What is holy?

Words are? Holy water
runs through you? Maybe?
Clouds then? Cameras? And the way they
stop things? Guitar holes?
A place where music gathers?
Words are.
Holy water.

it's me

I saw you watching when I got up
and I want to reassure you,
it's not you, it's me. It's not the way

you were snapping your fingers. Or how
loudly you were breathing. Sure,
I don't like your shirt. But

there are lots of shirts
here I don't like.
Look at that guy, for example.

No, this is about me.
And the choices I've made.
The potatoes I had last night, for example.

waiting on line

waiting on line
in my mind. everybody

cutting and they
don't even know it and hey

I was here. getting coffee
and a scone but

also waiting.

The lavender lemonade is back

The lavender lemonade is back
at my local coffee shop.
I'd given up on her.

All the lemon factories, moved off-planet.
"We Thank You For Your Business."

Empty cups, traced with
mint and cane.

I've been lost
behind the

lost

behind the
dark berry side of this Lavender Moon.

Here comes the lemonade.

Canada geese at night

Bodies fly 
           close
                overhead

glittering geese eyes

turning my body to track

invisible, lovely 
                        dark 

                                          honk.

Lift

Up on those shoulders. Over that soft tummy, the gray-haired chest slopping in.
Sitting up there, hands clutched together in clumps of see-through white.

He walks you around the edge of the lake. It feel so light up there on those shoulders,
Falling would just mean floating, then landing, then hopping back up.
And a rare smile from grandpa at the sight of the bouncing boy.

But you can't see that smile parked up on there on his shoulders.
You can't see his face, in fact.
You're looking forward, you're breathing in his cherry tobacco hum.

You're grandpa's face today. He's got a happy five-year-old's face.
You're giving that to him.
He's giving you lift.

haiku

both kids at other
kids' houses two toothbrushes
standing by the sink.

Snow lights

Snow lights
the heavens you
sparkle at me cold

soft indentations
that last a week or so
the footprints crushed

the heavens sparkle 
at me cold
  you
  snow.

Big letters in the window of a used car shop in Northern California

"75 years, same coffee."

Don't trust fancy coffee drinkers, they're saying.
Or at least, do trust people who are constant
-- fixed, unflinching
with scorched taste buds.

Give your money to the folks who say
Go to hell, cappuccino. Go to damn hell, double latte.

Buy this car?

Our coffee is pre-9/11. Pre-boom and bust. Pre-velcro.
We're drinking the coffee
the greatest generation drank
when they were nine.

What's it going to take?

What's it going to take
to get you into
this coffee cup?

I'll admit it

I ate a chocolate whopper today. A cookie that was so chocolatey that
in the molecular space where there's usually air
or maybe some kind of eerie vacuum
with a faint ringing tone
there was no air or vacuum. There was
more chocolate.

At the time I thought I'd earned it.
I thought the math of my last few days
the good things I'd done, the bad things, the easy moments I'd had, the challenges

had all added up to
it being OK
for me to consume
a chocolate whopper.

At the time.
That's what I thought.

Do You Love Bad Guys the Best?

Here's another libretto that spilled out of my soon-to-be-seven-year-old son. He sang this one last weekend while puttering around his bedroom. To me, it sounds sort of like something written in 1200 BCE and then translated in the 1950s.

I should also mention that I told him I'd be posting this and asked him what he wanted his "Vortex" name to be. (My daughter is codename "Shonny Vortex," my brother adopted "Jake Vortex" when he played sax on a couple of tracks a while back.) So anyways, he considered "Fire Vortex" and "Ice Vortex" before settling on "Power Vortex."

Who am I to argue with a boy named "Power"?

Do You Love Bad Guys the Best?
by Power Vortex

Let us live and win the battle.
Let us lie under the stars.

God, why is this happening?
You say no to everything.
Please let us win the battle.

So when will you say yes?
Then we'll win the battle.
Or do you love bad guys the best?

Is it for the good and the bad?
Is it for the bad and the good?

Dawn in the Midnight

Kids write the darndest verse. A while back I posted a poem or two by my daughter Shonny. Here's one from my six-year-old son. He doesn't really talk like this, but every once in a while he'll belt out a non-rhyming song, sort of like a libretto, and these words will come out from somewhere, and I'll scramble to write them down. He tells me this one is about dreaming.

Dawn in the midnight.
You see the voices far.
You see the big flying voices
and the beautiful light that I guard.

