Lincoln, April 16th

Hold me like rain
On the wound of the nation
The salve that binds colors and classes and thieves

Hold me like smoke
Where the fire has seared you
Gunpowder and gristle become grasses and seed

Hold me like hope
On the lips of the children
Whose fathers and uncles are corpses and wreaths

Hold no more hostage
Ascending toward freedom
Angels descending hold garlands and peace

Review

I looked back on my life from the clouds
Wondering where it began
Was it in the eyes of my father
Coming home from the war
Or my mother’s petulant murmurings
One more makes four
One more makes four
Born of the shrapnel and radar and blood
Born of the soft, sad lament
Born at a time when the world was at rest
Gearing up for its next bloodbath
I was bathed in the milk of a vagabond sheep
I was lost in the continents’ drift
I sleep now in silence as these clouds turn to rain
Sweat of the years bound to fall

Child

You’re a child
Santa will come
The Tooth Fairy, too
The world is a rainbow
Dream wild
As colors fill you

Animals talk
Costumes parade
Your head is in pictures
The pictures you’ve made
No one to tell you
There is no such blue

You’re a child
The dream will expire
And so will your fire
But you won’t be a child
By then

You Thought Rain

You thought rain
And down it came
You thought again
And cried

I think sun
And out it comes
The power of
The one

You thought rain
Incessant need
To be so entertained

The thinking and
The pouring linked
Forever thus arranged

Keep thinking rain
Suffer again
The storms within your head

I think sun
And so I run
Where there is light instead

Quote of the Day

Ludwig van Beethoven, confiding to Czerny about "Moonlight Sonata":

"Surely I've written better things."

The Bird I Long to Be

I see him hovering over my head
There in the azure sky
He’s miles above this sorrow
Sings his songs as tears pass by

There are rainbows in the distance
That surely he’ll pass through
He’s a confidant of paradise
The oceans know him, too

Just a pilgrim in the distance
Spans his wings over the sea
He’s the one who stole my shadow
He’s the bird I long to be

There’s a boat out in the great blue deep
That he’s serenading now
I hear it in my roiling dreams
I watch and wonder how

Just a pilgrim in the distance
Spans his wings over the sea
He’s the one who stole my shadow
He’s the bird I long to be

I wonder where he sleeps
Or if he ever rests his head
I live my life in search of him
Find emptiness instead

Just a pilgrim in the distance
Spans his wings over the sea
He’s the one who stole my shadow
He’s the bird I long to be

Drought

No water falls on this forest
Where reconstruction failed
And restitution swings
From broken branch to breaking branch

Visions

That fire
I saw rising from your eyes
Was it a lover from your memory
Abandoned out of pride?
That smoke
Curling like the mist
Was it fuel from passion tossed aside
Someone that you kissed?
That tree
Glistening in the moonlight
Is it one that you will climb again
Even as you lose your sight?

Prisoner

In effort to know the truth
He shakes the bars
Pulls at the chains
Screams the names
Of all who have done him in
The executioner however
Wears a cumulus wig
And a jacket of rain
And an ineffable name
Disappearing

Discipline

This may hurt a bit
It is the will of the Lord
Learn your right from wrong
Learn to sing the song
It is for your own good
This welt will go away
You now know what to do
What to think and what to say
You grow up strong as a cedar
You think and walk like me
Remember this switch here
Remember docility

Functionary Blues

This form I’m sorry to say
Is not filled out quite right
Too long looking at these
And I’m about to lose my sight
No news is good news
I’ve got the functionary blues

Please just take your place in line
And have ready your ID
The last four digits will work fine
Would you please follow me
No news is good news
I’ve got the functionary blues

The functionary blues
In the age of high technology
I’m a dinosaur in the horse race
Under the gun pointed at me

The world has gone to war again
No one is safe from the machine
Still they need someone to man it
Still they have these hands to clean
No news is good news
I’ve got the functionary blues

The functionary blues
In the age of high technology
I’m a dinosaur in the horse race
Under the gun pointed at me

Modernity

Someone is following me on Twitter.
Someone is downloading my photo onto their iPhone.
Someone is emailing me from Ankara.
Someone is Skyping me from France.
Someone is unable to Google.
Someone prefers Macs to PCs.
Someone is tired of MySpace.
Someone looks silly on YouTube.
Someone is texting from somewhere.
Someone has just bought a Nook.
Someone is Mapquesting their way to my place.
Someone unemployed is on LinkedIn.
Someone gave up on Yahoo.
Someone created a Hub.
Someone has grown disenchanted with the Web.
Someone has registered a domain.
Someone is running in place.
Benjamin Franklin looks up from his Almanac and says, “Huh?”

