Poem for Friday, May 17, 2013

Vintage Love

We could be like a Motown song
that was recorded but never
released. Two parts soul in a
dusty basement studio:

You are in the corner lipping a
cigarette, the filter inevitably
rouged.

I watch the ashes scatter and tarnish
the floor to the crescendo of
trumpets.

*

After the sugarpies and honeybuns,
what we become is background
noise.

Poem for Monday, May 13, 2013

Spring of Consciousness

I walk west down the street

to examine the rebirth

of everything.

To the persimmons:

I loved you before your first

leaves shriveled

into existence.

To the pollen:

you top my endless list

of necessary evils.

I wonder why some women

are smitten by cliches:

your eyes are as blue

as the sky's.

I am a walking blue-eyed cliche

wistful with a

fistful of dandelions

yellow as the sun.

I am not due a heartbreak

for six more months.

Poem for Saturday, May 4, 2013

Ricochet

In the woods several miles
away from here,
the coyote--the Aztec
trickster--trades blood
with the moon. His howl
is savage, is beautiful
and the stars are
too civilized to not turn
their heads.

Closer, locomotion pierces
through blue collar
America. In the smoke
and singing metal, I am
eight again. I am a skin-
kneed train chaser, air rifle
cocked. I am wind-tossed
among red clover. Shoot.
Ricochet. Return to
twilit present.

Look how many nights
were stolen.

How far we have come
and gone.