It's very like life.
You see the beautiful midnight sky
and the beautiful voices.
You have lots of fun but...

you don't know the ways
of your life and the voices so far.

Oh beautiful sky.
Yeah, dawn in the midnight!

Now more than ever (age 39)

Now more than ever we could all really use 
a yearbook photographer.

Whispering 'round the quad.
Snapping photos of us
and our respective pals
through the zoom lens of 
a swank 35mm Canon (Christmas gift)
as we participate in various
activities.
  Child-rearing, for example. Sock-matching.
  These things that we do.

Afterhours they're hanging with the Editor.
Sipping diet soda, talking Duran Duran.
Nominating classmates for various awards. 
Maybe you, even?
  Best eyes?

No Rest for Anne Frank

Anne Frank was resting.
The day before she had bested the Werewolf.
The day before that, an alien robot had burst
into the attic.

But there's no rest for Anne Frank.

Through a small window ringed with
pencil-drawn tulips, you can see
Godzilla's head. At first, it's the
size of a thimble or a small eraser. Then it makes
that noise, that horrible Godzilla noise.

The ground thumps with Godzilla's
horrible slapping feet.

The head grows.
And Anne Frank knows she's got
another monster to deal with.

"Kitty," she asks, "if I destroy this one, will they
let me walk the streets?"

"Will they declare me a hero? Will they free
my people? Will they free the others?

If I destroy Godzilla?"

Choir Timeline

Harmonize those ages into a blur from
5-year-olds to 17-year-old
giants

with smooth tones
taller than people
louder than people
vibrating

and our little folks singing
next to them

us all shaking
in our seats.

Zombie adventures, please

I will eat pizza and oversized subs and drink soda.
We'll tear stretch rubber masks off 
cranky senior delinquents.

    They have their complaints. 
    I have complaints too.
    You don't see me acting out.

Snoopy and Scoob will tug and growl
over a torn blanket.

The girls will help me fold my 
zig-zag t-shirt at night. 
Read me stories as I 
lay my large round head 
down to rest.

Release me from this dustbowl, Fred. From this house.
This baseball field. These shrill harpies.

Let me ride along 
in your stinky van.

Prelude

The coffeeshop is fluttering today.
Six or seven denim-coated guy-legs
shock the tiled floor.

Silent soft bouncing.
They shake the air. Crinkle your vision.

There's a lot of energy under these tables.

Espresso Poems

I write espresso poems now
the way I used to write about cigarettes.

My old fumbled word love to white ash
the hard-dented tan filter.
The clouds! Oh those sainted particles!
The courage of my glass ashtray!

All swapped for
a slight-stained saucer
a cup
a cat-like crema.

How long till they turn you against me?
What will I smoke when you're gone?

I rage against your dairy

the majority opinion that aims to
thick coat
my emulsified flavor.

Froth my cup
dunk its hue.

75 cents is my strong statement.

I will tip you 75 cents
if you'll just

leave me
some bean

slop me
some foam

and let me slide bitten

into
my
bitter oasis.

CNN's Glenn Beck

How many times must I not
watch you before you get the point?

If I must not watch you a million times.
If I must not watch you till the solar core
inside my TV cools and its silver casing cracks

until my many remotes retreat into open palms
rush back toward some lost part of my
insides

until my eyelashes gray and wilt
and spiral off
that

will be
my pleasure.

Paper cut recollection

When I was small you could
get a paper cut from just about everything.

From a computer display.
While petting a puppy.
You could get several paper cuts pressing down hard on
a pinkening snow ball.

We wore gloves in the summer.
Heavy mittens in the pool.

Underground

They date underground
they do.

And they skip by the mushrooms
they dance with the dwarves

They sleep under waterfalls
lightless with dark sparkle and foam.

They leave the sun and the wind and banana peels
to the squirrels.

Were they bats?

Were they birds or were they bats?
Does it matter?

When they drop down in darkness.
When they brush up against the back of your head and nudge you along.
When they flap in your hair.

You want to know.
Feathers or fur? Beaks or black noses.

Were they bats?

Your Warehouse

Looking into your warehouse it's clear that
someone's really good at stacking boxes.

I know they use machines
but it's still a skill
to form
a lattice like that

three stories high

to hold against
the pull top boxes feel

their natural urge to tumble
and tip
to splay and splash

to show the floor their glory.

I Saw It

That tree at night is so beautiful.
I saw it. I saw the beauty.

