PLAYING FETCH WITH MOSES

Moses scrambles over the edge and down
the cliff, into the baking dense brush, we
hear him rip and devour the August air.

Slouched, smoking, small talkin’,
draining beer like my bike does oil,
we catch each other up:
who’s in or out or going to jail;
tricks of lighting cigarettes with hair
pins, kleenex, and a one-ten outlet;
who shoots the better game, the boredom
of coke and rum, he’s doing fine, schemin’
on Jane, tall, dark and honeysome. 

We’ve jousted over her at parties and bars,
snared ourselves in boasts and lies; smiled
to each other, “Just kiddin’ around,”
(which I really doubt) then borrowed
from the other to take her out.

Oughta pay him back someday I guess
for the dance I took her to in his car –
then maybe tell him or maybe not
how off the old road we stopped , took
off our clothes under sweet acacias. 
She was a stretch of long, cool moonlight
on water, crickets sang her fervent praises.

Moses stumbles up now, panting, frothing
jaws clenching in triumph the 2 by 4,
leaps and begs for more, more, more.

HIROSHIMA STREETCAR

Car 653 rumbles through downtown, 
past granite lions guarding a department store,
along a square kilometer of bars and clubs
(packed and loud even on weekday nights)
toward Peace Park where brightly colored
paper cranes come each morning to roost
under the statue of a twelve-year old girl.
Sad at dusk to see custodians remove
garlands of origami wings crippled by rain.

My tram steams on in a lake of immaculate
taxi cabs and their white gloved drivers;
traffic signals chime a lullaby to the old
and blind: safe now, please cross now.

We’ve stopped at that exact spot 
304.8 meters below the airburst. 
Now sudden white ferocity lashes out of the
neon smeared night – a short in the overhead
wires whirls out sparks and sizzles and pops;
not a word nor blink from other passengers,
hugging themselves to sleep until their stops.

 LADY in DISTRESS

I stop for a woman who is stopped and
standing, arms crossed like a queen of Egypt’s,
marooned in the emergency lane,
her Honda Ennui’s right rear
blown and flaccid on the gravel.

Black crepe sheath and spiked heels,
she strives to dress for success.
(torn jeans with grease congealed,
I blithely groom for doom.)

T’was Galahad the Dummy who said,
“I’ll get you out in five,” but it was me
who choked when the trunk opened.
What didn’t she have in there?

For more time than any Samaritan has
I unload: hangers tangled in store bags,
(Frederick’s of Hollywood, Nordstrom‘s, Targét)...
last year’s chic now Goodwill rags...
ski wear, books, Monica L.’s beret... 
cassette tapes, Bing’s “Silver Bells...”
World Books I dash J and C...
lipsticks like spent shotgun shells...
big photo albums mostly empty...
half a garden hose...
Eiffel in a snow globe...
a dried pressed rose... 
a pink, fluffy robe…

I grumble where’s the kitchen sink?
But she must watch her nails grow,
why should she care what I think?

Finally, under a moldy teddy bear
with a jack and lug wrench
I yank out the friggin’ spare and
like an Indy pit crew on smack
I slap it on and give her back
to the blessed road all repacked.
(Lady in Distress, continued)

Could’ve said hey, mama, whazup with all this?
How it’s bad for alignment, balance and wheels
(and fixing them things ain’t cheap!)
But she’s a creature of excess baggage
and with those I stay silent and run deep.

My LAST DEACONESS

My stations end at a bed of stone,
quilts of nettles and parched moss, 
to lay with thee beneath the shade 
of the dark and jagged cross. 

His blood reddens your lips. 
His salt seasons your flesh .
His words writhe, rot in your sophistry. 
His wounds feed your auto-hagiography. 

For sins he didn't die for and a mired creed, 
he hangs and broods when he last was kissed; 
sees your tongue stretching, curling for my seed 
to give me honeyed head of the Baptist. 

Sleeping, your breasts heave for rapture soon; 
for kingdoms to come, you murmur holy names. 
Then I roll the boulder back to shut the tomb 
upon you and his mangled, picked remains. 

