Blood Red Moon

The moon turned blood red last night—
Once in thirty years—
That’s our blood up there
Reflected in these tears
The galaxy is starlit
But not our troubled home
We are falling like a dynasty
May we rebuild like Rome
Every angel in the system
Looks askance or looks away
This is the war we wage within
This is the world we know today
Venus holds a flower
Mars would surely strike it down
There’s a fever in the romance
There’s a fire in this town
God in all his glory
Holds the cities in his sway
The moon is bleeding red
The blood is seeping into day

Reflections from Land's End

I looked into the water
Saw myself a younger man
Holding clouds and rain and thunder
In the hollows of his hands

And off on the horizon
As the sky began to dim
Was a shadow slowly growing
Until it came to live within

The power that I shouldered
Thinking I could ride the sky
Was a falling star at daybreak
Was a comet bound to die

And now the water rises
And it rises to my head
But I understand the darkness
And the sacrifice instead

Questions

With the little ones, we
Do our best not to discuss
Where the old, old, old, old, old people go
When we get to see them again
Where the hamburger and tuna come from
What fishing feels like for the fish
Where all the garbage gets to go
Why the men in the news dress in green with guns
That we do not allow them to carry
But these questions I do carry
They used to gnaw at me
Forty years in the desert
Now burning

Still Life Falling

He walks his child across ice to school
Snow starts falling, silent wall
Sheltering, dividing, protecting her
Blanket made of flakes
Dazzling light in all that white
The children will stay inside today
So warm against the sea,
Staring out at the white, white sea
He remembers how it used to be….
Before the blanket was torn asunder
And he became one with cold….
Faces splayed out in the sea, stories,
Distant lands, shapes of
Eskimos and dinosaurs
Flags of many nations
Hello in Japanese
The hounds of winter call him out
Bits of snow falling still on balding pate
White conspiring angels, all

Chicken

Silence gives birth to silence
One shadow under God indivisible
With many mouths, and no one speaking
Many tongues twisted and curled
The cosmic egg is delivered, cracked
Someone hears the tree falling (it made a sound)
In the soulless forest and screams to all the neighboring pines
Then claps with one hand faster than light
The child stares down at his dinner plate and asks,
“What is chicken made out of?”

Thankful

It’s Thanksgiving Eve, a good time to reflect. Things I am thankful for:

*A decent job--I might not be rich, but it keeps food on the table

*The ability to go see a doctor--it might cost too much, but there are millions of people in the world who can’t go at all

*A healthy mind and body--alright, not like they were when I was 25, but hanging in there

*Religious freedom--in a world where countless millions are persecuted for what they believe

*A house--when many good people are being forced out of them

*Supermarkets, department stores, and credit cards--considering that so many people in the world don’t have these conveniences

*A loving family--people to come home to every day and night.

I Can Hold You

Child, I trace your features
As if I never knew a nose
Your eyes are lit like stars
That lead me through an open door

But I can hold you no more
Than I can hold the rain
Watch it trickle through my fingers
Watch it settle on the floor

Child, your hair of feathers
Beckons me to fly away
I would soar above this misery
Leave the ashes where I stay

But I can hold you no more
Than I can hold the sea
Watch it fall into the void and
Watch it wash all over me

Child, your feet are fragile
And your arms confused with wings
But I am far too fettered
To feel weightless like these things

I can hold you no more
Than I can hold the sky
Watch it empty out the universe
Watch it hold me until I

Can hold you no more

Something

There was something moving
In the carpet
Something creeping
In my drink
Something squealing
In the phone line
Just as fast as
I could think
Something blinking
In the skyline
Something over-
Taking time
Something squirting
Words from lemons
Something doing
Awful crimes
Something crawling
In the linen
Something running
Through my mind
Something stolen
From a distant
Planet on some
Borderline

With Our Minds and Hands

How the landscape has changed
Now this technological marvel
Has dwarfed all the peaks we knew

I used to paint with my eyes
Hands like butterflies
Floating on the horizon

I could hold it and read it
A story to keep
Taking me out to sea

There is too much to take in
Through motherboard and screen
And the ether of hope that surrounds us

