Posts for June 8, 2022 (page 11)

Reading about snakes before a trip
To a southeast Arizona,
I learned they “listen” by feeling vibrations
Then hide so their presence’s unknown-ah.  

This spring I saw rat snakes up close to my house
There were two—and were too big to watch.
So now when I go out into my backyard
You can bet I take steps like I’m Sasquatch.

Charity gives it up
without thinking about it  

Emptiness so full
there’s no room for selfishness  

No need for a slide rule
So blended nobody notices  

Charity is the butterfly
emerging from love’s cocoon      

*See 1 Corinthians 13:13. KJV uses the word charity where
other versions of the Bible use  love. 

Four legged deity, with your gracious thumping tail.
Wash my feet with your holy tongue.
My backyard forager, finding all things putrid to offer as communion.
You crunch a squirrel carcass.
“This is my body.”
I don’t promise to repeat the ritual in remembrance of you.
I swear instead, to start each day kissing your sacred floppy ears.
I know an eternity wouldn’t be long enough of watching your frito feet twitch each night as you sleep.

We were watching Wheel
when the barber came,
when the barber came 
to cut her hair, my sister’s hair,
thinned and patched, 
scalp afire from 
the atom’s kiss.

Gently, gently the barber
worked, the scissors snipped,
the razor whirred. 
She cried a little, 
he bit his lip, but this 
barber was good,
he worked on and on.

And when the barber
was finally done, 
he held up the mirror
to that gleaming egg,
the slick bald dome
in which cancer nursed.
She cried again
but thanked him still,
he touched her shoulder
like a father would.

He refused to take
bills thrust his way,
the barber wouldn’t,
no matter how we pled.
It’s how people do,
the barber said, 
then closed the door 
and went away.

storm clouds
over tin roof
the regulars and their dogs

into bristled light
with seven ways to enter-
growing out of stone.

we may be solitarily skinned in these body suits
but shut your eyes halfway letting in the skim of currents that surround
everything
-you cannot see these with body-eyes wide-
see
where one being and another breach the walls between that really
don’t exist
this lovely unceasing stream of realization

I would rather
the day-glo of ice cubes down my shirt,
a sweet person’s laugh,
than chase ghosts in a Pac Man arcade machine.

I would rather
Captain Crunch hack my Facebook account,
divulge the details of my love life,
than name all of my cool shady friends.

I would rather
get lost in new Los Angeles,
talk like SpongeBob,
than erase everything done with sloppy-intent.

I would rather
discover a new civilization
with more muscular arms,
rebuilt as part animal.

Moss is a verdant painted gash