SUPER STRING THEORY in Moby Dick

“All men live enveloped in whale-lines.  All are born with halters round their necks…”
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Chapter 60

It must be true! Yea, all things
are made of resonating strings;
how else am I constantly ensnared,
entangled and tripped?  All is a 
cougar’s cradle of invisible vines
looping and snagging on the other,
no middles, no endings, no forwards,
(like my computer’s cables and cords)
teasing my mere three dimension mind
with coy digressions of twist and wind.

Ishmael could see from Pequod’s boat
the cobra of tarred hemp leap and soar,
streak and smoke as the whale dove,
rushing to the planet’s molten core. 

We live enmeshed in 
deadlines, bottom lines, dotted lines,
those we swallow in order to love,
those binding us into needless wars;
serpents loop our necks, slack for now.

Though you cling to TV or poetry 
or portfolio, bible, torah, sutra or koran,
you’re plunged to a dark and abiding gravity,
as sure as the sailor lashed atop the leviathan. 

SONNET to the OFFICE DOGS

I crack a drawer of doggy treat stash
and kibble klatchers cease chasing their balls,
then stampede into my area en masse,
ricocheting off the cubicle walls.

Brave Brad guards against all deliveries,
silly Ruckus is just how his name sounds,
Gus the Lab likes to squeeze between my knees,
Poppy's a pro on biscuit begging rounds.

Mila's part seagull, vocal and skittish,
Lily is content to tailgate Poppy around,
old Pete is reserved and maybe British,
puppy Kia runs paper clips to ground.

Pure adoration with no gripes nor lies
drips from wet tongues that hang like pink neckties.

NORTH TOWER, TOP 12 FLOORS

September but oh so hot, so very hot,
oh the heat in there! No one can
stay at their desk, their office, no one.

They are leaning out of long 
narrow windows never meant to open.
Secretaries, file clerks, temps
into the morning reach out
as if hanging wash or gossiping
floor to floor with neighbors or
watching for parades of victory
to cheer above and throw confetti.

Some will stay but most will go;
pirouette, tumble or jack knife
joining hands or just solo,
dive into this sweet coolness
of summer turning fall.

INTENSIVE CARE NURSE

Lilting of Kildare, Cork or Kilarney, 
she says to lie oh so still oh; 
(still as death, glad as a babe, o lucky me) 
hugs my face to her bosom tightly 
as she drags the sensor firm and slow 
across my chest to sound and chart 
a derelict heart full fathom five below. 

The audio is amazing! Thunder pulses 
in a surf of sloshes and sploshes, 
and she smiles and makes me think, 
what else can she hear down there? 

Is she listening, I wonder, to those 
echoes of longing light years deep, 
rustling in crimson caverns, half asleep? 
Is she so professional, and so discrete? 

Does she ignore all that lives 
even now in the core of my core: 
quickenings of breath, the hot 
throaty growl of lips on lips, 
smacks of suction when flesh breaks 
from flesh, promises at dawn, 
the inevitable moving on, my 
misstepping, misscrewing 
into the lives of others? 

Even my mother's tired sighs 
Can be heard down there still, 
as she grudges a breast to her son; 
no, there are no lullabies; 
a child herself, she never sang. 

Now, all I desire is this Irish rose to sing --- 
By the Rising of the Moon, O Danny Boy, 
Cole Porter, an ad jingle, any damned thing! 
Your smile, your voice could forever cure this heart 
but as you leave, I can only say, "Erin go bragh." 

At the BEAR PIT

O’ what can she, beneath the great
 swaying bear, what can she say?
As he dances for churls and gentry to
cackling fiddle and gypsy stoked coals?

Chains rattling at each brutish step,
he growls his guttural need,
offers paws of smeared flowers 
to she in the madded raucous crowd,
howls for worlds without straps
without torches and the iron prod.

What can he to she mutely give?
Lost streams, the forest womb, 
a happy puff of pollen moon, 
river smoke and dawn song 
misting in the pines and ferns.

And how, 
shuffling this way and that,
amidst muddied clamor,
in her face upturned,
he sees the way back.