I claim this vision with my
artist's eye. My eye so
true you crave to see
the beauty I see. You pose
and claim you saw it too.

You didn't see it.

Escobar's Cold

Escobar couldn't hear so good.

His cold -- the same cold he was
complaining about last month --
had taken root now, deep inside
the curly spots that led from ears to brain.

You might think he would open his eyes
wider to compensate, to pull in
extra visual cues.

But he was going the other way instead.

Withdrawing like evening fish.
Letting things happen around him without much fuss.

For example: when that guy flipped him off,
Pablo Escobar (1949-1993) just nodded.

First, the flash

on the plane ride home
that I might be the one who dies young --
that flimsy-bodied office worker whose organs
gave out.

Then the smiling round
retired banker capturing me at the local tea shop
telling me only the rich are happy

that I don't really know Orange County
that I'm due for a double-chinned heart attack
and what will happen to my wife and kids then?

Finally a voicemail from my doctor saying
hi
my total cholesterol is high
I'm at high risk for cardiac disease.

She hopes it's OK to leave this in a message but she's going on vacation.

And it came roaring out of his eyes, his ears, his nose, his throat

like some kind of pressure-cooked stew where you
can't make out the specific vegetables involved
but it's obvious something's
been mashed.

Whiskey plush

He achieves a softer plush with his face
letting the gray grassy mass
accumulate.

Short enough he will not chew
a whiskey growth
a little moss.

Something to rub at during meetings.
that won't come come off
on the fingers.

Dance party tonight

Would you like to dance?

A gazillion years later
would you still like to dance?

Put on high boots and a dangerous skirt?
Are you addicted to garbage
this weekend? Age inappropriate?

Will you shake that thing?

And are you all the rage
again?

He's breaking all the time

"He's breaking all the time!"
our cabbie says.
He's what?

"The cab in front of me is breaking all the time!"
Oh my lord. Somebody stop him. 
We need time!

And then of course I realize it's 
just that it's late and I'm 
skating along. 

"He's braking all the time" 
is all that other car's doing.
His backlights flash and flash and flash.

Our taxi scoops around, passes on the right.
Bright white bolts of drizzle slam into the speeding road
streaming it back out behind us faster than we can parse.

All part of 
that necklace I wear made of 
night trips home from the airport.

Gathering My Stones

Other boys stay out late and smoke.
They use bad words.
They worship false gods.

When they ask me to come along
I say I'm busy.

I'm keeping my hands clean.
It's been hard work, really really hard work
keeping my hands clean all these years.

I do not live in a glass house.
I am not one of those people.
I've earned the right.

And now I'm throwing rocks at you.

He can't feel his paws

Chicken and eggs lobbed
from twelve feet away keep him
fed. They comb his mane when
he's sleeping. They clean his chin with a sponge.

Planted in someone's garden next to
the tulips.
Cool dirt and pebbles
pack up tight against his belly down

below
below.

They let him roar when he wants to roar.
Why not?

Bean song

Counting beans, one for every
word you said today.

A waterfall of frozen
lima bean conversation.

Bright bean rage.
Soft, velvety heirloom beans.

Bean opera. Beans buzzing
in a thick glass jar.

Where do all these beans come from? --
these beans, with no apologies.

And why is it that you find yourself
at this late stage

so full of frigging
beans?

Looking back

He described his life as a series of tasks
filled with the description of those tasks

how he’d cut the boards
what he did in the cotton gin
how he'd made the metal bracings for the chair in the front of his house
that you saw him in most days.

It was like asking a chef for her life story
and she says
well,

I made my first cake when I was 12.
We started with 2 cups of flour, a cup of milk, and a pinch of salt.

Crow Daddy

It's long past time
we end this charade.

This intricate dance
designed to mask

your competence
at faxing.

As if it's something to be
ashamed of

when we both know it's a
source of strength.

We should celebrate it.
Our dance should celebrate it.

Instead we dance this
shabby lie.

Those five sensations

I can
taste it.
Well, almost.
I can sort of taste the taste of it.
The soft peg-like extensions. The way
they protect me from poison

help me sort out
those five sensations.

It tastes good.
So far. That
safe taste of a taste.

We'll see how much I like
the real thing.

night of gold bugs

Gold, polygonal shapes.

Rectangular bars,
hexagonal prisms,
discs,
truncated octahedrons

with soft fuzz edges and
little black legs popping off
their sides.

