Posts for June 23, 2022 (page 7)

I don’t need talking heads
to tell me it’s raining  

I heard thunder’s voice
grow hoarse in bootless warning  

I felt spitting drops of madness
splatter my face  

I saw all the surprised eyes
without umbrellas  

a long time ago    

Your red, white & blue
yard sign says JESUS 2022
OUR ONLY HOPE. 

Lord knows it’s tough,
this election cycle, your guy 
trailing his opponent—

who’s just so cute,
those horns & that tail & that
little pitchfork, & such

a hard worker!—in the polls. 
Me, I don’t have a dog
in this fight. An independent 

in a swing state, I go
back & forth. But what the hell,
I’ll send your guy

a generous donation
since he’s always asking. 
In the meantime, just 

relax. If there’s a recount,
the Supreme Court’s
got your back. 

In the depths of my self-absorption
I find every benefit to me, to be an aberration.
There is no difference between the cancerous growth and the healthy cells.
Except one performs the chief duty of life with distinction.

I wish I could compartmentalize every aspect of my existence
Every stimuli received by my dull senses.
Five new personalities and a chance for success
Every appendage is some new hope for collective penance.

The western sky was like that soundstage
In Singing in the Rain
Where Gene Kelly falls in love with Debbie Reynolds. 

Every shade of rose, lilac, periwinkle.
Like a salmon’s belly
Flashing past in an azure stream. 

And the day the music died played.
And I remembered you.
And my heart broke all over again.

The front and the back porch 

Wearing a hand-sewn pencil
skirt, red plaid & belted
with a strip of neon

green leather thin
as a baby garden snake
she commandeered a Sunday

School class that Methodist
kids craved. Even the Baptists
wanted what she had, not to mention

the squeaky-clean Church
of Christers. She gave frosted double
fudge cookies for memorizing

psalms & whispered
the word intercourse when explaining
Joseph & Mary’s family

after Jesus. She’d drive 10-miles
to Huntington so we could see monster
movies, Curse of the Sea Creature,

The Crawling Hand. Once
a month she hauled
my sister & me to the Carroll

County library, which was on the third
floor of the courthouse, another 20
miles away. She discreetly

checked out Faulkner just for me, As I Lay
Dying. It was wrapped in pale
green library binding. I was completely

baffled, & didn’t much
understand. She told me Faulkner
advised a desperate

reader who’d tried Light
in August three times
to try reading a fourth.

My birthday is on 9/11.

It is a dreadful day.

I used to love to party,

my personal holiday.

I would take time off

to go out of town.

But, in 2001

everything turned around.

I was in Chicago

to go Wrigley Field.

Reds versus Cubs

but my fate was sealed.

Like all people 

I was horrified and scared. 

And my father only lived

7 miles from there.

Trying to get a call

through was not happening.

Having no communication

was maddening.

I intellectually understood

but, emotionally a wreck.

All I wanted 

was a welfare check.

Finally in the evening

his phone began to ring. 

My father picked up

my heart began to sing.

Knowing he was safe

was a gift to me.

For many other people,

that would not be.  

My birthday is on 9/11.

It is a dreadful day.

Not celebrating is fine.

All I lost was a holiday.​​​​​​​

The four of us ate shrooms and wandered out
into the moonlit desert, the canyon and cacti
in blue-silver light. And when the saguaro 
began to mambo no one got unchill 
or freaked out. John found a cottonwood
that had been hollowed by lightning strike: 
we each took turns standing inside the tree, 
surrounded by wood, enveloped by living wood,
cells swooshing like rainstorm in our ears.
I thought I understood entombed. 
Hours later, coming down, drinking our 
raspberry/hibiscus tea, we sat on a picnic
table and watched a helicopter shine a spotlight on the cliff face. 
The light played back and forth across the rock
for long minutes, a brilliant white luminescent beetle 
crawling along the wall, before it was switched off 
and the helicopter flew back to wherever
it came from. We didn’t know then what we learned later, 
that a climber hadn’t returned home as scheduled. 
Father of two, about our age. Search and rescue 
would return again in the morning, find his body
on the desert floor where it grows so bitter cold at night. 
We’re fully down now, raw-nerved and famished, 
so we trudge back to the car, back to our terribly poetic lives. 
A little worse for wear, but what can you say,
we survived.

the troops were fortified
                              had entered 
                              the tower

traced and worn to the ground
                              houses of
                              the others

the downfall did with most
                               looked upon
                              dented days

the smaller might mind for
                              once without 
                              altered cause

made us look to their times
                              for manners
                              brought about

perfumed gloves of good birth
                              hold his
                              undrawn motto

“a century too late”
                              of care still 
                              to be seen

in the time of hundreds
                              unnatural
                              removed

the house is still the old
                              tenantless
                              memories

the chase more to their tatstes
                              had done haps
                              we do not

Preaching
Teaching
Titus
Two

Out with the
phony law abiding
pharisee

In with the
free feminist
flowing with grace

Changing of the guard