Man Having Dinner

Man hunts animals and has dinner.

Man hunts animals, has a wife who prepares his meat, and has dinner.

Man hunts animals, fires a weapon, has a wife who prepares his meat, and has dinner.

Man hunts animals, sits in a chair absorbing facts, fires a weapon, has a wife who prepares his meat, and has dinner.

Man hunts animals, sits in a chair absorbing facts, sells things to other people, fires a weapon, has a wife who prepares his meat, and has dinner.

Man hunts animals, sits in a chair absorbing facts, sells things to other people, fires a weapon, has a wife who prepares his meat, watches other men and women on screens, and has dinner.

Man hunts animals, sits in a chair absorbing facts, sells things to other people, fires a weapon, has a wife who prepares his meat, watches other men and women on screens, flies to other countries, and has dinner.

Man hunts animals, sits in a chair absorbing facts, sells things to other people, fires a weapon, has a wife who prepares his meat, watches other men and women on screens, flies to other countries, has dinner, and dies.

In Everything

Everything has a soul
Slowly growing old
Gyrating toward the sun
Consumed in the end at once

The steel, the fire, the vegetable
The ice upon the lake
The guitar I play at sunset
The music that I make

Not only everyone
But everything is soul
The souls of all around me turn
Sure as lead will turn to gold

Curiosity

Curious
About flight
And wings
And the gravity
Of everything
And not believing
He leapt from the window
To the street
The angels were
Tied up that morning

Depletion

Time,
What a trickster you are
In the beginning
You were everywhere
Like water, air, breath, fish
Now everyone’s gills are exploding
No loaves and no fishes
To feed even a Christian
You should hang on a tree
Right between Barnabas and Jesus
Where Judas folded heaven and earth
And turned an infinite sea
Into nothingness

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition
Is the soul of art
Art’s soul, words form
It’s the dog’s meow
The cat of twenty tales
So many words rain down
Cats and dogs
Next or cattycorner to each other
Sure as you and I spoon
By design of a sovereign creator
A matrix made of sparrows
We are sparrows, we are words,
We fly and we hope
We don’t crash
Into each other
To be eaten by cats and dogs
Juxtaposed
We survive

Mirror

Fragmentation
Is slicing up my life
Grinding me to pieces
I self-produce the knife
I used to see the picture
Shining in this place
Smiling wide and lustrous
Radiant with grace
I will put back all the pieces
I will make the mirror whole
Fragmentation
Find me searching
For the glue to bind my soul

My Way

If I had it my way
The sun would always shine
Glass always full
Love all the time
But it is not my way
It is not your way
It is the way of seeds and flowers
Rain and rainbows
War and peace
Wounds and healing
Fragments of feeling
Sadness and euphoria
Dance out of time
It is God’s way
God’s way all the time

Banks

Your banks are overflowing
Though not the banks you would like
But a river of blood was overdue
Overwhelming, your carnage
Overspent, your accounts
Your karma is following you
Through the streets of Manhattan
The canals of Biscayne
The yachts and the Pipers find you
When you wake where are you
In this rubble and ruin,
The washed away cheekbones of youth

Shine

All murk now…..
Shadows fight shadows
And time loops in miasma

Sad dreams and daylight
Intertwine in the dust
Only memory offers a balm

In these recesses of mine
Scant moments extend
Rare flashes when I am at peace

And I remember when
Ideas scintillated like coins
Collected but not to be spent

Darkness Like This

Evening envelops
once-blue desert sky
a Bedouin’s veil
pierced by star beams

The moon’s drawn and quartered
an infidel hushed
its lonely shaft falling on no one
lazy eye glinting on dunes and oases
while silence rides silence to sleep

In darkness like this
I arose from my stillness
suffusing the void with my light

Zero Plus One

Zero and One were having a heated debate
About nothing
Zero so perfectly obese, obtuse, ready to envelope the earth
One ready to impale the next innocent bystander
With his spear-like intellect
Round and round they volleyed
Sucker and stick
Bowl and spoon
Bat and ball
Head and neck
Cosmic egg and lightning flash
Each convinced of his own importance
Along came a chick
They put their consummate heads together
To become ten