They were fighting each other
in tar-crackled dirt by a roadside stop.

A few feet over they were bobbing around this pond
the little ones dunking the larger ones
with unnecessary ferocity.

Someone said they must have come from outer space.

A tom-boy of a girl with tough brown hair sat by the pond.
She'd been there for some time
watching them.

"Be careful not to get their eggs on you," she cautioned,
nodding at my cap-toe Brunori's.

"Little specks. You don't want to bring them
back with you
to the city."

"Maybe we should call someone...?" I said.

"Call who?"

"Call Time," I said. "Or Newsweek. Get someone to cover these
gold colored alien fighting bugs
before they kill us all."

Sand-eyed boy

Scraped knee

so tough
his eyes dry up
when the pants tear through

and a red pearl forms

only sand
drifting out of his eyes.

Swirling crystals enough
to dust

his durable
stegasaurus band-aid.

The thing that I am after

When I transact toward an espresso
my intent
is to drink
the liquid part.

The cup and plate (and the spoon &c)
would remain the shop's property.

Really, I just want to make sure
no one's upset or confused (or surprised &c).

I don't want to lay down my clink,
then find out too late
that my rights
are limited to

moving the drink around, for example.
Or smelling it.

There wert a time

There wert a time, oh a long time ago,
like in movie time, when you could
tip someone a sketch more than they'd expect

and you'd say "thank you" in a
low ruffled D and they'd say
"thank you," clean surprise in their voice

and tall eyes with bouncy brows like
"thank you" you know? trilly and upright
and a tip of the bellboy's cap as for punctuate.

And I suppose it's still possible these days
to mark such a response
though I ain't heard so myself.

And what would it take?
Like a gazillion freakin' dollars?

Love words are plopping

The scariest guy in town
sits on a bus bench
beside his sweetie true.

His prison-gym forearms
coiled energy
  all Pop-Eye'd and snarling
  with frenzied shag

end at knotted hands
tranquill in her lap.

Driving past you can hear
love words plopping
like hash 
onto metal trays

out of that 
crazy-Joe 
bushy beard.

Regrets

The food
inside my intestines
advances like a jungle animal

stalking me in small leaps
three inches, five inches at a time
seizing ground

rumbling
fixing me frightened to a point

because a jungle animal
doesn't care how nice you are
or how much you need sleep
or how sorry you are
that you ate too much and
drank too much
too much

and neither does the food
inside my intestines.

Your enemy

Watching the movie
of your life and there's
your enemy repositioned as
the hero

he's a maverick
standing center
sympathetic

and she digs him

noble
pauses

and all.

The myth of bone

Do you believe you have bone inside you?

Have you bought stock
in the scam that
you're made of stone?

Why not skin? Solid through?
Why not dense-coiled hair
to prop your fading hips?

As if we have a pelvis inside us.

Tell me this: how did that stone
get in there? That stone called
"bone"?

And how come that stone isn't worn
by time
to a pebble?

my son's asleep right now

in his red and black
"Incredibles" pajamas

with his arms propped
behind his head like
a catapult on safety.

His face is a bass note,
calm and confident

as if to say:

"I'm a super hero. And a bass note. I'm a catapult.
And I've got plots and plans aplenty."

Fear My Nostrils

You're not the only one made uncomfortable
by these lens flares

twin pipes
that threaten, curl,
and shine.

They can wrench the wind out of a room.
Catch 5 quarters in mid-air. Each.

And when they sneeze
you turn away to miss a flash
against the back of that

prairie thunderstorm
cow skull.

Short lines

At the coffee shop
a man long past down on his luck
head resting on a piece of paper

pen in one hand
but no words on the sheet.

Just 60 or 70 short lines
twitched in all directions.

A swarm of
"I mean no harm"
hand motions
for him to sleep inside.

Vocabulary turn

After a while
they wanted to get so used to it
they'd have
a different word for each kind of rain

say, one for fine-pointed rain
that comes down
light and silky

one for thick drops where the rain is thick no matter
how few drops fall.

And then on a turn, the end of rain
and a kind of
sunlight showed up
that was also fine-pointed.
Or maybe shy. Loud yawning? It was
sunny that day.

All the puddles
preparing to hibernate.

Sliding toward Sandy Hook

I am inclined seaward.
Tilted at my desk
with my hair
saltwater soaked.

Seaweed, of course.

