Poems for Tuesday, June 27 & Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Rivers

when the rain pelts
unlevel ground
it becomes a
cropless squatter
settling in muck

or a vagrant
wandering in circles
not crazily but
without purpose.

you see miniature
rivers trace them
upstream all
salmon-eyed to
its source:
                                         a rift
                                         in sloping concrete.

you awkwardly hop
from curb to
rock while
your pant cuffs
suffer.

you think the
glass shards
make horrible
fish.

sweet sun drinks
brandy behind
nimbus clouds
red-cheeked
growing old
                                        the city stench
                                        down below.

(7-4-2012)



Background Buddha


glows                                  big and
gold                                    behind a
stretch of soviet blocks that have
been shedding their plastered skin
for decades.

rain                                     drips
down his gilded spine, tickles
his posture. he dines on rice grains
while everyone dozes through
mosquito nights.

i gawp at him through windowless
frames five stories up. i tell him
my asceticism falls with each
cigarette flicked at the sentient
grass below.

he tells me through the bleakness
that everything has never been
more alive.

(6-27-2012)