2024
16
a single white cloud
suspended in endless blue
slowly drifts apart
15
leaves alone know why
trees fill them with such greenness
just to let them go
14
the sun's summer eyes
form small windows of light through
our woven fingers
13
wind blowing too hard
for the crow chasing the leaf
down the cracked sidewalk
12
a plane hums above
two birds laughing like monkeys
while melting snow plops
11
a yam-tinted man
outside Barney's barbershop
returns the sun's glare
2023
traffic
2021
10
all the rain that fell
on these little brick buildings
went back to heaven
9
a breeze blows through town -
the trees bend to give waves of
cascading applause
8
went into the woods
to be all alone but i
brought myself with me
7
the people's laughter
leaving the house of worship:
echoes of heaven
6
the bluebirds playing
against the baby blue sky
are flying Buddhas
5
nothing happening
except the barman pacing
behind the counter
4
a man on a stoop
weeps into his hands below
the humming city
3
a man on one knee
listening to three children
as if they were god
2
for the hundredth time
the red maple's leaves descend
to the cold pavement
1
dead on 33rd -
the white truck holds a bouquet
of pink citations
2020
misc.
This being what we are,
(Never's eternity,
some senseless seeing and
Forever's so far)
leap crimson into this
earth orange
(P
i L a S)
L o e e
e f v
Life
of wild galloping pastels;
of texture trillions,
sunrises of smiles
giving mango emanations -
when the heart, that river
(a place of feeling
with the pace of streets)
drips heavy as honey or
beats like Count Basie
quicker than cities,
lie quiet with closed-eye lotus,
all doors open
(hear the hilarity of
cherry trees chiming)
and listen,
swirling like the
eardrum of the ocean -
if still
Nothing's worth Happening,
ask how far
a ripple travels,
and gaze
towards
moondown
of sailaway starlight,
at the apricot sun's
most fragile
unraveling
simple, simple
i am not so brave
as these steadfast mountains
beyond the pale violet sky
(they are faceless, they are looming)
i am not so bright
as this childish sun
glittering emerald hills of everyone
(some grass danced, a little bit gasped,
some pollen pranced, a little bit even laughed)
i am not so busy
as this anytime city
of corner stores and cement
(of mourners of every moment)
not as successful
as these sometimes streets
of highwires and birds speaking electric
(of the sleepwalkers and
the homesick for nothing specific)
i can feel the ocean tidings
of my own breathing -
that's plenty.
if i forget empathy
or cease to feel completely
may i never dream gently
and fade away wonderfully -
for i am a witness
to every tiny aliveness
that has no
otherwise, if or whyness
tonight the clouds come rushing in
and i will lie smiling
with the sleeping secrets of rain.
at the beckoning of orange morning
i will arise
among the clamor of buildings
and bow slowly
to mouthless
white mountains
gazing beyond
we foolish few
maple syrup
what if the weathermen finally
stopped the wars?
what if the workers of the world
truly united
from Pittsburgh to Brisbane
and Tehran to Brighton?
what if the moneymen went
milkywaywest
in zeppelins
and took the
marketing and
measurements with them?
what if the indigenous had gears for eyes?
(float up in a gumbubble, look down, surprise)
what if tomorrow each and every all of us
awoke as a weeping willow tree
and each regret became
a doting honeybee?
what was, and will be, shall buzz,
replacing whats and whys
with who cares of because
what if we could free
every atom of ourselves
and give them
to someone else
for one huge day
when everyone stops selling
and says let's play, let's sing
what if the stars hung from strings
(and the flagpoles were
upside down dangling?)
what if we finally met the
much that goes by
which we don't notice,
like ourselves
(mucho gusto ustedes)
what if every mirror showed
a weathered landscape
(so marvelous of beauty
the commonplace)
and each one could form a
crowd (millions of Meccas)
intertwining colorful fingers
beneath passing puffs of
clueless
clouds
2019
meaning/beauty
while the town abounds with the sound of round
where durangos drove the road
down to earth dirt degradation
walking by blue holly amidst holy grass blown
by gone gusts thinking of former follies and
what's capital T to a tree
sucking on purple lollipop clacking around teeth
i heard aircraft overhead
probably flight Chicago to Denver connect
i stop to squint at fresh-pressed gold-coin sun
face puckered i might sit
butt on achilles and pray
to golden teacher proprietor
of the lemondrop clock
but zipping zigzag through
air of cyan manifold
zoop swoop the wee birds
twee and flock in porous block
toward the yellow sun
that shines like crystal citrus window
of broken stone cathedral under which
i conduct and collect the wind's whimsicals
and construct my soul out of
coquettish cubits of cocoa eternal, rainbow cubicles
november 1
it's autumn.
the sky's black sequins ballgown
keeps slipping off her bony shoulders -
for the ten-thousandth again
it's morning and the metro's moaning
with smoking coal-stuffed boxcar locomotives,
far-off siren howls echoing
through hollow courts and boulevards.