STRENGTH & HONOR

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
 - George Orwell

our world does not turn, marines know,
unless they die to make it so

they do not fight for you or me
nor for policy or liberty

it’s for him hung in razor wire
it’s who’s guarding their backs
it’s jarheads dying in friendly fire
it’s teens going home in sacks

the granite of the next long wall,
they’re the core of our nation’s soul

LAST CONCERT at FILLMORE

even our words flash and splinter
beneath strobes and ultraviolet
in rapid fire shadow and light 
your white levis combust in cool 
luminousities and a thousand years
on, this paler shade of your thighs
still burns behind my eyes 

and all because
five foot few of southern
comforted soul boils in
rainbows of oil blobs
her hair become scattering
birds
that voice glows, sobs 
cyan and roan
screams just
another
part of her heart
into the microphone

REPLY to ROBERT FROST

Gotta be done, the blue jay scolds
and I stake out more chicken wire
all around the raspberry bulbs
growing  into hedges of sweet fire.

They'll guard our roses from loss,
and keep the deer from the fruit.
Good fences are good fences, Mr. Frost,
and make a great pie to boot!

	MARKETING

The self-effacement of women is as
diamonds turning to lumps of coal
golden wheat become worms and weeds
oceans gone fatally barren.
 
Thistle frail doll of Dacheau faces a 
full length mirror, touches bone china 
breasts with spindle fingers and what,
what do you think she sees?

“Fat,” she vomits.  “Ugly fat!”

Consumer is consumed, eater is eaten
by crafters of compulsion and envy;
you can see it all without having to look,
you can hear it all without having to listen,
that you’re too big, too short, too small, 
too light or too dark, too old and too poor,
how can anyone love you the way you are?
And isn’t now the time to buy a new car?

RACK OF AGES

My mind is blown!
Who could've known?
A pip of an epiphany: 
beauty queens, the NFL,
doctors, professors and cops
are younger than me!

I'm kuklafrananollie old
geneautry ancient
mightymouse medieval
spin’nmarty primeval
I played marbles with Methusalah,
tether-ball with Jesus, copied off
Buddha in second grade.

I can still build mud forts,
chew sour grass and clover
but what of tiny corner stores
selling Green Lantern for a dime?
Candy bars a nickel,
jawbreakers two a penny?

Where are paperboys on bicycles? 
Arms cocking and flycasting 
the ink smeared Independent 
into hedges and milk bottles?

They pedal through a pine smoke
perfumed chill of autumn, pass
parks of maple and fire cherry.
The crack of a wooden bat,
tells of a child, anxious and weary,
who’s safe on first at last.

GLIOBLASTOMA

Remember? We marveled at the depth, 
stealth and stubbornness of white oaks
infesting the drainage; how 
thirsting roots bit through flaking
iron? How many weekends did we
we dig out trees and fit in new pipes? 

Eight months now I've watched a blob
wolf you down, gorging your motor
functions, senses, memories, 
shriveling your skull and soul to 
just a husk with bewildered eyes
and a mouth downwards nailed. 

Best I could do
was throw you a death at home, 
in a house of pre-teen Goths, liars of positivity,
conjurers of hope, magii in muumuus 
bearing casseroles and cold chicken;
relatives I never met before and never
shall again -- you can't say you were left alone. 

When AAA Crematory rattled up
in a dilapidated Honda mini-van, 
wrestled you onto a gurney, 
zipped you up in a long vinyl bag, 
I nearly said, wait, wait, he's gotta breathe
but how stupid would that have been? 

Your arctic blue wrists and ankles 
were adorned with bright paper bracelets
dappled with trees, birds and suns
and “GOOD BYE, GOOD BYE
WE LOVE YOU” in fat crayons.

The grandkids put them there
as the hospice doctor pronounced you
man without life; she raised high the long
arc of the blood streaked catheter
flowing from your groin;
and, as a neighbor’s baby shrieked,
snipped it free

AN ENLIGHTENMENT

Life makes Life a simple gift,
wraps in parable and myth
a thing not so large it
cannot fit into a single lotus seed;
not so small it couldn't bulge 
and expand the cosmos,
not so near it does not shine
on numberless galaxies beyond sight
not so far its breath doesn’t
touch your ear in the quiet of night

all around and flowing within us
the heart’s blood of waking buddhas
who open their eyes laughing,
having dreamt we are glasses of water
deep in wondrous, rhythmic seas

FALL

October’s beast dreams me yet
another year, weaves plump
blazes of pumpkins, clouds of crows,
a salt laced half moon’s fog
for a shroud, while I breathe,
the creature stitches and sews.

