The 50-year-old divorcée is not a debut performance, 
though it may seem so to those who missed the first run.
Really she’s a revival:
the 19-year-old sub-adult 
now on the big stage.
She dances barefoot 
talks to strangers 
calls her whiskey on the rocks
plans life by the season and band tour dates
Who made her believe there was a better version?
And guess what?
The bills still get paid, the kids still get loved, the toilet still gets scrubbed 
and the laughing! (“too loud”)
and the dreaming! (“too wild”)
They fill the cavernous silences left when the life-let-go
went.
She wasn’t prepared for the role at 19
for the breath-catching urgency of this fleeting and irresistible life
But now!
Now
she’s singing second chances like song lyrics,
feeling the noise and color like fireworks,
holding tight to nothing but 
          what she can hold in her own two hands
Improvisation (“Yes! and…”)
is knowing that we never know
what we can be.
                   
6/4/26

Today
I took a walk and saw
fallen branches
on the ground,
brittle and matted mixtures
of brown leaves, yellow grasses
ceramic pots with mummified stalks
slumped in their lifeless gestures
making macabre garden sculptures
only traces of what once was

All these things did not survive
the deep lake of winter

Now that ice and snow are gone
Spring breezes rock the new growth
and my eyes are drawn upward

In my peripheral vision
I catch what appears to be gold leaf
fluttering on the frames of happiness
I feel from seeing the boughs swaying
plump with rain water
laughing at the sky

The matador gave the dandelion the right of way
But it was a trap
And waited and waited and had a cup of tea
And had his cape pressed too.
The medicine man showed up in his station wagon
Administered the dandelion amphetamines, espresso beans,
Pep talks and ephedrine,
A poem about God carrying people on the beach in pamphlet form
And after 3 more weeks the dandelion crept through
Glorious in its mane of stars
And the matador grabbed his sword and cape
And tiptoed across the asphalt
To maintain the element of surprise
But before he could raise the blade
The groundskeeper erased the dandelion with his turbo mower
Novelty balls dangling from its rear bumper.

In the springtime of my life, I shall cry
Crawl, walk, and run, gravity I defy
Nourishment from my mother and father
Sapling budding new though lacking flower

In the summer of my life, I shall run
I’m living free and loud and bold and fun
A lover’s touch feels like a fantasy
Leaves vibrant green across my canopy

In the autumn of my life, I shall toil
Parent and mentor, the youth I enfoil
Tomes for mind’s embrace is my newfound fire
Leaves brandish orange, roots deep, trunk like a spire

In the winter of my life, I shall sigh
Keeping my loved ones close to say goodbye
What comes next even scholars do not know
Limbs bare, bark rough, leaves fallen down below

In life we grow, ebb and flow
Constantly we are shifting
Seasons undulate with tide
Forever we are drifting
There’s order to this chaos
Through the madness, look and see
Everything will recycle
Akin to the mighty tree

Springtime comes back round again
We’re growing everyday
We bud and bloom and blossom
New life we shall display

I know the world hasn’t ended
yet but people’s eyes are greyed
over. Necks scaffolded. 

And the whole country is a hill
that’s actually a glacier.
And I feel it rocking as molecules
shiver with warmth, calf
off with miniscule Cs 2 octaves
up. The seasons keep going
unsurely, like I don’t know if I can
do it, mommy, I’m scared.
Still there are red leaves and icicles.
Cloned lambs. Slaughterhouses.
Gemini overview. Dronestrikes.
And I’m still trying not to hear
my mother’s war-stricken voice
in my love’s mouth.

I have never needed to know
if I will live again. I want to worship 
this place. I am awake as
I can be in the second 
womb.
What a blessing.

All my childhood protagonists
had red hair, too. A princess
who saves everything by dousing
red eyes.

June is a kind month. Still there is June.

At the old hilltop college where the cold winds blew,
There taught a professor that nobody knew
Quite how to explain, quite how to define—
A man who seemed balanced by losing his mind.