The Movies

The industry
Is dancing above our heads
An alternative reality
So much more pleasing
Than the making of beds
The punching of clocks
The regimens of diets and pills
Tap dancing and drum rolls
Someone kissing someone while someone is bleeding
Guns are drawn though real police seldom shoot
Credits and panning and praising and frothing
Casting the lost horizon
In a sickening smug sunset
The envelope, please
And the winner is
The illusion of mind over matter

Harvest

The air is electric
With spring wheeling in
The wind magnetizes the flowers
In bloom in the garden where I laid my soul
Bare to the earth last November
One of these seeds will become something wild
Something new for the world
To remember

Sadness
Drips from leaves
Into the valley
Lingers in the foggy dawn
Wrings its lonely hands around me
Knows the face that I put on
Woman
I slide down
Those sullen eyelids
Sun has risen, she is gone

Pretend to Be Air

Pretend To Be Air

Someone was whispering—
Somebody I knew—
Someone who watched
What I was turning into

I was left at the doorway
Saw night rise and then fall
Transfixed by these shadows
That murmured and called

I can stand in the vacuum
Imagine your hair
Breathe slowly the autumn
And pretend to be air

By the bedside I hover
Inhabit your dreams
When you roll to the side
It is hard not to scream

These are the mirages
Of one who was whole
These are the visions
That shattered my soul

I can stand in the vacuum
Imagine your hair
Breathe slowly the autumn
And pretend to be air

Blowing Yesterday

In an era when the glitter
Had overrun our lives
Plastic and metal creations
Ruled the day
You came in on the silence
Riding waves of wheat
And blowing yesterday into my mouth
Then when the sparrows all flew south
You held me through the winter
Running with the water
To the spring
Running with the wind like it was
Blowing yesterday

Lover in Winter

Despite the numbing
Of mind and of body
The dumbing of synapses
The buried emotions
The words made of ice
Hearts besot with rum
Day wrestles with darkness but
All is not frozen
All is not lost
I love you

Healing

Here at the Home,
we permit daily visitors:
the pastor, the accountant,
the lawyer, the cop,
the actress, the dancer,
the school teacher, the shrew
None of these people really know you
Therapy may help to deter the disease
But should you find yourself looking
at the law from nine different angles,
remember what was told you before your
personal Big Bang,
before you were made,
The Original You….
And the little blue pill
by your bedside

The End of the Cunning

The leaves will dance
And the birds again sing
When finally the cunning is gone
A long expiration from night until dawn
When the cunning is gone
The hucksters give up on their scamming
The showmen give up on their cons
The starlets and models surrender their clothing
No matter what rags they have on
The players recreate for enjoyment
The agents are shown to the door
The floor is now nature’s, the clouds are the sky’s
Now that the cunning is gone
All across bridges and nations
Real estate is no more real
Sensation, emotion, and love rule the day
Now that the cunning is gone

When the Wind Goes Home

When the wind goes home
And the leaves go limp
And the rain has sent
Us all within

I’ll still remember
Blowing through your hair
But you are gray
And the wind’s not there

Was a world of thrills
Now a world of woe
The wind went home
And the world says no

Freedom flags
Are torn and spent
The wind was high
But the wind just went

We had a boat
We had a sail
Now we have a sea
To no avail

For when the wind goes home
It’s a ragged world
I picked you up
I told you girl

The Poem

Each syllable of the poem
Was hiding in soft cocoons behind your eyes
Transforming me, transforming you
Into branch and water
Bamboo and cloud
Unspoken plaintive heartbeats
Were the cadence of these words
Each letter lying languid in a lonely silver lagoon
And the poem like a river was unleashed raging
Finding us flying
When we kissed

Scent

As a dog smells goodness
Draws near to honey
Sniffs and shuns all sorrow
So I move toward tomorrow
Thieves around me
Stay away

Barriers No More

Sun and moon
Went out to play
Found nine friends
Broke the color barrier
Now sandlot baseball is played
With planets of every race
Thank you Venus Mars
And Mercury for
Proving that
We are all
The same
Inside

Holes

Through a little hole

I climbed out

Saw the stars

Beautiful cataclysmic universe

Coming at me way too fast

I'd like to focus all my life

On one twinkling freckle

In the face of this great mother

But she died without warning, and I'll die too

Back into another hole I go

Narcissus

Through the labyrinth of laws Controlling the cosmos Celestial bodies Orbits of planets and moons Something started spinning With water, light, movement Time was envisioned and freed All I had was a moment In this miracle of lights Then amnesia set in Sent me back to the darkness Within these labyrinthine layers Of chaos and sound And profligate echoes I lost you

