Carnage Ku

smiling eyes
stir the pot
Hezbollah spring

~

bull in china shop
swats biting flies
Israeli fall

~

father mourns
holds out son's arm
Lebanon heat

~

mother and daughter
life and death
eye to eye

~

talking heads
weave shroud
cover face

~

endless storm
clouds the sky
the united waits

Mary

Mary is a ratty shirt,
not buttoned,
tail flapping behind.
She’s not loggers

with the heft to hang well,
not a double knit sweater
that’s snug in a storm,
she’s not familiar boots.

Mary is flimsy pajamas,
twenty minutes after
I’m in bed I reach down
to see if she’s still there.

End of Time

Clock tick tocks and swinging rocks
beat out the cosmic age.
A great and leveling constraint
is time that brings down trees
and athletes to their knees.
"Where the cosmos doesn’t move,"
she opined, "there is no time."

Coyote learns to run,
carouse and fool around,
learns to hunt and feed their young,
then old age slows them down.
"At particle level nothing’s movin’,
your time," she sniggered, "doesn’t exist.
For particles, age is just illusion."

The fourth dimension is time, yes time,
the elusive measure of age and ages.
"Your time," she pressed, "is no more a dimension
than is some measure of stress or tension."

Could a dimension disappear?
I think not, my dear.
"To quarks," she hissed,
"it’s nothing but a myth."

We don’t spend time
together any more,
nothing’s movin’.

It Never Ends

Hang up the old battle flag,
agree to stop the combat.
Two old men at Appomattox,
a couple of old blisters,

agree to stop the combat.
Get ready, change is looming.
A couple of old blisters,
neither together nor parting,

get ready. Change is looming,
load up the truck and move on
neither together nor parting,
embellish the effigies and statues.

Load up the truck and move on,
build mythologies and specters,
embellish the effigies and statues
to the survivors.

Build mythologies and specters,
face the threat, face the harm
to the survivors
in a war that never ends.

Face the threat, face the harm
to old men at Appomattox
in a war that never ends.
Hang up the old battle flag.

Pool of Reflections

The barbarians raise angry dust
scarcely beyond the eastern wall,
at night we hear their trumpets,
by day we smell the cooking fires.

They don’t withdraw
even when wintry rains dribble
from their hats for twenty days.
The Imposter King affects a pose

in the central tower and abuses them
with taunts and slurs. High ministers
empty the treasury to hang ribbons
on our generals’ purple robes

and adorn their horses with jingling banners.
There’s nothing but happy talk
around the Pool of Reflections
even as our young soldiers fall

like peach blossoms in the garden.
In war or peace it’s always the same.

Fruit Flies

Don’t you hate it when the fruit flies
aren’t satisfied with the old banana
in the kitchen and they hover
to the living room for a glass of wine,

don’t you just hate that?
Scott thinks I’m criticizing
the kitchen’s condition, Marion
takes it personally, says she doesn’t

want a glass of wine, Kathy just sits
and frets, I think on the futility
of explaining poems. A fruit fly
gets the vapors and lands in my port.

Kitchen Lockup

A can of chili rolls across
the floor to make an escape,
a box of crackers on the shelf
waits for its turn to break out.

I close the cupboard door
for all the good it will do,
magnetic latches are a joke,
a three-year old could pick 'em.

I’m going to eat a pickle
and teach the rest a lesson.
I hear a noise, muffled talking,
in the refrigerator a tomato

is reaching for the thermostat,
I’ll put a stop to that, there’s going
to be salad in its future, they can’t
pull that crap in my kitchen.

I order the bottles against the wall
but they don’t crack,
I’m going to finish off a beer,
then the others will open up.

Call Me Sir

I bought a hat that will be prominent
in a foremost assembly,
I made a walking stick of teak,
I hired a guy to call me sir.

Dark Radio

Light rain idly drips
from high clouds and listens
to the dark. Standing on a road
side watching tail lights

get small I’m misplaced,
out of the wandering flock,
my place is on wheels,
my niche, behind a windshield.

I get in the mode,
in the wandering mood.
In the truck’s dark cubicle
the radio reaches through mist

and fog, hisses and sings
like tires on the wet highway,
as long as I keep on driving
I’m doing something,

getting somewhere on a path,
a track joined to every other track,
joined to every other nomad,
as long as the radio’s on

I’m connected to strangers
listening in the dark.

To Anna

When coming to the room you must turn out
the light so I don’t see New Orleans eyes,
the waves and ripples in your lips, the fragrant
curves in cheeks, the long slow curls of hair

dangling over an ear. Wear heavy boots
when you walk. Supple willows we want not
swaying across the room in tango rhythm,
in time with Don’t You Leave Me Here. Face

the other way, conceal reminders to pull
you close, toe to toe, you join my skin
to the backbone. Turn not the elegant contours
of your back, dark hair astray. Before

talking or humming please turn on the vacuum,
blender or garbage disposal. Thank you.

Calamity Waiting to Happen

The broom is an earthquake pushing debris
in uncommon ways and directions,
unsettling historic order.
A file folder is like a hurricane

where layers are sorted, stacked
and ordered to a shrouded plan
that’s not clear until landfall
when it scatters rubble on the floor.

The toilet brush spills blue-green compounds
then scatters and swirls the toxic soup
into a scum sucking tornado.
Folder, brush and broom,

surreptitious misfortune hiding in the dark
corners of my hermitage, scheming evangelists.

Word Anger

Sitting down to write this I have
fifty words for underwear
to show off, a hundred words
for hate to drop on the floor,

but not one for Falcon’s intently
focused attack, nothing for Weasel’s
blithe indifference working a roadside,
nothing rhymes with Winter Wren’s

intricate song trinkling out of the darkness
between sword ferns and cedar stumps,
and there’s no word for the suffering
when Coyote sings to the Rabbit in the Moon.

Women Ain’t Normal

Women are not like me,
is that too direct?
Maybe it’s a guy thing,
I should be more obtuse.

Is that too direct?
Don’t even talk about it,
I should be more obtuse.
Then there’s commitment,

don’t even talk about it,
they don’t use plain English.
Then there’s commitment,
they take it seriously.

They don’t use plain English.
Look at the way they dress,
they take it seriously.
I don’t mind being with them,

look at the way they dress.
I suppose they think I notice.
I don’t mind being with them,
not like it’s a problem.

I suppose they think I notice
women are not like me,
not like it’s a problem.
Maybe it’s a guy thing.