspirational, something like what the last person says at the end of those films we watch in school, but all I could think of was how we might be pranking future archaeologists.

Sunday, August 21, 2016

Lake Trout and Document 5

Lake Trout

A substantial shadow in the shade of the shore,
a cool place
between stones
that give back the alpine sun’s shining,
its dappled back
like the lights that appear in the shoregrass at night,
going nowhere
and showing nothing.

Waiting. Watching. Wondering
if those eyes admit memories,
if my face is clear
beyond the lake’s spirituel lens,
knowing  
my intention to cast a line.

My father brought me here, many times,
a legend passed on to him about a hidden tarn,
tucked beneath the cups of two peaks’ cirques, 
a deep pool
shrouded by dense stands of spruce and juniper;

where an antediluvian intelligence ruled waters
as rarified as regal spirits,
striving only for survival,
while accumulating
what wisdom or ways
will the realm toward
an equilibrium in death’s dissolute diet.

A tailfin, larger than my hand, fans sand and silt,
mica and decay,
moving out
to light, taunting,
laughing at me,  
lolling in a languid drift from the flutter of its fins’
feathered fingers,
a dismissive wave.

Document 5

There is nothing in the pantry for her to make
and everything there is beyond her grasp,
anyway; a cup of milk may as well be
an Arabic anagram or
a ton of spoiled meat.

Hunger. For.

Eating, a broken clock, a reckoning of time
manifest in hunger, a gnawing knowledge
that something is missing and things will
be better somewhere, where? Where,
where there is eating, a broken clock,
a reckoning of time manifest in hunger,
where? Where are the rest? Eating?

A broken clock.

A reckoning of time.

Something
is missing.

In between, everything is missing but that
static quintessence of each second, the is where –
where. Where the is is, is an opaque reflection of
clouds on a cream-white opal, an ephemeral flash
of what was but is not is.
Is missing something.

Hunger. For.

Dreaming, a desperate plea, someone needs to be saved
as there’s no time left, what’s left has left her
out, left out, out left, gone, left, out, dreaming is
and out where, where? Where is is? Where is out?
Out where dreaming is the eating and a
reckoning of time manifest in hunger,
eating is, is dreaming is, is is but where?

A broken clock.

A dream. Eating. A dream.

Something is missing.

Friday, August 19, 2016

These Stones Don’t Sing out Here No More

These stones don’t sing out here no more.

Their dead song’s dead,
songs don’t get sung no more
so there’s just nothin’
but a sound that don’t make no sense.

These stones don’t sing out here no more.

The bear, the poem,
the plastic flowers gone
got wind scattered and
torn from the white cross we planted.

These stones don’t sing out here no more.

A broken bike
that fell off someone’s truck,
someone movin’ to
some better place for speaking their names.

These stones don’t sing out here no more.

And so I sing,
for them and all of us,
bones above and below,
a song about the forgotten.

And I sing, sing,
tears like branding irons,
words explode on the wind,
“Rise! Fix this broken bike and ride!

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Two Poems

Aurora

Clouds were scattering west, following the night,
fleeing the scene as if they’d stuck around to see
if anything else might fall and break,
or lay dead in pools
collected along curbs.

Last night, summer skies clashed,
cold and hot air, high pressure and low, everything
exploding, thunder cracking like a lone gunman’s random shots
 ripping through the night, the sky screaming
and, in an instant, bleeding light.

Behind the blinds, it appeared as though
armies battled in the dark, booming guns
pounding enemies hidden without and within,
in the heart of the city,
in the heat of the night,
in the promise of damage and destruction,
in the deaths of things.

Morning emerged, wrapped in a damp towel,
a lambent crimson rim on the horizon
like a gash, a tear where day asserted itself
timorously, taking a tentative step into
where the sky had lashed the land,
where the storm unleashed itself,
where the wind and rain shredded artifice
and laid bare roots to expose corruption,
decay, dirt, things buried beneath the
incremental accumulation of discarded time.

She arose, radiant, chin tilted toward what’s
passed and past, her displeasure betrayed
by the usual ruse of regal indifference.

Dawn shimmers away to fill mirage pools,
leaving the August sun to do the heavy lifting
and hopefully dry things out,
clean up the mess,
carry on with what life remains from before the storm
(if what’s broken can still give grief words),
and believe those scattered clouds will never return.


                                     
White Privilege

Mimicking a hummingbird, its wings bombinate with hovering,
making itself welcome to our hydrangea blossoms.
Out of its innate knack for subterfuge and duplicity,
It has been allowed access to our flowers and their nectar,
even though it was never our intention to invite that family.

“It’s not a bird. It’s a moth.”

“I wondered.

It’s ugly. That awful face and fat body.

All brown and black.”

“Shall I kill it?”