Flub preserved in print,
LexPoMo bids, Come and die,
ye perfectionist!

a knock at the door from

a Jehovah’s Witness,

wondering if I’ve thought about my fate

or my nosy neighbor,

curious if I plan to mow the lawn this year

both, I say, are tomorrow’s problem

I draw the blinds shut

please let me sleep

the fruits of one’s labour

often taste sweeter when shared

with a friend or three

black and brown voters*
don’t care if your live or die
twenty twenty four

A waking labyrinth,
not like those of my dreams
where I wander through countless rooms
in the old seminary
or endless ruins
in my old neighborhood,
but awake
I seek the archive library
(biblioteca in alto, the key is tagged),
I climb in alto from the third floor elevator
to an ancient room of tomes
which is not my biblioteca
but the precious repository of an Irish friar of ages past.
And so I wander past empty guest rooms
and dusty offices and nooks crammed with books.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! screech the gulls circling
above the outdoor loggia at my folly.
Finally, with head hung,
I admit defeat to the librarian and
armed with new instructions,
of higher knowledge,
climb again to a secret door
truly in alto
where my quarry sleeps—
more boxes
of a dead man’s mail
to burrow through,
seeking his quiet presence,
sensing his knowing smile.

by the turn of the clock it is time
though the skies and my eyes
would have it otherwise

” Let me give the world a gift. More incorruptible than love.”

Working in secret at Los Alamos
I, too, was a plutonium

scientist. Brilliant
& cocky, the men’s schemes

were considered first
& desire to end the war

was overwhelming. Like a campfire
in the wilderness my conscience

flickered. With others I
recommended a live spectacle

of the bomb, leaders
of nations would watch

& surely lay down
weapons after witnessing

such power, destruction,
military dominance. No one

seriously considered it.
Lily said, We all carry

some guilt but big boys
like big toys.

i pull from myself all of the goodness and flower it onto you

the sin i choose knowing i will not win

and i no longer call it a vice a thing unto which i succumb to

but a beautiful saccharine wish

that i bestow on your tongue

while our friends laugh and we giggle

because without ever knowing

we are the only thing that is truly infinite

(A Sestina)

After a week away from home
we wake before light hits the land,
in the house everyone’s asleep
so we make black tea in silence,
tip-toe outside into the fresh air
and load up into our prairie Prius.

You drive. In the quite of the Prius
I doze and dream I’m already home,
no long miles or air-conditioned air,
just the gentle contours of our land
– but an abrupt swerve ends the silence
and any hope that I could sleep.

The interstate never sleeps
and as the worn tires of the Prius
whine, I worry and read in silence
the billboards: Try the down home
feel of Western Wear;   Ozarkland,
where we have hookups and free air.

You start making signals in the air
for me to drive and you to sleep,
then pull over at Produce Land.
I stretch. You walk around the Prius
to a plowed field and like at home
come back muddy. I drive. Silence

never raises her head for air, Silence
is smiling and sailing towards home,
Silence is you in the beauty of sleep.
Illinois, Indiana…      our Prius
carries us on into Bluegrass land.

********************************

we never know where we may land
it could be laughter or silence
it could be something to pry-us
apart, this trip was dice in the air,
a reminder to always sleep
together whether away or at home

now at home on our land
we let Prius have her sleep
and we can hear the silence of the air