The stomach of this colossus growls
As its chrome crashes parties
On the moon

With our minds and our hands
We made so much more
Than any of this software can create

Incorporation

No interference from this ubiquitous giant
though you feel the shadow everywhere
from moment of awakening under coconut tree
to dusk under the sheltering golden arch
whether homeless or aristocrat
carry your card he won’t question you
but he will swipe it

One Dream

When your mind and body
are broken from the weight of time
and at last you go through
the dark door to the
limitless light of eternity,
take nothing with you that
weighs more or less than a dream
exactly one dream
and place it under your children’s eyelids
when they are fast asleep
and let it also be the light
that wakes them

Deutschland

I should have seen
on this clear, cloudless day
something subtle, sinister
undulating into the corner of the panorama
a dark speck in the painting
or a fly on my eye
an aberrant hawk above a
sea eerily placid
among the mansions of man
there is one chilling attic
dark plumes fill the air
we will not venture
up there

Satellite

My eye was glued upon her
the brown ink of its iris wrote her poetry
its black pupil seared holes through her skirt
its retina reflected her flesh back to me, like a moon to a sun
outer space was absorbed in its corneal plasma
but never once did that eye meet with hers.

Changing the Tone

The other day, I was driving with my six-year old daughter Angela to downtown Knoxville. Where our exit ramp joined the thoroughfare, a haggard-looking, homeless person appeared, holding a sign that read: “STRANDED. Need help.” Quite alarmed by the sight of this unkempt, unshaven, toothless person staring at the people stopped in their cars near him, Angela asked, “What’s wrong him? Is he going to hurt us? What’s he holding? What does his sign say, Daddy??” Feeling weary and ill-prepared to launch into an explanation of poverty, abandonment, and homelessness with my first grader, I decided to change the tone a little bit. I answered, “It says, ‘I love everybody.’” Little Angela was suddenly beaming. “Aw…he looks like a nice man. I think he really does love everybody.” And then, when the light changed and we pulled away, she said, “Bye-bye, nice man!”

Maybe I wasn’t totally truthful, but I felt like I’d done some good.

Stealth

Numerous phone calls were placed to
the shadow
but none were immediately returned

He is dining in Spagos
eying the blonde
evading the ubiquitous paparazzi

Speaking in code
plotting the murder
deciding where the body is disposed

Watching the North Korea Military Parade

A steely sky hangs over this spectacle
here where the world is eternally gray
hundreds, no, thousands, tens of thousands or more
file upon file of sartorial flags
a military machine with a million moving parts
clicking with more precision than his atomic watch
is ticking

God help the smile that escapes from a face
a stray cowlick, a sideways glance, a fly on the nose
of a cog in this contraption
one million duplicated faces
duplicate uniforms, duplicate lives
clicking and clicking in sickeningly perfect

time, an abstraction left back in the
fire that Prometheus, a Korean, stole from the
gods, the Kim Jongs now at work on his liver
sticking the scalpel and clicking and clicking
a square with no end, a sky with no blue

surely one of these bodies, impeccable cogs,
knows thirst and knows hunger, has a child in some cell
where electricity is rationed some days of the week
a pat of rice, a weekly egg

on the face of the leader, cheeks bloated in family pride,
a dispassionate smile from high above as the sick clicking million-headed
contraption goes by; he looks at his watch through his Versace shades

Thank God for football, and oil rigs, and beer,
and George Bush and the chance to live like and think like a pig; thank God, click it off, it’s

TV

New Leaf

One morning arising
and cursed with the burden
of thinking

My jackhammer brain’s
ceaseless pounding
the surface of concrete

I came on a leaf
dancing dangerously close
to my window

Chlorophyll stolen its
blood intermingled
with rain

Speckled and auburn
and falling and
grasping at nothing

Jesus with all of his
lilies could not have
designed this

I gazed at the leaf until
I and the leaf
were the same

From the Heights

Height of summer
any day
is paradise
nothing can fail
nothing can fall
your medallion sun
is in its august throne

Behind the cirrus clouds
autumn clenches
a stealthy fist
you do not see
the hole in the sky
where all the leaves
and breezes and branches

Dance spinelessly downward
robbed of nerves
anesthetized
through the hole
the old man punched
fear not, for you
a blanket is coming

This New Eye

I take this new eye
to the next planet,
where a world does not
shiver in silence,
blind with false suns,
vilify its living
or dead

This new eye will see
to the core of each being


And while new bones conjoin
in capsules of fluid
as part of an ecstatic running,

This eye will move too
to the balls of my feet
to know what is pressing
and moving
whatever is called
the ground

Google This!

