Poem: Hi, how're you doin'?

Another day has come and gone
without so much attention
as one pays a bodily function.
Busy work and time logged,
are the wipe and flush of daily life,
and existence with time, rest somewhere between.
The habitual consumption and expulsion–
as creatures, we eat and shit, instinctively.
Everything we do has origin in that process.
The torture is that we cannot stop.

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Poem: Whiskey for Lunch

Squinting in the brightness of a straight-up sun,
I flick my cigarette's ash and watch it roll away
on the sidewalk, next to where I'm sitting
leaning back against my front door.

Dark wings flutter overhead and land
by a pool of oil-slicked water on the drive.
A yellow eye peers out from black feathers
to size my danger and determines–none.

I speak loudly at the bird, "If you drink that
it'll make you sick, and you might wake up dead."
Turning its other yellow eye to the pool
as if to consider and weigh my words
regarding the safety of the find, the bird drinks,

and drinks, and drinks, until I stand up finished.
Wiping its oil-slicked beak on black feathered
wings and back, it regards me once again
with the first eye, then returns to his sky
and leaves me with a nagging thirst for whiskey.

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Poem: (Ananas comosus) my love is a spiny bromeliad

too cumbersome for a house plant,
you demand open fields and free sun

the roots you cork-screw stay shallow,
feeding from windy wet air

your saw-tooth leaves grow rosette round
to contain the dewy droplet rain

thriving and mature you flower your first,
pink and sharp to attract

irresistible are the folds of your blossom
for my pollination buzz

i wander homeward, dizzy headed,
heavy in the day's nectar

in visits to come you grow fat,
thick-skinned and full of juice

hovering around your ripened maternity
waiting for gravity to mid-wife

your pineapple splits on the soil
gushing and wet; I make a bee-line

the sweetest reward for me, my love,
lies in your pulpy fruit

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Poem: Singles' Night

In the bar light my teeth are white,
and my thin hair is thick and full.
I say your eyes are black
as the sky between now
and the pull of morning shades.
I say important things to you
and funny things too.
You laugh and nod your head
'yes,' and puff Slim Virginias.
I watch my weight and work out.
Although I like dark beer, I drink light.
You smile and walk to the ladies room
and never come back. I finish my drink,
then drink yours, and put up my own chair
at ten after two.

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Poem: Shakespearian Sonnet 2: Unfinished

A true poet lives not in the moment,
but in the brooding past, after the fact.
From a mental tomb, an encasement,
the poet writes knowledge others have lacked.
From a mystical memory, thoughts come,
to be lined out in black upon the page.
Like others before, Coleridge, Keats, and Donne,
I cast my mind back to an ancient age.
To pen things in an enlightened light,
must surly be a blessing from the Muse.
But the poet's life is dark as night,
the laudanum, TB, and pleasure abuse.

Living a painful life is not my wish.
This, preventing death, remains unfinish...

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Poem: Solar Functions

When taken one day at a time,
The immense repetitive futility of life bears its full weight
Upon the branches of your potential happiness.

Recalling, I did this yesterday and will again tomorrow,
Is enough to throw me into a fit of never-agains,
Calculated to shake trees and frighten birds.

Inept and ill suited to repetitive tasks, I flounder;
Why tie my shoes, why go to work, why pee?
If it weren't for biology, I would never leave bed.

Reliability is the key to order and stability.
Is the sun punctual of its own accord,
Or because its lower half needs to evacuate?

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published: March '06
Indian Bay Press

Poem: The Sun is the Flashlight of God Checking his Favorite Terrarium

If the firmament exists,
and we are enclosed by a glass globe,
then God sits, gazing in, outside our sphere.

If we cock our heads to the sky
and strain with our electronic ears,
then we can hear the echo of His last sneeze.

If we fix our eyes to the night stars
and focus with our sharpest lenses,
then we can see His crystallized phlegm twinkling.

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