Thursday, August 27, 2009

family portrait

he ambles he shambles he mumbles
he has bumbled a lot in his life,

she scrambles she dabbles she troubles
she has doubled for nought as his wife,

their children foible they bible they libel
they shall babel down towers of strife.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

cityparksummer

the man in the three piece suit relaxes
cross-legged on the weed-free lawn,

his shiny wingtips empty and grounded,
he waits for the boy with braces after
a downtown orthodontist visit.

the park swelters green almost tropical
in late June’s vibrant noontime,

cucumbers, pita and yogurt drinks
are sipped and munched by sprawling
crowds of gleaming lunchers,

(laughter and talk curve lively through the park’s
wandering perimeter, paint the moment comfortable)

the lad has met a new pal with happy eyes,
soft orangeish fur and a red studded leather collar,

as they romp through fragrant mown grass
sniff its farm-like sweetness,
dad fishes in the rumpled suit coat
for coins, or maybe, a few moist dollars.

the bright bell of the ice cream man
beams and scampers like music
or light across the verdant field

and the three Tuesday picnic-ers
begin to grin like drunken sailors
as they lick melt streams fast flowing
down strawberry and vanilla mountains.

GRAND CANYON BLUES

you’re on the edge of the Grand Canyon in day’s first purplish light,
alone you stand heavy as iron, bound by aches in this sixty year old body,

coffee, Prozac and a good woman won’t save or stop you now as you
picture the step off the cliff’s top and the long free scary swoop downwards.

ignoring the impact on others is the only way to do this,
you erase their horrific reactions to the news you’ve killed yourself,

as you say your last goodbyes to your life, its little lies, self pity and glories,
out of the early bright shine a blonde with killer legs and blue eyes men
would die for, walks up and asks you the time.

two hours later in Flagstaff, the blueberry pie alamode tastes sweet so
delicious so fine, goes down just right with these two smiles and big black
steaming mugs of coffee.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Coffeehouse Afternoon

a boy with eyes like sweet purple
grapes lights up grandma’s lap.

a young man with dreadlocks
of blackened rope chatters
to grandmother in her powder
blue baseball cap,
pets a puppy painted
black and white,
thin fingers fidget in the heat.

a woman with bold sun/
glasses and papers in her fist
drifts like autumn leaves
inside this coffee shop,
a minute later she walks out
with no beverage bought.

the boy with grape shaped eyes
sucks his thumb and watches all,
with luck, the next Cronkite, perhaps?

neighborly ways

Have you been
with a man
with a twitch
and a limp,

a born again
neighborly twit
with an iron
wrench
and fat
hammer
filling his fist

who fixed
you good
that summer
he sullied
your wench

after Beefeater
gin was imbibed
on a backyard
bench made
of wicker,
so woody
so dense

then with
his wicked
gloat twisted
grin purloined
your booze
and re-crossed
his fence

just as
the coming
monsoon
in late June
commenced
its drench?

Right Next Door

the old man next door sits forlorn in his plump red chair,
dreams of far vistas in tattered torn underwear,

a tube of dried out Polident squeezed thin
is next to the sink, while his lower bicuspids float
like dentures of doom in a diluted drink of cheap booze.

we laugh in the night’s bleary eyed middle of such a thing
as our bleeding gums and crusty eyes hear the bells ring,

announce the end which is coming no matter what
is done or not, for this to not happen we’d give up our bling,
write poems to distract from, forget we can sing.

oh god how we like to ignore through our myriad
addictions these final times of decline,

the very last breakfast
the slow fade of strawberries' shine,

this shadow cast everywhere
by the black Saturnian whore.

SCREAMER, SHE

She screamed a high animal yelp,
it cracked open the opaque
square transom.

I refused to offer her help until
her fiendish friends delivered
the full and final ransom.

Our past wasn't so checkered
as it was beleagured and
double-deckered,
a confused bullshit melange
of two unfit home wreckers.

I, at last unfettered, had now done
what was needed.

For years and bleary months she'd
ignored my pleas to come clean,
she'd left me unheeded.

Now her strident cries eased
this inner sadist, frankly
it felt pleasing as I smiled
widely---

a revengeful greedy fool
dying to deposit oodles of
green well earned moola!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

happy whispers

Happy whispers
season the night
like sprinkles of salt
in pure white shafts
of pleasing
moonlight,

Listen easy in quiet
while the west wind
kisses your skin
as the soft sure
truth speaks
from within.

THE FLAG OF MY INTOLERANCE

Oh how I dig these anorectic chicks
with varicose veins, thick silicone lips,
fat plasticized tits, vapid elastic brains,

their stuccoed condos, neutered
computerized casitas with American
flags purchased at WalMart
by frequent shopper repeaters

drooping limp as cooked vermicelli
from paint flaked balconies
in grayish curtains of rain.

