He Swallowed

he swallowed the day
like good red wine
and the day in its turn
opened to him over time,

when it slowly became a cave
of minerals coalescing
and not a broad meadow
primarily for sleeping,

his brave acts became a child
in flannel pj’s creeping
along tiled halls
in a grand mansion
of strange flailing people

their bony arms
a windmill circus
gesticulating,

then, like a bullet
over a ribbon of river

dark fleshy rock
grottos dripped wet,

in this get-together of
opaque wailing
and weeping.

Dream

my many paintings hung
on the broad high wall,
I sprayed them all with water
from a streaming hose

the bedroom’s paint began
to lift and peel
a flood flashed through the house
causing me to run
and feel

how hasty effort ratchets up
the present moment
and shrinks attention
to a minor player.

SWINE FLEW

could this spreading swine flu
reflect our snouts stuck
deep in the trough,
ears closed to grunts,
we snort and we hunt,
we’re eaten by greed

our hunger for more
and our neglect of the score
as we gobble our earth
in gluttonous riot

shut tight the door
to those who need
our love and our time
as they cower and hide,
their empty grumb/
ling bellies down
on the floor?

Night on the Town

this body lumbers and farts along
the swerving dirt packed trail,
where men and mice belong
mired in wet travail.

oh how we trudge the days
and nights away
in all our boombox glory,
we wait and wait and wait
for a sacred valet with slick hair,
cocaine, white teeth, his name
must be Rory,

and when he arrives at our door
we slip off the ice cold steering wheel,
surrender the vehicle with mixed motive
slide away from what we feel,
as he tips his plastic straw in rows of powder
in well practiced church-like ritual
and squeals the car away in a brash spark
of rubber and concrete.

we sit on the cold curbside
car-less in the dark
there’s a space we inhabit,
a welcoming near north Chicago
and a little park,

a red and white plastic straw
lays twisted in the street,
ahead a screaming siren, a loud flash
of sharp red lights,

suddenly, as our shoulders brace
for body bags as the living gawk,
we stand up start to stagger
upon the gray sidewalk,

the night has settled the score,
no further need to speak.

FIRST DATE

the tender laughing surface of things
shimmers like a girl with a pink jacket
and a boy in cobalt corduroy
warmed near a blue fire,

their delight simmers and surprises
creates a ring of open history
around this plush moment

where an improvised storytelling
compels a knowing of deeper
silence under chalk cliffs
at the edge
of the open channel
as small birds
swoop and lift in the swift
fresh breeze.

Speaker's Bureau

“I am mostly honored to meet most
of you in this grand hall today
which I've been told by our host
is Tuesday
(or is it the weekend?)
over our steaming bright
bowls of thick requisite stew.

The train on the tracks which shall
interrupt my speech as I lurch
and loiter through phrases and stages,
with its tin whistles
and wails and whines,
flies like a bullet towards
that city up north where we’d
all rather be living sometime.

This burg we call home
is plebian and plain,
yes one could safely say
it’s boringly mundane,
yet our crime reports bring
a certain luster and cachet
and that new jail downtown,
well, hey!....

So, let me conclude my ramble
and rhetoric with this bit
from a proud civic forefather:
‘a pig in the poke and some
good dope to smoke,
a friend or two and a frig
full of food make a life
worth its weight in tomatoes.’ "

Anonymous (Timeless)

Writing

each word comes to us
as a birchbark canoe
embarked on its wayward
way across this azure lake

an hour before light
burns through misty
gray corners of the day

in these still and wild
waters of our thankful
mind.

I AM

I am a plump grapefruit ready for a fork
or silver knife to pierce my fleshy gold.

I am an alley full of strangers and their
voices like morning music thumping
at a rusty dumpster.

I am a patient moment when gap and stretch
become a time for all to breathe.

I am golden.

I am darkness yearning for itself.

I am far from here where the Andes
and the Conquistadors soak their sleeves
and lust for spoils in blood of bold
squat Indian men.

I am the trill of birds on city branches.

I am the treaded known and the map not yet drawn
nor imagined in the shining mind of the explorer’s son.

I am scintillation, pure and simple.

I am the canyon deeper than we can reasonably descend.

I am the mass of bone and mortal fear known
as doubting man.

I am tomorrow clothed in today’s purple vestment.

I am who am as we all in truth be told shall be.

You are I AM,
We Can Be
Morning and Night,
the Air
Where Breath and Body
Soar as a Dove
or Goddess
or Light,

this woven cloth
where Planets
loosely wrapped
bathe and breathe
their luscious
first clean
freshest sigh.

Before Genocide Was a Word

When the Jews began
to suffocate en masse
on crusts of week old bread
and vans of poison gas
thrust at them by hateful
obtuse Germans
and Lemkin made his rounds
in a new white suit and shoes
to scream to us of horrors
so far beyond
our ken,

Why did their strangled
breathing, those wild human
cries for mercy not reach our
shell shocked ears and minds
in time to make the needed
difference for so many many lives?

The answer is unsettling.
We did not want to care
for those out of sight
past rose colored
glasses nor see the evil
flowering where
the mirror had been
hung askew
in darkened rooms
between a twisted
steep flight
of stairs and walls
thick as death’s
massive whisking
broom.

cleanshave

I like the feel of a week’s
worth of beard
on my chin,
how my cheeks scrape
clean when rubbed
by your hand,
the time we talked
about trips
together up north

and now that’s
all gone, as these
gray and black
whiskers circle
and spin down
down
down
down
the bathroom
sink drain.

and why would I avoid
the slip into sleep?

the dip towards the deep
where plankton thrive,
silver porpoise leap
and swerve with a sheen
on their backs curving
in saltwater brine
and the steadiest drip
drip of warm sunshine.