There's a mussel in each ear.
and a starfish sucking on my nose.

Five equal segments hath the starfish.
No heart, nor brain, nor eyes.

And yet I find
its tube feet

with their remarkable vascular system

dragging me off into the deep.

Flea Market Fandango, 1985

Bladed stars
shuriken with bright black tips
spread out wide against soft cassis cardboard like bats
behind a glass case.

I'm shopping from a safe distance.
Five feet back, where the merchant
can't catch my breath.

Ten minutes or so and
now my sneakers have set
into the muddy tire treads of this rained out road.

The morning's bagel keeps me warm.
I'm not really shopping.
Just standing still.

Bladed stars, grant me ninja speed.
Focus.
Precision.

Ta da

He said "ta da"
because he wanted them to spot
the magic. The unicorn and its twisting horn.
The wand and its wand rainbows
all spark to celebrate
that spreadsheet.

See mammal

I used to be an otter.

Now I'm mostly.

Mostly just.

Odder.

The Skeptical Colonel

Today was another important
lost opportunity

Another day when I didn't seek an audience
with the skeptical colonel --
confront him with my passion.

"Colonel, soon these oceans will run dry!"

"Soon the humps of humpback whales will be revealed
and all sorts of unknown sea creatures
will flop about squinting in shallow pools!"

"Colonel, for once in your damn life..."

He arches a brow. My hair's gone insane.

"...can you not be so
dangblasted
skeptical?"

Emoticon Rescue

It's the smiley that really breaks my heart
the little happy face you
tack on
right after you break goodbye, say the news, share that thing.

You're happy. And I'm glad for it.
But where is your nose?

Now who will save
your missing nose?

Ice Skating

Don't hold on to that wall.
Don't let it pull you backward
to its fixed side.

Hold my hand
and now we glide.

Biz Trip

Airplane seats never fit his body.
Not just his legs,
though there wasn't enough legroom, that was for sure.

And you lower the tray and it goes right up
into his rib cage, like he's a grown man

sitting in a baby-sized high-chair. And the day is scraping

baby food off his face with a small
spoon, cool metal, plastic nubbin of a concave
food-holding dip at the end.

And putting that face-warmed leftover vegetable goo
back into a
squat bottle.

A mellowing

I was so angry, so spinning with all my anger
I remember at one point saying to a good buddy
that I was going to tell everyone I met
for the next TEN years:

"if you meet someone named [her name here]
please give her a kick for me."

I figured the word would spread over time, like a belly.

But now that I know where she's at
all these dozen plus years later,
I no longer feel the need to kick her.

Or to have her kicked.

Signify

I signed a lot of stuff today
and I don't mean to brag
but no.

I do.

It was the way
I curved that capital "C" in Cecil.
and looped the "l."

My graceful scoop.
The pen's hurled weight.

Like I was piloting
a space plane
made of jet black ink.

Yeah, I was really saying something today.

Something
beautiful.

I'll draw the hair

If we're all drawing a face together
I don't want to draw the mouth.

I'll draw the hair --
just lines, loose and easy.

Or the eyes.

But not the lips.
The way they curve and join

and hold back
her teeth.

Don't make me draw the lips.

Lost

Forgot an old friend's name tonight. I
thought it was "David Shapiro,
of Kansas" but it's not, is it?
It's something else, something 
    equally 
    common
    unsearchable.
Or maybe it is?

Lordy lordy I've
lost all 
confidence.

75/25

"It's a multiple of a lot of different things."
Then somewhere down the line, you find yourself saying
"It's a syndrome."

You're giving 75/25. Or 65/35.
Holding back.

Not out of laziness but from some sense
that things are finite and you don't want to spend it all.

When the phone rings, you answer it on the fourth ring.
Or you go to an adult valentine-making class and you say "nice to meet you."
But you don't make valentines for everyone. Just two or three.

Your basketball buddies don't even bring it up.
The way you've stopped saying
"That’s what I'm talking about" with your trademark vigor.

So you head on out to a petting zoo -- any petting zoo.
Because animals can't tell the difference.

Except that maybe you're easier to sit on nowadays.
That goat is so heavy.
Come on now, you big old goat.

Move.

The founding fathers

Never gave thanks.
Never had blogs.
Owned slaves. Some of them owned slaves.
Were shorter than us on average.

Yes, some of them fought against it
tried to move things 
    forward 
    toward

a blinding 
bright world 
but

not all of them.