In a knowing star’s wink
we’ll be as the shapeless
whispers of seashells; a
lacquered egg’s tidy vacuity; 
we’ll be as the sails and ropes 
of ships long drowned; a spoonful
of rain in dunes, like a love
gone and never again found.

We must storm Creation’s core,
seize its vast engine of souls,
command the lathe of karma, 
to emerge as gods and worlds.

Or, failing all, become 
cause without effect,
effect without cause
to pervade the cosmos
as all dark matter does.

FLEURS DU SAUVAGES

in chocolate lilies and bright baby blue eyes 
you burn warm as white birch on an august day, 
laugh and savor our tall vanilla cherry lies 
then shed blushing orchid petals of lingerie 

ladybugs, rubies in your hair, blow whistles 
bang their tiny drums in samba procession 
as we in bloodroot and melancholy thistles, 
dumble to the Woods of Mutual Possession 

TORCH SONG

All night I sit next to his bed. 
He squeezes the dried bark 
of a photograph. In sunlight vanished,
she smiles. I hear his torch song:

If still alive out there somewhere
and cold and snow finally shut you in
the attic of whom you might have been,
why not try me on for size again?

Put me on like you so always put me on!
A gin joint slouched panama brim 
over those gorgeous eyes,
kisses cut with bootleg rum,
glimpsing your calves and even your knees,
saxes and 'bones ignite into rutting heat,
bow ties knot demblackselves silly
trying hard not to dance!

(I never asked for love,
Just a chinaman’s chance)

As the great disappearing act ends –
you from me, I from am, 
then from now --
murmur me a memory
of the worlds I saw in you
of something you saw in me.

Come! Here and now;
let us breathe again to speak,
kiss and weep in the lost tongues of
all our dead seas and buried cities.

GREEK CHAMBER POT’s INSCRIPTION

Odysseus, rogue of twists and turns, incessant braggart,
Minor prince of a minor island in the wine dark sea,
You started all this, ten years of siege and skirmish,
All to impress – just who were you sucking up to?

Sure, we were drunk but you just had to jump on the
Banquet table, shouting oaths to Zeus and Menelaus
That we'd go to Hades for Helen's honor,
You miserable, friggin' grandstander!

Shivering in trenches last night I dreamed of home,
But goddess Athena, whose pet you are, was there,
Chiding me, showing me in my own hearth’s blaze
Your cursed name in heroic verse for the eons.

As for me and the thousands of soldiery
Far from home and a wife's or mother's tears, 
Our lives, our names, our stories simply disappear
In a sweep and ebb of the ocean of years. 

DOWNTOWN COMMUNITY
MENTAL  HEALTH PROJECT

bureaucrats cannot roll back the asphalt,
cannot impart a land of milk and sweets
to victims of electroshock gestalt
existing like lab rats left on the streets 

we've worked so hard to be their champions
fought a charlatan system that’s insane,
that serves not bread but only scorpions
and our people in chemo-bondage remain

let's escape to the forests, you and I;
there we can leaflet burrow, den and lair,
monitor redwoods holding up the sky
mediate between buck, squirrel, owl and bear 

we’ll lobby thunderheads till they waver,
and triumph without political favor 

how gentle my kitten
seemed until a hummingbird 
came within her reach

her jeans are long blue
flames blossoming to the blaze 
of a white spring blouse

fire-flowers adorn
summer evening’s sky; where now
is my soldier-child?

FOUR HAIKU

RECRUITING STUDENTS  to PROVIDE 
RECREATION AND COMPANIONSHIP
in BOARD & CARE HOMES

Richard, you’re on the steps when I
open up.  All day you sprawl on my office
sofa. You’re the last at night when 
I close and wonder if it’s worth it.

Richard, my shuffling couture 
of star trek pins, garlands of puka shells,
peanut buttered beard, jar lid eyes from the 
new souls bin; you’re a grizzly in  
unwashed overalls, army boots
and mardi gras beads
but just not as graceful.

