Give me geckos with suction cup feet
and clickity clack music dancing on walls
as the ocean lulls the island to sleep
the stars promise wishes come true
Waning moon, 2 a.m.
Side swiped, tired
Beleaguered from all that shining
Wants to lay it down
Before he does it all again
Lift of a kite – whimsically in pillowy
scraps & nonsensical paper
twists, trailing 8-times its length.
The peculiar Richard Babley, nicknamed
Mr. Dick, was weighed down
by the troublesome thoughts of King Charles I,
although the monarch had been recently
beheaded. The way a father
strict father can stomp over the footprint
of an eager to please son, the way
a strict math teacher quells
the contemplative questions
of a young student. Mr. Dick
schemed with David to build a kite
with long side tails trailing, embellished
with paper swatches from King Charles’
funeral. They glide like ragged bellwethers
above the rocky beach. King Charles
is finally released. Wind whips
the ascending kite, propels it toward
to the stratosphere & rewrites the script.
Insects
This feral pressure of diamond making,
these alabaster-winged fireflies cover the yard,
and weigh down the garden with their legs at night.
Blue, Federico, write of my favorite color. Blue—like Noah’s planet
at a pop—delicacies are dreams I dream, paired with blue, crawling
scar’s lengths up my legs & such wings on green things never seen,
green hums dissolving, birds at feeders thrumming an unplucked zither
sounding the sex of scarabs sliding in a scuttling seraglio, or ventriloquism,
my Mamí & her hands groping handle & cord—shorted—a slurping electric
sweeper pleading—who watches hijito, who cares for me vacuuming every day?
My anger at this is a circle, waiting for a new woman hidden inside a root—
She is a tumble-down brown, red delicious toward new beginnings in the fall,
while my intrepid sister climbs peaks to meet Abominable Elohim, & the other
juggles her gaggle, three championees of all ages with ease. None of these
my doing, none of these & my tiresome wife—she laughs, you can’t get it up!
Papí keeps crickets for the iguana that terrify Mamí—she siphons them
with a Dyson. I could be hungry as an aardvark, but I ain’t that hungry yet—
Chicago rises from ashes, tall
buildings scraping now-hidden sky.
National character built – hardship,
generosity, new frontiers.
Now begins conquest of darkness
passing of era, its namesake queen.
But Pittsburgh a filthy city,
sewer waste running into river
Factories burning coal spewed smoke,
until darkened sun refused to shine.
Masses arriving for jobs, children of twelve
working late into night.
Age of invention, science hailed as truth
Henry Ford’s well-oiled machine
Burning and ice packs and waiting.
My whole life is
burning and ice packs and waiting
for at least another month.
I hate that I am
memorializing this
in a poem.
Because I never want to remember
burning and ice packs and waiting.
Blue grass and big hearts
Barefoot summers
That go on forever
Fingers stained dark
From picking berries
Ripe from the bush
Warmed by the sun
Tobacco and thoroughbreds
First Saturday in May
And those horses fly
My Old Kentucky Home
On all our tongues
An anthem that lingers
In our very souls
Deep forests and calm waters
Fishing boats on the lake
Vibrant leaves in the fall
The quiet peace of winter
Covering us like a blanket
Until it’s time to thaw again
The fifteenth state; born in June
The most beautiful place
A commonwealth for all
Where we standed united
As blue blood Kentuckians
