Monday Poem

Storm whips crack over theback of Massamet lurid lightcolor of lime May spits crazycat calls throughthe wet lips of June croaksbig threats groans like distant trainshauling mayhem up slopes sky, a mad gymnast of electricitytumbles and casts boltsthat land like T-Rex bonesupon a timpani drums thump down undercircumambulating blasts of Jericholet-loose spirit uncorked jinnflattens new…

Monday Poem

My breathing system seems to be:these lungs within; without: those trees……………………….. —Inspiration. Conjoined There are mountains in this pic of withered leaves—as from a satellite and voids in shadows they recede but I see brittle peaks bright spinescurling from dead stemsdry as earth desiccated by the practicesof men: light filamentsthat have broadcast life and breath:…

Monday Poem

Easter I should be devotionalin my mother’s waystanding at the mouth of a tombwith its rolled stoneempty as the night sky between starsempty as the space within atomsbecause, they say, a man diedbut beat death and wouldbequeath immortalityto those who believedeath can be beat entirelyso that bodies may embrace in heavenso that what was so…

Monday Poem

Breeze I dreamt I wasdreaming in Chineseso didn’t understand my dreamthough it’s calligraphy was clearas the brushed strokes of breeze. the characters Lao Tzuclimbed behind closed eyes but said as little as they couldmounting nothing hill obliquely vanishingbetween two skies. I came upon a Buddhasitting circular and wise as a pictographwithout a word silentlyloquacious mutely…

Monday Poem

Fresh Brim-Feather Inside the eye of a new stormare you lost? came the question;came as a little nesting tornado, awindy Matryoshka tuckednaturally within another;a wind like the tiny tempeststhat lift street leaves from gutters in fall—a miniscule funnel by standards ofTornado Alley butif you’re small (as smallas a small thought)the small question,are you lost in…

Monday Poem

Alarm Wake up as much as possiblebefore you sleep………………… catchyour breath while the sun’s upwhen……….in February after a snoweverything’s so soaked with lightsleep……… is impossibleand all that’s left is to catch a dayby an hour………………. and dance.. ….in incandescence forget……….. about sleep and dreamsforget……….. the doldrums andwake……….. to what the crows cawcackling over road kill…………………

Monday Poem

Expect nothing and nothingwill come bearing something—sure thing Sure Thing This is how the world began:expecting nothing but see how something(a blazing ballcaroming off the tip of Kepler’s cue)breaks the horizontrailing a passionate veil of crimson lightwhich sets the sea afire with fierce luminescenceand me with fierce delight this is how it is:the earth, without…

Monday Poem

Caresses and Cuffs Silence thick as her stews sometimesfilled my grandmother’s housebut for the cars on 15hissing toward Picatinnyon a wet nightbig black Packards or Buicksheavy as a hard life,Chevy’s wide whitewallsspinning over asphalt on a two-lanebefore the interstate sliced througha table in her living roomcluttered with snaps of Jim and JackHoward Frank Velma RuthGladys…

Monday Poem

Aftermath Goaded by hurricane the river raged through on a tear to the sea taking trucks and treesOil tanks bobbed under bridgeson swells of liquid gravitya wood-framed studio pirouetted from its piersoff downstream, a ship of art, rudderlessuntil it lodged against the steellifts of the dam gatesCellars filled with siltand whatever the river’d dredgedfrom back-yard…