And I hate it when you spook off  young
women who come to tell me we’d be a
good fit for their classes and commute
and there’s no paper to write, right?

You sit at their feet, anoint their ankles in
feathers, grunts, giggles and string, ask 
about boyfriends, show off  a Navajo
headband shouting love for Las Vegas
and buttons that say to kiss you because
you’re Italian or Irish or Croatian

That smile they smile for you
means we will not see them anymore;
they leave and I slam darts into the door.

PHYSICS OF LOVE

why not apply some nonlocality
to what divides your life from mine,
factor love into our totality,
erase stale space and feckless time?

we’re lonely lines always in parallel
but somestar beyond Rigel we’ll converge
in the cozy quantum of a quarkshell
where dark hot energies must bang and surge

even a tiny nano kiss for me
from the singularity of your mouth
flop-flips my soul to shift polarity
and thus my north gladly becomes your south

look now in your sky, a new star’s shining;
its magnitude’s as deep as my pining

AFTER READING EMILY DICKINSON’s 
“My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun”

Slim and smart in bed or flattened grass 
and crushed columbine, supple as blued steel, 
soft as the stained walnut of stock and butt;
you, my dragoon breech-loading carbine.

Your eyes in mine hunt and gauge
degrees of elevation and windage, 
to send straight and forgiving and raging
the ball to strike and devour mind and flesh.

In the parlor’s holiday soiree with
music, chatter, candlelight and crystal,
I hear someone laugh as you flounce away,
			“That Emily!  Now ain’t she a pistol?”

For DENISE LAPIER, a Buddhist

you called to tell me you’re chanting for my
happiness – your words are a tsunami
sprinting into the Mojave, drenching
this parched seeker of lost mines and mirage

your clarity untwists twisted copper
wire, cuts through satellites and circuitry,
simultaneously swallows my heart whole
into the seas of your bright and tender soul.

PARKING

already you tell me things
I forgot I told you
and will soon forget again

already you beat within,
a second heart, a second
life, a first happiness

already I want to tell you
in ten voices a hundred stories,
a thousand chapters each

already we’re parked on a dark street
with headlights passing by to shine
on an angel’s tongue touching mine

ON THE TELEPHONE DURING A STORM

Lying in beds miles apart we talk
as thunder tumbles by your home in the hills,
down slopes of houses, trees, huddled deer
and comes stalking beneath my window.

When bright wild birds of lightning shimmer
across my room I count Mississippis between your
thoughts and words.  A breath, a pause and then
all your syllables lilt and ring like stars and bells
	on wings of providential winds and rains.

I want you 

bent beneath, a long shining
wave curved under a driving force,
hair spilling and cresting on the
breakwater of a windward shore

I want you

legs up and silhouetted by candle flame
jogging on the ceiling and walls,
running me around the world 
balanese shadow play

IN THE SEQUOIAS

on the damp dark earth beneath us
you become stretching wings of early
light dappled with leaves and gems 
of moisture; your breath rises like 
a mist of pearls, your little bird voice
flies up, flies up to grasp them 

mountains and redwoods pause 
from holding up skies and suns 
and wonder on the fallen star
that ignites the forest floor into
a blaze of worlds without end 

A Gift of Desire

I make a gift of this desire to
enter your heart and never to leave;
to burn inside you like a bed of embers,
constant and unquenchable;

to share solstice and equinox
till our skies and stars run out
and even you should live much longer
than me, deep within your smile
I shall always be.

When We Talk

I’ve got gazoodles and buckets of words
that dribble out of my closets, roll under sofas,
froth in my tea, these parched leaves strewn
on my dried creek bed of consciousness

your words, they are fewer and stand
polished and straight in their quivers
to strike my heart as like no others

WHAT OWL SAID TO PUSSYCAT

When men look at you as we enter,
when men give us glances too long, 
I see their wonder and envy of how such
an owl as I came to be with the lovely 
feline you are, you are, you are.

Is it how I sing to stars and strum a guitar?
Or our joys of eating with a runcible spoon?
Or perhaps I look at you and see no others,
And forsake dark woods for the waxing moon.