The wet red white and blue
salutes the innocent slain:

high flying falcons fallen
flat onto hot soaked asphalt,
squirrels squished immobile
under rolling rubbery Michelins

by drunken at-fault pickup
truck drivers, gun racked,
half deaf, bald skulled,
counterfeit grinners,

big ears glued
to countrified honky-tonk
music, they holler
and hoot off-tune,
an unhallowed refrain.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

What Lies Under

Lift up the hotel
mattress hulk
in early morning
with Liza and
the rest of
your friends,

tip the big foam
rectangular bulk
down towards the foot,

peer into the lowlight
underneath the bed,

see a large hole
of dirt and rock dug
out several stories
above ground


and wonder how
three small spindly
evergreen trees
grew from seedlings
in darkness

with no sun
to reach
towards,

as innocent you
pouted
and dreamt,
slept easy
and snored

deeply above.

waiting for godknows

a tangled garden of rotting yellow vegetables
in a postage stamp square of once fertile dirt

we waited for whatnot
hot as a blacksmith shop
in late August’s mangled
freeway sun

Sunday, August 16, 2009

FIRST

THE DAY
I WROTE
THAT FIRST
POEM

MY NOSE
BLED
RIVULETS
OF WARM
RED

AND THE
DICTIONARY
REFUSED
TO
OPEN.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

MEAL TIME

a pool of French’s mustard,
creamy melted goldenrod,
lively tangs my lover’s
freckled dreamy skin.

we languish past time’s
wide window with paper
cups of ketchup, these crimson
puddles on her white belly
taste tart and sweet
together,

as we sink and swim and thrive,
flow down this menued stream
of brimming weirdly
wondrous flavors,

poke pillowed heads above
grandma’s fabled tablecloth,
wonder when and how will
the real good meal
temptingly begin?

She slowly twists open
the brand new jar of mayo,
spreads it amazingly thin
onto twin peaks of virgin earth
whose tips stand fresh and raw
in twisting winds beyond
these clouds of condiments

and as with a single tongue
and set of ivory teeth
like symbiotic tendrils
we eat and eat and eat,

nude silky skinned gourmands
we lick and chew,
smack and swallow such
gaily colored fluids

lunge into storms of hunger’s
tender wild growling
like crazy druids,

a pair of red white and sunny
yellow lips shine fat and happy in
this plunge delicious
of waning luscious light.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

DO YOU?

do you ever feel
faded like an old
stain on the couch?

out of touch with
facebookers,
barely an onlooker,

a real geopolitical
slouch,

prone to mistake
a botched drone
flown into homes
over Pakistan

for an
outmoded
unconscionable
assault?

Monday, August 10, 2009

THAT DAY

On the day my mother died
of cancer, afterwards
on that scorching
blue March afternoon,

a helicopter wrecked the sky
with sounds so giant,
an engine’s dirge to drown
my oiled grief

as I held our baby daughter
in the thickly green backyard,

desired to become a cloud
or bud before the bloom

beyond flesh and toil
just this once.

Now with the passage
of these eighteen years,
every hummingbird I see

writes mom’s name in nectar
on sweet hibiscus flowers
outside clear windows
of warm homes,

and the hum-scented alphabet
spells out quite well
how life and death
shall engulf us all one day,

as we learn to read and hear
and fly inside expansive
quiet

time and time
again.

friendship

friendship,
a golden
light bathes
this backyard

in which perfumed
trees burst open

as we join the birds
above

become a song
or cloud to love
and float

or shove,
perhaps
to shout
aloud!

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

SLO

WE RAVISH THE DAY
ON WHICH WE MAKE
NO DEMAND.

TUCKED IN THE GRASP
OF TIME'S SLOW CRAWL
BEGIN TO LOVE THIS LAND.

BLACK FIGS PLUCKED FAT
AND RIPE FILL OUR NUT
BROWN OPEN HANDS.

THE TILLED VALLEY SHINES
SOFT AS SIFTED FOG OR
A SUDDENESS OF GRACE

IN SUNDAY MORNING'S
LACEY MIST JUST BEHIND
YOUR KIND RADIANT FACE.

SAN LUIS

WE RAVISHED THE DAY,
THE LAND,

BLACK FIGS FAT AND RIPE
FILL OUR NUT BROWN
OPEN HANDS,

THE TILLED VALLEY SHINES
SOFT AS FOG OR GRACE
IN MORNING'S MIST
BEHIND YOUR RADIANT
FACE.

Sultry Season

On that next sweltering August night
when sweat beads and annoys with
pools like mercury cloying on
your middle aged wrinkling skin

and you grumpily curse that half-hearted
air conditioner whining and thumping
in spurts next door like a 2 am drunken plumber,

you might remember other summers
when torrid eves and sky-high sun
were sure signs of such complete
pure pleasure:

cherry popsicles sweet and cold
delivered by the bell ringing ice
cream man,
the knowing that there’s no school
for six or more long and grateful weeks,
frozen milky ways so hard you must
admit your teeth may have met their match,

hamburgers flipped on shiny barbeques
as a sprinkler sifts and sashays
like Astaire across a broad backyard,
consecutive days of barefeet braving
bumblebee lawns and black molten
pavement, city lava sticks like ink
to your pinkly calloused toes

(shoeless so many days you forget
where your shiny loafers will be found
in deep and dark September),

and your first real crush,
the feel of another’s warm
soft hand tentative in yours’
and that summer wind tousling
two heads of hair as shyness melts
like a liquefied fudgesicle
you kiss her quick,
just once before you and your heart
skip grinning toward those exhilarating
safe lights of home and the golden
cinnamon kitchen,

oh yes that summer wind
how it carried laughter and freedom
with your crewcut pals
through the neighborhood down
the long summer blocks where you sped
like dragonflies mischievously flitting
from this moment to that, simply scurry
on pedaling Schwinns in patient eternal hurry,

enough to last a lifetime
if you’re luckily willing
to hold childhood’s summery pluck
close like a yo-yo spinning
fast at day’s end or a mitt
of dusky brown well-worn leather
stained with streaks of sugary goodness

after frozen crimson treats shed their sticks
of balsa,
coat glistening happy this
your sultry awesome season,

speak in living color to a later
older self of future
wondrous summers.