The newest innovation from the geniuses at Google involves a Magic 8-Ball of a design that tries to guess what you're searching for with every letter you type, beginning with the first. One quick whirl with this baby gives you a good idea of the state of our country:

Type an A and it will bring you amazon, aol, and att;
B yields best buy, bank of america, bing, and belk
C gives you craigslist, cnn and comcast....
you get the idea.

Any surprise that G leads to gmail and google maps, or that F leads to a certain "book"--and it's not one that has page numbers??

I think the folks at Google have too much time on their hotmail (sorry, finger slipped onto a Google search)

His Inerrancy

The Creator saddens.
In all its gyrations
mad gestations
Earth was never
meant to darken.
Dappled sun-baked marble
slowly burning
holes into
some emperor’s
gold-lined
pockets.

Planet Basket

Blueberry:
Earth in miniature
Delectable whole
From tartest poles
To sweetest core
Splash of ocean on the tongue
Blue spume into my cavernous cosmos
Juice into the void

Banana:
The gigantic crescent moon has swallowed
The sun and splayed its rays
From end to end and spotless
If peeled your white returns
But the craters have all smoothed
Your sheen reflects my loneliness
We fill each other's holes

Orange:
Ten thousand groves of goddesses
Converge inside my mouth
Florida itself floats in this ocean
All-encompassing
My saliva glazes the sea
All vessels straggle homeward
Yellow delirium
Unconquerable sun

Something for Loneliness

She stares at the man with his
Counting machine
His elixirs and syrups
Her exquisite sadness
Enveloped in minks
Where the heart hides in shadows
She marvels at the colors
Of pills like a rainbow
For all of the ailments
From rheum to tinnitus
And asks is there not something
For loneliness?

Gunboat

Who dances behind the clouds
Deciding rain or sun or war
Arms reaching down around me
All around me arms
No companion in the ballet
One arm’s finger points at me
In the end there is the ocean,
Countless little triggers,
All these bullets
And I alone at sea

Fandom

Why have I given half my days to
Fandom
Watching players in the height of
Life
Defying any reason, this
Projection
They have no allegiance whatsoever to my
City
What a masterful slieght of
Hand
They have agents, sports cars, homes, and futures full of
Luxury
I have my account, with its checks usually
Bouncing
I watch them move from town to town, following the
Money
Very good at keeping their eyes on the
Ball

Old Light

Don’t ask this shadow
To stand in the light
Of a sun that is hiding
In caverns
Memory obscured
In a filigreed dream
A lampshade around
The corona

Past Life Regression

I recently went to a New Age festival and consulted with a past life regression expert. She ran her hands over my shoulders and informed me that I was a high priest under the reign of Ramses II in ancient Egypt. In a later life, I was a Jewish doctor who survived the horrors of the holocaust. "You've been around persecution for many lifetimes." I wondered if everyone had such sensational past lives. I wondered if, in one of those lives in between, I was a plumber, baker, or maybe even a schoolteacher. But then maybe she wouldn't have such a great past life regression business.

