I’m just here for the small plates except when I am not. This banquet of poetry can never be fully savored. Attempting would leave me foundered. Everyone has their unique ways to sample the all-you-can-eat buffet. I begin at the top and search for the tastiest morsels until my small plate is full. Small poems almost always are worth a nibble. Longer poems must offer something spicy or savory to pique my taste. Any dish with a bite of truth no matter how bitter is always apropos. I do not return for another plate but have been known to seek seconds of a bodaciously delicious dish.

Abundant harvest
Delivers a smorgasbord
For all appetites

Good morning darling
Have you rolled up your sleeves
and washed your face?
Scraped yesterday’s muck out from under your fingernails?
Good.
Now, 
Put on your best dress. 
Comb every doubt out of your hair. 
Find every pen and pencil, every sheet of lined paper, every clay tablet.

Gather your sisters and brothers. 

Warm up your vocal cords.
Stretch your backs. 
Clench and unclench your fingers. 
Put on your sturdiest boots. 
Lace them tight.
Square your shoulders.
Link arms.
Stand as tall as your spines will reach.
Lift your chins

and Sing
So Loud that no lie or tyranny or fear or consequence will ever shut our mouths
Ever again.

we used to draw our water from a well
cool and clear, brought up in a bucket
we didn’t have a pump, so it had to do
water never tasted so good as it did then
fresh from a spring that runs beneath our
familial homestead, bubbling to the surface
in places, but mostly hidden under ground
heated for bathing and dishwater, always
more than enough for everything and everyone

when we got city water it was like a dream
water coming from the taps and not from a
bucket pulled up on a rope; i can remember
it so vividly; it was like a bizarre luxury to me
being able to turn on all the taps and see it just
flowing freely like it was nothing at all, though
I will always remember that old well, how good
the water tasted, not like chemicals but like gold
cold and fresh, flowing over the tongue

Listen up! Life is not lived on silicon chips; live life unplugged.
How do you marry, carry on, raise kids on chips? Can’t! Be unplugged.

Keep your finger from that power key, or anything with a screen,
Doesn’t mean you died with your world fried, merely that you unplugged.

Busted! Opened my laptop landing; faceless hordes rushed my email
shrieking, the world is ending; send money now! Not when unplugged.

Writing a lonely letter, one that needs no @ or subject field,
just paper, pen, a stamp, a hand that doesn’t shake, equals unplugged.

To hell with “sent”, scrap the cyber amps, the headache-baking screens for
sexy scratches, my pen making paper love, me making unplugged.

way worse addictions

my grey-haired father could have

than just Taylor Swift.

ashes to ashes
dust to dust
memories of times gone by reduced to smoke and char and bone

once hallowed ground, scorched
spat on
and salted

this wasteland of a life that was
holds nothing for me now

and so

i begin

anew

I imagine that Pluto will have a street named Park Lane
just like the one in Jersey where my father grew up,
where my grandfather parked his Lincoln
with a back seat big enough for five children,
where the Murphy’s lived across the street
having cocktails on the back patio
while the kids made noise on the lawn,
kicking balls and riding bikes back and forth.
I imagine the neighborhood will be called Maywood,
after the oak trees that line the lane.
In the summer, the light will filter through
scalloped leaves and acorns high above us.

Maybe we will build a dome on Pluto,
trap a little bit of sun under glass,
like a terrarium, and grow hothouse tomatoes
that are bright and red and beautiful,
but taste like kindergarten paste.
The bubbles our children blow,
crystalline shards of glycerin and dish soap,
drop out of the thin atmosphere and shatter.

I drew a map for them, but Pluto has only one street.
I wish they could leave this place, or maybe
climb to the top of the oaks that line this street,
catch a glimpse of the other side of this galaxy.