Howie strode in mornings with papers askew,
A coffee-stained notebook and one mismatched shoe.
He’d lecture on Freud, then detour to crows,
Then somehow tie both to the shape of your nose.

“Reality’s fragile!” he’d suddenly cry,
While pointing a yardstick directly at the sky.
The freshmen would blink, the seniors would grin,
Because somehow by finals it all settled in.

He’d pace like a preacher, he’d rant like a bard,
He’d turn every classroom discussion up hard.
One minute statistics, the next minute fate,
Then twenty-five minutes on why pigeons wait.

The textbooks were useful, but not half as much
As watching old Howie go gloriously off-clutch.
He’d challenge assumptions and twist every rule,
A beautiful menace to orderly school.

Some called him eccentric, some called him bizarre,
A comet of chaos, a runaway star.
But under the thunder, the tangents, the smoke,
Was a teacher who cared for the minds he awoke.

Now the halls seem quieter, the classrooms less wild,
No professor arriving with the grin of a child.
No impossible stories, no philosophical spree,
No debates about consciousness sparked over tea.

And somewhere, we figure, beyond what we know,
He’s lecturing angels in heaven’s front row.
Explaining cognition to saints on a cloud,
Making the cherubim question out loud.

So here’s to Howie, delightfully strange,
Who taught us that learning requires some change.
A little bit wisdom, a little bit crazy—
The kind of professor whose memory stays easy.

For some leave behind books, and some leave behind fame,
But the best leave behind stories attached to their name.
And up on the mountain, through laughter and tears,
We’ll be telling the Howie tales for years and years.

“I hated my hair, and I hated my shirt.” – Jason Bredle, “Pinball City”  

I hated my glasses
and my eyes for needing them.
I hated the gap between my front teeth
—called a diastema—
and I hated my mind for making me
look that up. I hated being asked to sign
up for the app.
I hated being asked, “What’s a good name?”
before I could get my coffee,
which I didn’t hate at all.  

I hated hated hated
repeating my date of birth three times each time
I visited my rheumatologist.
I hated my demons
though I admired their work ethic
and my guardian angel
whose bathroom breaks
had become too long, too frequent.
I hated my manuscript
for not writing itself
while I sunbathed on my grungy hammock
for which I held no hatred whatsoever.  

I hated the noisy construction next door
and the indeterminate finale of The Sopranos.
I hated the tailgating trucker
and the slowpoke in the pink Prius,
not to mention my seat in the back
of the plane by the bathroom
and the flight attendant
whose legs stretching across the aisle
I did not hate at all.  

I hated my own jokes because
I’d heard them all before.
I hated the hiss of a snake
in my rusty voice
and I hated the calendar
filled with dreaded dates,
the first day of school and yet another
birthday, one giant step closer
to the grave, which I hated,
and how just looking at the calendar
made me hungry for cake,
which I definitely didn’t hate.
You’d have to be fucking deranged
to hate cake.

raw fledgeling vaulted
thorn guarded nest assaulted
cleft pear stump salted

shooters’ growth halted
big hairy humans faulted
crows’ ire defaulted

hard work exalted
habitat somersalted
Who the fuck planted these damn pear trees in the first place?

tickling my cheek
it moves threadlike

sinister appari-
tion, mouth flickering, 
its stalked eyes gleam
towards me
crawling.
hand placed on lever,

moment becomes months, i  
ebb here one glimpse longer.

monster crabs
approaching still,
claws and algal slime.
hanging over the world, 
isolation, desolation abominable:
north only darkness;
east, Dead Sea, stony beach, red sky

            Everything

            Everything that I will tell you
           happened within miles
            of where I am right now.
            In fact, there is a temple
            on this base that Abraham’s
            father worshipped in,
            and ruins of his home
            are still here.

            I have not had
            an opportunity yet
            to make my way up
            to the Ziggurat,
            but I am permitted 
            to go there alone.
            I have added links
            so you can see it.