DENISE MAKING JEWELRY

one tiny drop of garnet goes on another,
a necklace grows in slow and quick
circular rhythms of her hands —
as if 
playing a harp 
where notes
 become 
my heart’s blood 
dangling on transparent strings

The Passion

as you cry out for god and jesus
in the midst of night, your neighbors
must think you’re getting some
of that old time religion

all your breathlessness for the divine
leaping from your mouth and loins to mine,
would’ve inspired reams from Pablo Neruda!
(and caught a wink from the sensuous buddha.) 

BLUE SWALLOW MOTEL

somewhere pass the left nut of scorpio
in a bed of creaks and rusty screws
in august of not so new mexico
you swallow every drop of my blues

shaman kaiyotes and wiley sage do their tricks
and we, sleeplessly, go back to sixty-six

RACHEL CORRIE, 23, 
of OLYMPIA WA

Rachel, Rachel, 
I’ve been thinking
on this anniversary
when you stood up
to Israel’s Army

You stood 
between a bulldozer 
and homes they came 
to scourge; you wore 
day-glow orange
pleaded into a bullhorn

You stood up 
even when 40 tons 
of US-made Goliath
bore down; your arms, 
legs, chest and skull 
were broken, just
another crushed 
Rose of Sharón

Some disparage you, 
laughing it off
as a senseless death 
in senseless strife; 
honey, those folks
never stood up 
for anything
in their lives.

my pillow still has 
your hair’s scent; the fog and  I 
dream of your nearness

The Passion

you cry out for god and I for jesus
in the midst of night – neighbors
must think we’re having
a religious experience.

all your breathless calls for the divine
that leap from your mouth and to mine
would sparked sonnets from Senor Neruda
(and catch a wink from the sensuous Buddha)

DOLLS OF ABU GHRAIB

your parents weren’t home when
barbie, little sis’ skipper and ken
orgied with their smooth unbending
limbs, heads rammed into featureless
groins smeared with a little mayo

you did detainees the same way
all hooded, bound, naked, drenched
with terror’s sour fecal bouquet,
bent, twisted and jammed  
into patriotic acts and displays

now we see what was seen
by your buddies’ sony recorders
now we hear those timeless words:
you were only obeying orders

WHEN LOVE ENDS, WORLDS DIE

gardens are unplanted, children unconceived,
beaches and bookstores miss us no more;
mortgages unsigned, accounts unopened, 
wild mountain passes now impassable;
beneath glass a diamond glisequins 
like a fixed star, distant and intractable

MY YOUNGEST,  MY SWEETEST

my posse lost your tracks in the Sadlands
they could not pursue you through mirrors
or ever diminishing doors you slammed

all I dream of now is rushing, arms out wide
over a playground to catch you at the bottom
of a tall crooked slide I just looked away from

HOUSE on WESSEX

You know, don't you, 
ghosts are embers of memories
smoldering in walls and beams, 
and spaces of dark they enclose?

One day you think you see me; 
it'll be this house sighing,
settling to fitful sleep 
after a long summer day’s
heat, dreaming of a man
who stopped bringing flowers.

 
HOME IMPROVISATIONS

Underdogs live for undersides:
sprawled beneath decrepit cars,
nosing in a console's innards,
crawling beneath the house
for leaks or a dead mouse.

Shamelessly squeezing nickels,
fearlessly fucking-up; us
inspired inept, only we know
the zen of closed spaces
ying of frying wires
yang of the lost rebate,
tao of gouged knuckles
ambrosia of 30 weight.

For, as Joltin’ Jo Goethe says,
"What we do not understand,
we do not possess."

AC-130H SPECTRE GUNSHIPS

It’s a little like watering a lawn,
nozzle twisted for a fine, wide spray,
that big cargo plane doing lazy circles
gatling guns shrieking shrieking
six hundred shots a single second, 
stitching six square city blocks,
ten bullets per square foot.

Even Satan’s inner demons recoil 
from the dragon’s downpour 
which drowns any ant
who dares stand up to its roar.	

GUNSHIPS OVER GRAVES
OF THE PROPHETS NEAR
NAJAF IN IRAQ

Adam, Noah, Issac, Abraham
and millions of faithful sleep
in six square miles of cemetery,
Wadi-us-Salaam, Valley of Peace.