Faceless

I rose from bed and went walking
Saw my neighbors stripped of flesh
No face, no hair, just skulls and bones
Walking from town to town
No beauties and no geniuses
Just bones about their business
Yet somehow in this faceless world
Beauty, equanimity, justice
Hideous and true
No line or mask dividing
Sleep from dream or
Me from you

Scarcity

I don’t mean to alarm you now
Make you tense or paranoid
But there is scarcity
Don’t say the word too loud
Keep it to a whisper
Out of the ether, below the clouds
But watch out for scarcity
Electronics are abundant but they only go so far
Watch out for scarcity
Keep it low, keep it cool, but
Scarcity
Scarcity of love, scarcity of thought,
Scarcity of anything not managed, sold, or bought
Scarcity of water
Scarcity of time
Scarcity of tenderness
All falling fast behind us, and up ahead is
Scarcity

Z

Compared to all his alphabetic cousins
Z is such a lazy bird
Let me snooze and think about it
Who says, "Catch some Cs?"
Here’s the answer; it’s a breeze
Z is Alcatraz and Mayaguez
The Zulus in Zaire
Zsa-Zsa, Scott's wife Zelda
Farmhand Lopez who doesn’t move
Excuse me while I sneeze
Britain appropriated half Z’s power
Analysed and seized
He’ll take ten points in Scrabble
With his quizzical mate Q
No wonder saved for last in line
Z, what do I make of U?

The Magic Island

The place I am writing about here would be a mysterious isle in the Caribbean, not too far from the mainland, the same one referenced in this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK2BEOLESDk
Not so far away, ay, compadre?

She doesn't speak
She doesn't sing
She doesn't look like anything
I've seen or heard
In this tired world
She is from the magic island

Her eyes are flames
That call my name
These secret stars in silence came
To light my nights
To warm my days
Came from the magic island

The magic island lives inside
This embattled heart of mine
Though the water overflows
She's the only one who knows
What's buried on the magic island

Another dawn
Will come to pass
Another race will run too fast
And only loneliness endures
Till she returns upon these shores
For she is from the magic island

You Didn't Finish

We had a project here
You didn’t finish
Went your way
We hang upon your every word
No one whispered, no one heard
Not like you—
You didn’t finish
High and dry
We laugh and cry
Point to the sky
We had a race
You didn’t finish
Left us at the pit stop
Back behind the racing track
Not like you—
You didn’t finish
What do you have to say

Call It Music

One year after the death of Michael Jackson, here's a lyric for a new song that's a commentary on the sorry state of the recording industry today.

Call It Music

Get a synthesized drumbeat
Long wild hair
Slick vixen video
Get something there

Husky voiced baritone
Deep in feigned pain
Sounds just like angina
Sounds just like rain

It’s a business venture
A bankable kid
Good till thirty
Keep the skeletons hid
And call it music
And call it music

Automatic voice fix
Sellable smile
Big bold sponsor
Take us for miles

It’s a business venture
A bankable kid
Good till thirty
Keep the skeletons hid
And call it music
And call it music

Got a franchise coming
Posters and toys
First we take Montana
Then the girls and boys

It’s a business venture
A bankable kid
Good till thirty
Keep the skeletons hid
And call it music
And call it music

We need a cable channel
And a show for her
Fake some scandal
Create a stir

It’s a business venture
A bankable kid
Good till thirty
Keep the skeletons hid
And call it music
And call it music

Child

I would walk in your footsteps
Puppy at your feet
Smile your smiles
Light the people you meet

I would trace all your pictures
Study each line
Live in each story
Holding back time

But time has been subtle
It took me away
Caged me in darkness
While you breathe the day
I’m here in the moment
That hypnotized me
So all I can do
All I can do
Is love you

I would hold your hand gently
And walk on the shore
Then ride every wave
Till the ocean brings more

I would paint the horizon
And give it to you
Tangerine sunsets
On deep azure blue

But time has been subtle
It took me away
Caged me in darkness
While you breathe the day
I’m here in the moment
That paralyzed me
So all I can do
All I can do
Is love you

Nine Lives

I am not in a box
To be opened and eaten
A chocolate throwaway thing
Alive and attuned to all passions
I savor the end
Of the buy and discard
Way of life
And recycling the wrapper
Fails to salvage
My dreams for I am
Aware of my fate, Number Eight
This is the karma
Of all of my kind
We learn to love all
Who would hate

Airplane Down

Who was flying this plane
With its fuselage in the ocean
Black box in the clouds
Drunken pilots at sea
God warping the engines
With bird strikes and dirty bombs
Passengers with scrambled karmas
Trajectory downward
From Kitty Hawk to Duty-Free
Air traffic controllers
Lost in space
Reading tea leaves

