Hades
silvery moonbeams
impress upon me
the art of lying
still.
percussive photons
paddle eyeballs
sine waves
goodbye.
spider eggs
lain from sight
awaiting
inklings.
Drivel and dogma
drown in a dearth
of dilemma.
Dispel depraved deeds
of deception with
daily devotion to truth.
rocks in the tumbler always have me jumping
stage four of the tumble has my heart pumping
has any of them cracked or gotten really small
no matter what they look like I will love them all
from Lake Superior I have some quartz thats lovely and white
I hope to find some rocks that glow under a black light
a rock i found in a kentucky creek that looks like candy corn
I love rocks that are so smooth that the rushing water has worn
when walking around I find rocks that catch my eye
there is even one from Louisiana that looks like a little slice of pumpkin pie
I glue them to old fence boards to make garden art
I am always on the lookout for ones shaped like a heart
there is something so magical holding something so old
then placing it in the tumbler to see what secrets it might hold
The birds were really going on about something
this morning—likely some telephone line
gossip or perhaps whispers about what dirty
laundry I’d be airing today along with the wash.
Or maybe I’ve got it all wrong—they were
crowing about how quickly chicks leave
nests these days, wanting nothing more
than fast access to the very highest perches.
But what I want to believe is that it was
just a bit of whimsy the mist brought on
or better yet a clear-toned couplet or two—
for a full-feathered start to the day.
This is a grief and I must bear it.
-Jeremiah 10:19
In a shaft of light
which is also time
liminal and amber
I see her lifting her arms
and behind her squinting stands
her sunburnt farmer father
who behind him stands his jowly
French mother in a housedress
who behind her stands her serious
bearded Mason father
for whom my brother is named.
In a long streaming lemon shine
their chests breaking open
with gold inside, their arms full of soil,
and I stand at the base. She holds onto me
without letting go of the others
full of perpetual life in this dust
mote beam from epoch to age
through wars and farms and papers
having nothing and possessing all
in this wave of yellow memory.
I see it all sorrowful yet rejoicing
humbled but not despairing
that she’s gone along
with all the others.
Lead me to the grass
Lead me by my name
I’m finding it hard to be proud
this month, so I turn my attention
to another sin to take its place:
wrath.
Over uncles who blather on
about how no one was “that way”
when they were young.
Over legislation forcing
doctrine down children’s throats
while saying that’s our crime.
Over members of the community
who choose to tear down others
to be one of the “good ones.”
So, I’ll rage for these next few days
then go into hibernation, and
when I awake next year,
maybe I’ll try lust, instead.
Ragged jagged overgrown fields of steroid
ragweed drowning out the state flower, golden-
rod; like everyone else he was letting
everything go, even the usually mown bottoms
gone to wingstem and ironweed; it’s a bold
behold coming down the sledding hill
in dawn’s excited light, they held on to the runaway
Deere, somehow already hurt by the pressing fade
of these fall ephemerals
who next year will have a different life,
competing with honeysuckle, multiflora rose, wild
grape vine and voracious locust saplings;
in the dark shade of sudden woods where light receds,
the open sea of grass will know its barrenness,
will come into the bitter days of weightless being.
He has run his race and lost forever those coyote nights:
love making, howling at moon hidden behind circus clouds,
the trapeze swing into another body, the ethereal
penetration of nightly vales giving way to morning
vapors when the itch of intercourse is luminously
revealed in the ugly whelps of their alfalfa romp.
The surcease, at first unbearable, a low numbness,
became his litany of what their holy acts meant, repeated
on his grandmother’s decades old rosary beads;
sex as the anointed drama of his life, the top & bottom
of his extinction, the extension ladder into the heaven
of her perfect invitation, her sweet Honey flow,
the ecstasy of exploring every contour earth could hold,
the memory being on the ground looking up into her eyes
that are nothing like the sun, and afterwards
a distance in her words and what they mean.
She’s a raptor going for the prey of her life, and he
a drama coach with year after year of bloodless
Hamlets, a director without direction, vulnerable to her
eagle claws. She sank in & rode him like a god-damned rodeo
My phone is on a tether,
having used up half its charge
already today.
I find myself languishing in bed
all afternoon while it reenergizes.
My wife napping next to me,
recovering from a three day stint
in Pigeon Forge. My daughter
is fighting a migraine and
my son is resting up for a
pool party later. A full house
yet quiet as we each hear the
air conditioning turn on and off,
and me holding my breath,
unwilling to break the spell.
seems to me I’m putting a lot of faith
