Posts for June 11, 2023 (page 8)

I’d have kept you alive
for 20 more years. You’d stop

wearing a beat-up Cincinnati
Reds cap to hide the thinning

tendrils of your blonde-gray
hair.  I convince you that bald

is sexy.  In your soaring
tenor you’d belt out two

original love songs at my front
yard wedding–only six of us &

Chrysiantha–under the Sugar
Maple.  No more delivering

Dominoes at 2 am, double
cheese & pepperoni. Your album

climbs to #1 on the Americana 
charts & you leave Nashville once

& for all with your faded blue
pick-up, red & white

Fender & Tina, your spectacular middle
age lover.  You take Brenda, the sweet

dappled calico, along too; the light
of Carolina still strong in your voice. 

Two-hundred
and six
bones—
the skeleton
of a good story.

Hopeful, idyllic 
Needed Now more than Ever
In America!

Snowflakes fall to the ground,

the truck has little gas.

It’s okay, it’s good enough.

This man’s kiss tastes like the moon!

This man’s eyebrows are a work of art!

This man’s Peruvian hands are migratory!

This is as strong as surfing in Pacasmayo.

Let’s sit on this snowy roof

and feel like a tank full of gasoline.

was really nothing.
I was silent,
too caught up in the following to recognize him,
though I’d seen photos.                                      
                                           Mom took them,
the boy in a tailored suit,
on his trike or on the backyard swing,
the boy as master of the puppet show,
or sitting on Dad’s lap
(The Child’s World, Volume One, open to read),
proud creator of the model Alamo,
frowning into the sun with the Easter basket,
next to his Nonno who holds a drink, sporting a shiner
from a diabetic fall, the boy somber
looking straight ahead.                          
                                           Only when waking did I know him,
this guide to secret places. Now that he’s gone
with the fog of morning as I stepped over the boundary
into wakefulness,                             
                                 do I know what I would say.

Hey there! Thanks for coming on the show!
Some fun questions from our patrons, then we’ll let you go!

First just let me say how we all are dumbstruck
By your enormous, voluminous, big, loud truck!

It rumbles, it grumbles, it belches out smoke!
So tall that the wheels require 60 inch spokes!

But…

Why choose a whip which needs so much gas?
Is it simply to get your ice cream home fast?

Why do you take up four parking spaces?
Is it so no one your “off-roader” defaces?

When you gun it and run it, before walkers pass through,
Is it just cuz you have something better to do?

Rolling through stop signs, turning left on red,
Do traffic laws not exist in your head? 

Your bumper sticker says “This Man Puts Up a Fight!”
But have you ever hauled anything heavier than Bud Light?

One last question, you’re such a good sport.
(And we know that you have that appointment in court.)

With all of that going, From To and To From,
Have you ever been able to make someone come?

No appointments needed, a fair asking price:

is it the wood fire,
the deer outside in the dark,
the circle of family,
or the marshmallow chocolate
that melts our worries away?

Birds sing in the morning, and after a rain.
That’s when it’s easy to see Jesus.
Jesus likes to listen,
so they sing.  

St. Francis knew this.  

Birds were born knowing this.
But humans evolved a cataract of mind.
Behind mind, we remember
and write poetry.  

floral stem branches
out   lateral stretch toward light
orchid’s innate faith