Hall of Trees

Driving across Mississippi
Is like driving through a hall of trees
Wonder what the natives
Made of these

Elegant, aristocratic,
Reaching for the sky
Rooted earthward yet giant
In my mind

I see longboats, spears,
Looms for something spinning,
Winning till the white man
Tore them down

And cutting through this sanctuary
We now have carved a road
Found a box to put the funny
Red men in

These ghosts with leaves and thistles
In the wind like arrows whistle
But there has been a crime
In their blue sky

These trees have seen it all
Know the Natchez, saw the fall
In this hall of trees I am small
But I drive in

Children

They are from another planet
Know nothing of our world
Questions so ridiculous
They make you laugh in joy
What is inside an apple?
“An apple.”
What is inside the sun?
“Fire. Hot, hot fire.”
Where does God sleep?
“He doesn’t. He’s God.”
Where is love, anyway?
“In your questions.
In my tired, bewildered eyes.”

Coherence

I can be coherent
Like a drunk on Sunday morning
When he has to he can
Make it to the church

I can be irreverent
Like a preacher lusting, leering
With my sermon, words just
Floating on the wind

I can be a martyr
On that cross you see me writhing
Is there someone who can guide me
From this tomb

I can be connected
Like a telegram or modem
But I prefer to lie here
In the dust

Time Is Cold

I struggle with time,
a man paralyzed
by desires unyielding
to form

No matter how time
is delivered, its entrails
are all I can make out
at night

Time could be snow
delivered in blizzards
and still I’d hold this
empty shovel

Time could be steel
with its bars all around me
and I wide open to night
in its prison

Time could be ice
like a glacier retreating
to the volcano from which
it once dragged me

But time stays unknown
as the world becomes old
and all that I know:
Time is cold.

Sleep as Best You Can

On President's Day, I offer this humble paean to certain recent administrations.


Sleep as Best You Can

Fire’s blazing through your store
No one is coming back no more
But sleep as best you can

Termites chewing up your walls
Soon you’ll have no wall at all
But sleep as best you can

Sleep as best you can
Through the uproar in the nation
Sleep as best you can
Through the whole damned conflagration
We all know that you’re the man
So sleep as best you can

Floodwaters rising through the streets
Yonder muffled drum now beats
But sleep as best you can

Guerilla warfare down below
Stop on by and say hello
Then sleep as best you can

Sleep as best you can
Through the uproar in the nation
Sleep as best you can
Through the whole damned conflagration
We all know that you’re the man
So sleep as best you can

There’s a shadow on each face
Each rebel soldier struck by mace
But sleep as best you can

Dark miasma hangs above
Squalid children cry for love
But sleep as best you can

Sleep as best you can
Through the uproar in the nation
Sleep as best you can
Through the whole damned conflagration
We all know that you’re the man
So sleep as best you can

Winded

I don’t want to look at you
Broken anymore
When you were
Whole you wore the wind
A beggar on your back

You changed direction in your
Chained spasmodic sleep

Now no longer stone
More like a sponge deep the sea
The wind no longer touches you
But puts the waves
Where you would breathe

January

There should be a law against
January
Clouds roll in for tombstone sky
Frozen birds and people
Southward fly
Or die
Waiting for a crack of hope
But “Nope” says the dealer
House rules
House crumbling
Evicted from the house
House condemned
House to be rebuilt
By June

Word is saving January
January – Microsoft Word

Sleep

You think you can shut this down
Grand Central at midnight
Trains inbound and out
Generator in overdrive—
How do you sleep?

You entreat with a pill
Count sheep on the wall
Here in the caffeinated city
Your graffiti on every car of
Every train, every sign

Pointing to a night at the theater:
Rumbles in the station, panhandlers
Rap music, lost chances
Lost potential romances colliding within
And tell me how will you fall

Asleep?

Onward

Hard to believe you hover here
In this numbing cold
You in the smoke, you in the trees,
The snow-filled fields,
The birds that bear this blinding freeze

I like you so much better
In the summer where you
Blue the sky, you warm the lake,
You let the girls wear summer skirts
You let me have what I can take

What will you be in springtime?
Will you take Afghanistan away?
Ann-Marie whom you know well
Knows nothing of this metal world
This crushing hole, this freezing hell

All those butterflies, I close my eyes
I see them painted in her room
You in their wings, you in their eggs
You gave them flight,
You give us legs

Alight

When the night descended
Madman beggar, loveless soul
I was hanging out my laundry
To dry in the sun
Never one for timeliness
I tore the clocks down
From the sky
Where am I
Come morning