When the foot falls..

..onto wet sand
glistening in afternoon light
I know and take each step
like a friend
or a forgotten smoky night
where memory and desire
commingle and lift towards
acres of stars on fire
out past circling planets

with one yellow moon
quietly watching this play
of life through two gauzy
feminine eyes.

Pharmacopeia

pills of pink dots
and yellow octagons
thrilled his pupils huge
as black dinner plates
and his passive tongue
a wad of flesh
waiting flat
pointed inwards
towards an Armageddon
of delight
in the day for night
he traded for nought
and named
as the docile
baptized bride
of frightened time.

none of us
knew how

one white rose

would in
its per/
fumed
dangle
put
the day
so right.

EASTER AT THE PARK

strawberry jam coated his mouth
like sugar crystals shining in sun
while riding the gauzy wings
of an angel’s sweet breath.

the day of folded sorrow and doubt
yet untold but remembered
receded like flood waters
slowly diminishing,
while still sustaining orange fire
and pure energy of intention,
their turbulence and turgid current
unmasked and nakedly open,
somehow now rolling
in music’s sweet time
down cliffs of gentle maple
and birches where each moment
we’re alive in presence
is linked in rhyme.

sixteen artists convened on a Sunday
around tables and sandwiches
to talk of their love
of creation and color.

trees, clouds and human visages
in sun and in darkness
imagined themselves portrayed
in cracked oil on canvas
between rectangled wood
for strollers and sighted
to gaze upon and take
as nourishment like jam
or good cheeses
on thick crusted bread,

as olives and garlic danced
in the sacred light yellow
as pooled melted butter
on a field of grass
among bold vibrant
sculptures.

THANKS,YES

THANKS to the green grasses and the brown denuded hills,
to the letters of love in the dresser drawer and the table
laden with bills,
thanks to the bruises of long ago which sometimes echo still,
and to the fervor and flavor of strong human nourishment
here and now, forever until….

YES to what is not yet visible but shall rise into worlds
beyond both verdant and barren hills,
to all which is coming into our lives for so-called good and yes,
as well to ill.

home is where the prostate sat
flabby as a pound
of bacon fat
on a greasy concrete slab,
in the midst of
manufactured tract
three bedroom shacks
with one and one-half
cheesy baths.

mud morn

marsh mud
oozed brown
between her
five quiet
toes
as a dozing
egret stood
stock still
in the lively
pink morn.

everything
ablaze and
perfumed
in a shimmer/
ing gold light
of redolent
scent
when one
early dawn
blew us
away
like dozens
of oak
leaves
spinning
aloft and
so wild
under
the spell
of a storm.

I AM

I am a beautiful man.

A man of many colors
vivid and diaphanous
and myriad sounds
muted and loud,
including the non-noise
of silence and the blank
canvas of waiting
for you and the floor
of home on which
to love and stand
when ready.

I am a man of strength
of presence
of durable
living
with the uncertainties
of others
and of my own cherished whims
and wishes where worry speaks
in fleshy pink tongues
to seashell ears
in ofttimes unheard
archaic language.

I am a beautiful man.

cypress

a cypress tree
stands mid height
in rock
and dirt
alone

where steady
growth
good fit
and simple
beauty
are its
grateful home.

Family Dinner Table

the boy sparkles and exudes pure life
as he tells the day’s delights
at the evening dinner table
until the sad weak scornful father
mimics his overbite
and cruelty wins the prize:
the predator has pinned its prey,
humiliation stains youthful eyes,
sin again has had its say ,
strained silence fills the air.

now plates of good warm food
sit like cords of cold wet wood
as hearts thickened
with threaded fear
begin their grayish brood.

and throughout this stupid
unconscious strife,
the boy held deep in quiet
still glistens in cloudy waters
of scary rage and sorrow,
listens to hidden strengths
and exudes his ongoing life.

Cypress at Rest

the squat cypress tree grew robust
and green in tough earth and yes I
was somewhat surprised my dream
brought forth such a hopeful prize
rooted at the edge of the home
where we lived in those times
of plenitude, ease and thoughtful
talks soaked in ponds of stillness
at the foot of a future
just out of reach
and so possibly pleasing
we could barely conceive.

I sniff its pungent perfume,
am taken by
an awakening
bloom,
as grateful we bathe
in its free-flowing
ascendent breeze.

Sick Economy Blues

the coffee table sings chaotically
with strewn books, last Sunday's
newspaper and unopened mail
while economists lack harmony
as out of tune they wail
of our fearful globe’s
surreal travails.

and more and more wherever I read
of the day’s crazy unfolding events
the odd word “oligarchy” is used
to describe our nation,

is our dear democracy
dissolving in an acid barrel
of systemic fraud
and inept leaders,
plundered and stolen
piece by piece,
eaten by a marauding
cancerous greed
in this never ending
medieval dream?

I'm far from ready
to acquiesce to governance
by an elite few,
nor to fairness and truth
to say "farewell"!

Chris at 58

the little brother bites
and bites and won’t
let go a bit,
a smooth round belly bleeds
and still his corncob teeth
pierce and rip,
his anguish seems
quite infinite
indeed.