Moon Landing

In Idaho’s backcountry
Of prairies and plains
Perfection kissed us from the sky

The greatest discovery
In the remotest of places
No angels, no stars, and no ore

The quartz and the crystal
Of pioneer roads
Danced into our antennae and hummed

We radioed home
They had found us at last
So why did the dawn have to come

Approximate Train

The language keeps on changing
But still we move in chains
The words never do do justice
To the things we mean to say
I call you in the bayou
I call you from the tracks
I call you from my nightmares
I never can relax
One day when we awaken
And see what we could be
Words will cover us like wind
And still we won’t be free

Blog

I am throwing words on the page
Hoping that something sticks
There was a time when I was so very much
More eloquent than this

All my experience coagulated
Into pixels and opinions
In heat is how we learn to sell
The world at fever pitch

Thoughts used to spread like flowers
And now they kill the weeds
Amongst these words can anyone
Find soil and roots and seeds?

Oil Spill

This water that I love so well
There’s something strange within
And my wings are coated with
A gooey muddy thing
I cannot flap
I cannot fly
I cannot swim
This river, magic river, everything
Inside it flowed to me
It is music, it is time
It is taken by surprise
Find me flying in the river
Find me flying, hiding, sighing,
Find me flying deep inside

Find me flying to within
And find me whispering goodbye

Initiation

He did not want to hold this gun
This metallic snake
Cold and slippery in his arms
Constricts him within another life
All the others move in stride
He thinks of suicide and love
One is quick the other fleeting
Both drain blood, always entreating
Blood and venom clog his brain
Coil, recoil, reload, and fire

A Walk through the Memorial Garden

The other day I witnessed one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. Having nothing to do while my six-year old daughter was at dance practice, my three-year old little boy and I decided to take a walk. Turns out the only place to enjoy a leisurely walk near the dancing studio was a beautiful cemetery across the street. Rolling hills, quiet gardens, the whole deal. Tombstones and monuments mean nothing to Dylan, who was enjoying the walk with his dad through a quiet, pastoral place—a nice contrast for his fiery, fidgety mood. Not far into the grounds, a monument caught my eye because it had children’s toys, most new-looking, carefully laid around it. There was even a small snapshot of the person being memorialized, a boy whose dates were 2001 to 2006. The little chestnut-haired boy had an incredibly cute smile. He looked to be in perfect health. Flowers and toy tractors adorned his stone. I couldn’t imagine what could possibly have cut down a boy like this when he was only five years old. “Beloved son, grandson, and brother. We know you are enjoying your new friends in heaven.” Dylan, understanding nothing of this, of course, went up to take the toy tractor and stuffed animals. It was almost surreal, watching my buoyant, adorable son playing around the tomb of someone who had lived only a couple of years more than his three. It made me thankful and mournful at the same time. I patiently advised to Dylan that not only should he not be playing with any of these things, because they didn’t belong to him, but he shouldn’t be playing around this little wall at all. All the rest would have been too painful to even try to explain.

Aurora Borealis

When I arrived here in my youth
In search of truth and mystery
And everything in front of me
Lit my imagination on fire
Aurora borealis in flames around me
Aurora borealis ruled the day
Ever since another downer
Another downer every day
Another cloud obscures the sky
So blue one moment now so gray
I watch the charlatans’ sleek revue
The loud, the brash, the arrogant
All the peacocks have their say
All the color melting now
Aurora borealis fades away

The 1960s

How I miss you time of grace
Look of love splashed on your face
Weapons, war, community
Hippies, gurus, big city
1970 rolls around
Consciousness goes underground
Beatles knew the time to go
One toke over the line in snow
This is how our days have gone
Drugging ourselves till the dawn
Gadgets, games, and trash TV
Cannot reclaim that harmony
And thought…..

