The Romans are proud of their water,
a guide told me years ago. This water,
once brought by aqueducts from the hills now
pours from a spigot on the Via degli Artisti
near our convento, day and night and Romans
and tourists fill their bottles here. But last night
as I passed—there was a bouquet of roses
left beneath the trickle.
                                           What was the story?
Did lovers quarrel?  Did a suitor think better
of the match? Did a romance end on these cobblestones,
only to be watered
not by Rome’s pride,
but by her tears.

The cool kids hang at the coffee shop
Themselves, their signs

At least, they did in those days
And the signs do, still  

Or the one does—Bobby, Bobby
The We miss you hidden beneath the ink  

Bobby, Bobby—We miss you
I wonder if I did  

When I slunk into the coffee shop
Hoping to catch coolness from their eddies  

Was some of it from him,
On his way out as I entered?  

Bobby, Bobby—We miss you
I wonder if they do  

There, at the coffee shop
Now that the other kids are grown   

Cool kids, sign writers
Myself, the baristas  

Kids still, just college-aged
Who’d seemed to us already grown  

Who all is left, now,
From those simpler days?  

When the cool kids hung at the coffee shop
Themselves, their signs

Boundary Work

Ksh-grrrrit… Thooop. Ksh-grrrrit… Thooop.

I was digging for words between us.

My shoulders tightened
with every jolt the earth hurled back.

Ksh-grrrrit… Thooop. Ksh-grrrrit… Thooop.

The air thickened between clamshell and ground.
Each strike pulled more suction—
the dirt grabbing back, unwilling to release.

Ksh-grrrrit… Thooo-oop. Ksh-grrrrit… Thooo-oop.

I spread the handles wide as a wishbone,
the earth molds itself shut.
Gravel scrapes the blade’s tip.
No instructions, only resistance.
The ground yields to steel
but rarely to agreement.

Ksh-grrrrit… Thooop. Ksh-grrrrit… Thooop.

I am putting up fences
to keep you away.

Ksh-grrrrit… Thooo-oop.

        Ksh-grrrrit… Thooo-oop.

     “If I knew how to write a poem, I wouldn’t.”   

I’d rather drown in the open ocean,
the smothered sound of the albatros waiting
for my corpse to float back up
after shark jaws tear, and hagfish burrow away
taking, and taking, and taking.

I give, and give, and give.
Too much? Not enough?
Matter of perspective.
I’ve been compared to the Spring rain
that gives seedlings the inspiration to grow.
I’ve been thought of as an arid land
with not a drop of drink to give.
I’m soaked up and spit out.
I intake purity and poison
and cut away to let it all flow out.

I’d rather drown in the open ocean,
throat choked to keep from saying yes again,
people pleasing pushed down by the current,
jerking body to final stillness,
no longer worried about the world
water releasing, and I’m finally free.

Ubiquitous (read aloud)

        Not Every

        but every
        junk car
         is there.

        the best
        and call her
        by her name.

forty-eight hours of bed-rotting,
gaseous ideas building up in my temples,
my kingdom for a trepination to relieve to pressure.
mood? cumbersome like some albatross,
sinewy and wet upon my back.
i want a revelation, a donk on my crown
to dislodge all the things unwelcome in my home,
my head, my eyrie, crags filled with the garbarge 
that would make a hoarder blush.
i wait, and nothing comes to save me.
but the incessant sound of my own breath,
perhaps my ego could use it to obfuscate itself
and give me a break. these are my thoughts
mollusk parasites on my bark,
beaten endlessly against the sea

my pen falls
onto the rug

and I bend
to pick it up
hold it

grasp it
thumb extended while

bird typing
into notes
a poem
maybe

because
I mean