Marines and gunships hunt
through this necropolitan sprawl, 
a drab, arid arctic of graves,
crypts, catacombs and tombs.

Big, slow planes fly lazy
figure eights; electric guns 
spin and shriek pass after pass
churning acres of headstones 
and bones into dust devils,
sowing showers of spent brass.
.
                        Who or what can endure 
torrents of fire and lead?
Will the Book’s Prophets give up?
Or with their devoted dead, await 
God’s vengeance to unfold?

TO EVERYONE IN MY HEART

My heart gets crowded.
My chest hurts. I cannot breathe
when you jostle and elbow
in that tight little room of 
ventricles, papillary muscles,
and leave footprints all over
my aorta and atriums.

You implore, scold, preach 
and coax on what or what not
I do; on that person I was
or the one I am or ought to be.

It’s time to get dogs,
a jeep and head north
to sleep in cold grass,
bear scat and forget-me-nows;
to ask glaciers to scrape
this knotted muscle clean.

 
REMOTE OPERATED RECOVERY
DIVE IN THE MOUNTAIN LAKE

She fell overboard and sank
like a skipped stone.  As her arms
slipped through velcro straps
and she glided out of life,
a thought of playing dress-up,
lost in daddy’s billowing coat.

No, please, no.  No hooks, no nets.  
Those, you see, would only bruise 
and hurt. She’s just turned three. 

Now a big bright orange tortoise,
with halogen lamps for spectacles,
swims three hundred feet down.  
He reaches into the dark interior, 
embraces and lifts her gently 
as if bringing her in, late at night,
to be put in her own warm bed.

LEGION PREFECT PANTERA,
JOURNAL FRAGMENT, 45 C.E.

A centurion with a good eye and desire
for promotion took me into Antonia
Barracks to show me the day’s catch;
a bleeding, naked lot of three prone on the
stone floor, slapped, mocked and mounted
by drunken members of the cohort.  Zeus,
what to expect of troops forbidden to
marry in their first 25 years of service
and stationed in such a hostile pisspot?

One prisoner I knew from gossip and
my own informers. The warlock’s face
recalled to me a maiden of the temple;
a spit fire, persuasive, pretty and 
betrothed.  I was fresh from Athens,
new to my legion, easier at heart then. 

My authority,  weighted with silver,
arranged a ship for this man and his wife.
I ordered the switch to be made: simply
snatch some out of town oaf, a Cyrene or 
Samaritan, to balance Pilate’s books.

The wretch did not thank me, said nothing as
 I left.  No matter. What else could I’ve done? 
What father would forsake his only son?

ELENA KLEIN (1913-2004)

I did not attend her memorial,
my heart’s image is enough: 
gardener with her chinaberry tree
poet writing for great-grand-kids
soul of a many gabled house
waiting for friends coming for tea.

I just didn’t want to go; too fat
for my decent slacks, too ornery
for any show of piety. But I’ll
tell you of one night at our
Not Yet Dead Poets’ Society. 

A man finished an epic rant
of homelessness and addiction;
Elena reaches across the table, 
slowly moves her arms to catch 
his hands in hers. Eyes shut,
she bows deeply, mutely
gripping him
clutching him 
in divine apology.
 
THE SNORING BUDDHA

mornings as she sleeps
after hours of  making love
I rise to plug coffee in
turn heat on, let dogs out
and kneel at our altar
to chant the sutra, easing
her eyes open in warmth 
of prayer, lotus of lightness

WHEN WE WALKED AT THE
FITZGERALD MARINE PRESERVE

my love for you is like that little bird
swooping, looping,  spinning on thermal
eddies rising from pocked sandstone cliffs,
he hurls himself against towering rock 
and suddenly is gone from a slate sky
as if vanished from your world forever

FOR A LADY FROM MONTANA

if if I'd been lucky we’d have met
long before now, when we were 
little kids and no thing and no one
in our way and you’d be frizzy hair,
pink cowgirl boots and matching
holsters with shiny cap pistols;
I’d be torn overalls, a coonskin cap,
we’d play Hopalong or hopscotch
a puppy and kitten nuzzling soft
in a shoebox just before 
the decades started flooding in