Pistons Hum

Engine burning overturning
Life is streaming down
All my love in overdrive
Nothing comes around
And still the pistons hum

Fine machine in sad decline
Mile markers whizzing by
Leaks and spills and blood let loose
The ravages of time
And still the pistons hum

They would take me anywhere
Defy the chassis frame
Oil and water breath and fuel
Atomically the same
And still the pistons hum

Goodbye, Sun

As the years fly away toward the heavens
Where black sky meets white of the moon
I see silhouettes in the craters
Of the loves that I left far too soon
As my soul stirs and rises to join them
The stars and their colors all fade
A galaxy melting behind me
In the beautiful fire that I made

The Trouble with Now

A somber meditation on the general state of malaise affecting our avaracious and implacable country right now.

All of our prisoners, they schemed and conspired
Plotting to bring the house down
The rain was relentless, but now it is gone
So what is the trouble with now?

The trouble with now is the sickness
The trouble is that there’s no cure
The trouble with now is the malice we live in
And no one can stand anymore

Our miseries were endless, our land was in flames
The fields were all bloody and brown
But all of these battles have come and now passed
So what is the trouble with now?

The trouble with now is the sickness
The trouble is that there’s no cure
The trouble with now is the malice we live in
And no one can stand anymore

The best of the day is still lying before us
From battleground back to the plow
The future unfolds if we let the past go
Tell me, what is the trouble with now?

The trouble with now is the sickness
The trouble is that there’s no cure
The trouble with now is the malice we live in
And no one can stand anymore.

Witchcraft

It was sad to see her in this state
Alone and tired and sordid
Face proclaiming innocence
And all the facts distorted
They hanged her before nightfall
In the Salem village square
No one knew her virtue
Till she was gone and swinging there

Blue and Free

I cannot hold the sorrow
Anymore within this smile
It spills out of the edges
Falls around me for awhile
Swims in circles against whirlpools
Looks for light within the sea
Ever deeper into darkness
Until it leaves me blue and free

Your Water

My mouth never tires
Of calling the sound of your name
It is water to me
From the cloud rolling over the plain

Rolling in darkness
Rolling a rainbow at dawn
Your name is the river
That all of this water falls on

Falling at will
Falling reflections of you
And dream of this water
Is all that I ever will do

Humming

In the middle of the night
I hear her humming
It’s not the wind, it’s not the clock
Electricity flowing only
In my head I hear her humming
Too much vibration for a dream
She’s been gone but she is coming
She’s not a bird, nor firefly
This empty space beside my place
Hallucination, or her face?
It’s moving though she’s far away
Far away and humming

What Burns in Here?

The sun graces your bronzing skin
But what burns in here?
Hotel, ramparts, parapets—
What burns in here?

Flag outstretched and hands are too
But what burns in here?
Kissing bibles, monitors—
What burns in here?

Fanatics killing screaming names
But what burns in here?
What is this within the flames?
What burns in here?

Haiti

Too much devastation
For one lonely little island
In the blue Caribbean
What karmic wrecking ball
Befell these shattered people
Fine sand and water lapping
On Bahama and Bimini
And only smithereens
Here in Haiti
Overkill

Be Nimble

The sun became a dying ember
The day you went away
Night stars wither too in pain
The sky was always a silent joy
Unlike the ocean, arcade,
Even nimble mental noise
All its awe so effortless
And you leave,
I hear it cry

Philadelphia Fans

My hometown Eagles took an ugly beating tonight in Dallas at the hands of the Cowboys. I could not imagine a more unsavory scene: George W. Bush and Jerry Jones rejoicing in the stands, the masters of war and business, the most expensive franchise in all of sports pulling it off beneath the Jumbotron in the new Dallas Palace.

I offer this as consolation to Philadelphia fans.

We learn early how to lose
Baptized in this salty river water
Faces taut from years of pain
They line us up, we fall again
When once a decade chances come
Usually they bind us
Find us still helpless, unprepared
As fall frost descends on our stadiums
We wring our collective hands
Where would we be without this common sorrow
Our one blood connected by these unfulfilled dreams
Our lineage and legacy
McNabb and Schmidt, Bowa and Boone
All these ghosts we know are here
On the cold winter streets
Of South Philadelphia