isn’t this rose. Alone
in front of a wall of jasmine
its vaunted smell smothered
by the saccharine cascade behind.
But its stand-alone pink beauty—
ah, there’s a solo act to attract
this photographer’s eye
on the walk up from Assisi’s
great basilica for Francis,
No other rose will be as sweet
to his memory.

By the time I came along
back in the late nineteen hundreds,
quirky general stores and varieties
were already damn near dead.
I remember Ben Franklins’ down in Morehead
stayed in business for a long time
mostly ‘cause the owner had a real smart parrot
who would follow you around the aisles
talking and squawking up a storm.
I can’t believe I’ve  forgotten his name
but it’s been a long time

and he was pretty rude for a pretty bird.
Over here in Olive Hill the novelty wore off
when the factories closed
and they banned ol’ Tom T. Hall
from raisin’ hell in his own hometown
after a few too many Billy Beers.
And the back streets were lined
with charming storefronts
turned struggling furniture stores
and the kind of junk shops
where everything you try to buy
smells musty enough to get you sneezing.
Ain’t nothing much left here now
but the churches, one brand of Baptist or another,
and the cemetery ghosts of folks
who used to matter.  

words to a new poem
buried in my confused brain
I watch a kite in a movie
imagine clear-cut words birthing
new poems written on kite-tails

Move over, please, give us enough room to dance,

Welcome
Please wait to be seated and
refrain from unguided
tours of the grounds. 

The following are prohibited: 
1. Unclear intentions
2. Blurry boundaries
3. Unaddressed/ unattended baggage
4. Projection of any kind 
5. Altering of facts, images, or conversations at a later date 
    (verbatim auditory replay available upon request)
6. Reservations

Your patronage is appreciated,
your patronizing is not. 

-New management

On the Impossible Occasion of an Old Leonard Cohen meeting Young Federico García Lorca for Tea in a Buddhist Monastery in the Catskills, 1929

I wash with scrub
in a silence so luxurious,
so still, it is rhapsodic,
almost lewd to my liking.
You think I’m kidding,
do you not young man?
Everything for you is
ensconced on a throne
of deep, and great danger.
Federico, your name’s sake
is the scream, planted green,
green, so heaven-climbing,
green, where walls to earth
and eaves do meet,
where blood spills by moon
and civil hands, cry of gypsies
at their shining leather feet.
My boy. I am peace between 
pebbles thrown into water,
I have women or men
for you if you want them.
My kitchen serves breads
aromatic, soft, and whole
to ease you after your
journey to our America,
and today I wonder, child,
at spirits—what devil or which
talent as forest fire burns
the soul of your pen—rent poor
of metaphor, drained of similes
in verdant Granada today.
What of New York—has
my Andalusian puppy come 
to chide? Dear, we sing! 
Secret chords into each other, 
we please the Muse
and cease our Civil War, 
stamp heels together— 
splintering the cedars
from the naves to the tops—
to the slow, red stops! 
of the Soleá,
and make the weave 
of your pouting, black locks wet 
with fixative to slide 
words smearing unintelligible 
on the page—a wildness asking, 
a pregnancy begged.
Leonard, perhaps men can stop 
making sense of women,
perhaps life becomes less interesting,
perhaps even boring.
Leonard, I want to burn the ark of heaven
dressed in pesetas and prayers.
Give me agency and excess,
give me your disease and prowess,
I want to touch this sexless mystery.
Leonard, today I am the Germans 
who bleed Guernica,
Krakow’s ovens blessing Poland.
I will sit one day in the West
inside the bomb in New Mexico,
I will light the sky with el duende,
the grace and violence of all the poets
riding black horses on a plutonium core
without a door, the sweet life dancing 
inside an eye with no walls slightly smiling,
with no walls broken widely open.

Loose rope dangles
Down the building face
Cross open windows
Cat burglar in daylight?

Man on a seat bursts from the roof
On belay! he rappels down the building
Lands, sets down his bucket
Safe, with window blade and rag

A pet cage, left nearby on the street
Door open, cat gone

before
dawn,
in the
instant of
awakening,

my dream is
to feel
your breath,
in a whisper,
brush my ear.

like a storm surge
it floods in,
lightning sends
to frenzy all my
fifteen thousand
cochlear hair cells,
clanging like
carillon bells.

in that timeless 
moment, once
again, you 
are real.

in full squint,
i scan the room
to check.
all clear.
empty.

first light is pink
and orange,
it isn’t finished yet.

i take a long stretch.
try to interpret
what it was you said.

it was your
quiet voice,
unmistakable,
even after all
these years,
speaking just
one sentence,
higher pitched at end,
i rub my head

a question then?

Benton Park’s mallards kill
engines in unison.
Razor sharp arrow point
under cloudy sky.  

They perfectly, in airshow sequence
and at unknown click,
shift west.
Their aft alight
with mites of a biology same.    

When they stall,
on the quilted altitude,

time  

stops.  

Shutter-still.  

Then bang! they bank north in a chorus,
bank again over Crittenden Street
in concert
and glide
anthem pluribus and unum equivocal.  

Each duck a meager muscle,
a paltry airlight bone
selflessly assembled
so to single seem a creature greater.  

As they,
descending
over Cherokee Street,
yaw.  

One all
in wet memory,
an eloquent synchrony sudden.  

Aim east again   
and climb.