a crowd of men are smoking
cigarillos of marijuana and tobacco,
strolling through a
labyrinth of hulking high-rise corridors
that obscure the senile old sun.
the city is withering
one wind at a time,
but the fall is handsome,
auburn leaflets divorcing from
groaning tree boughs,
floating down,
cracking like campfires
under the worn soles of the
working poor
shuffling through the
stale, naked air.
beginning at the end
a hunk of something i can't see
contains everything beyond my eyes,
which i live behind;
nothing is as much of a wind as a mind
or an ego's whim,
and one woman feels
more than all mankind
(another's mountainous world
is as much as a grain of sand in mine)
this world every here
splashes mirrors where and there;
shimmering reflections aluminum blue
i may fall into these waters, and
a ways away i shall sail,
leaving behind a frothy wake
of a worldview mirage
(every dream is realer than true)
isn't it queer that everyone's a pond?
that is why in your eyes
floats a sailboat,
i apologize.
flash
rolling past
the furniture store
in a dented evergreen
DODGE pickup truck
a disheveled man
stares down at the
butt of the cigarette
held before himself
between the tips of his
middle finger and thumb,
haphazardly rumbling
past a
sweating young woman
in a thin red
spaghetti-strap tank top
pushing a stroller
under the indifferent sun,
casting a glare
that imposes between
these two wonders
the reflection
of my own face
upon the
thick glass
train window
stutter
on 38th near the
tuxedo rentals towered over
by hostile billboards
next to the metal trash barrel
overflowing with hardened food
emptied liquor bottles
worn gray shoes on top,
trash spilt on scarred sidewalks
roasting in hundred-degree sun,
i saw someone stuck in a moment -
everything surrounding
in locomotive movement,
but to her and her querida
all was noiseless, frozen
save their vibrating cells alive,
tinglelips and fingertips
beneath waltzing eyes
(we're alive)
- a barrage of hulking
contraptions rumble down the dead road,
rendering image memory instantly -
i and everywhere resume motion,
but for a stutter of a split second
i feel that love is an
archipelago of puddles,
and to that box scraping the sky i say
those are no delicate oceans
alive
the day is perfectly almost, but
the sun is fragile (as is my soul)
in a mood in the afternoon
the sky took blue and
peeled itself in two
(brooding bellows, booming echoes)
i was caught in a stoic rain
(it didn't stick) passing quick
like every year's hastening -
twice in a while i feel as
a mountain made of a landfill
when apathy's worn elbows
rest on a wish's windowsill;
but let go of cling, remind forget to sing
(who knows what tomorrow's
gay lilies won't bring)
as it is that the sea drips
at times warmly from our eyes,
i hereby renounce humanhood,
(startling the hell out of heaven's surprise)
i dissolve into glares of light on glassy waves
for it is a life wiser than all of think
and always and forever
the silence of sunlight never sinks
indigo
what's the hullabaloo, and
who is it who says who's who?
is it the frightened men in black
whose lives are navy blue?
let's pretend a porcelain planet
(fragile enough for me and you)
and place it on a lucid dream's horizon,
for where's a galaxy begin or end
but at the deep amber of your iris
unremember days of months of years
(the wisest time to leave is when we arrive)
we won't be alive when truth appears
so let's laugh as maple leaves do in fives
oh so grand are fellows of hello,
petals of letting go;
let's be free radicals
and pretend a purple ocean,
for
age is oldthink
and
time is ten minutes ago
peace
i
dream
of
valleys -
calm emerald,
genderless
stalks of
elder
people
named grass
whose
togethered
swaying
waves to
bananastriped
fuzzy children
of the breeze
called bumblebees
who tenderly
kiss maybe
the soft necks of
bitter sneezeweed
beneath a monolithic
blue canopy which the
worms will dub a day
braincloud
it's moon-time -
hardly had the
magenta hills
cast a careful wish
when
i am carried by
fairy dust
fairy dust
fairy dust,
sun glitter,
- glittering sundust,
rubber bubblegum lust -
the words closely rhyme
too many much and which
seem not meaningful
to a fuzzy mind
flaking rust
rotating
rotating
rotating
i am
fizzling into
reverberations
like the thundering
of a distant locomotive
rotating
rotating
rotating
under a blushing
white zinfandel sky
(which the grass shall drink, swaying)
words
didn't was Done -
haven't took Had
and rolled it up
like a rug;
never knew None -
nothing was gone
and nobody knew
whose Why was wrong;
when loving's hence
sets sail for If
delighting Now
and everything since,
a string quartet
of longing leaves
unweaves forget
and three is one;
(p.s.)
i don't know
why anwhere am i
(gallop, wild horses of mind)
my eyes all the time
are peeled
dry clementines
but minus my-ness and
i'm dandelion fine
monday
in bloom the flowers bend laughing
at questions of doom
(the moon's asking)
o the cloudy day is lackadaisical
(meadows told secrets called heather days ago)
the sun peeks out to check on drowsy flowers
(unwinding after five hours of rainshowers)
they are quieted, among themselves whispering
(it's funny, your and my petals are glittering)
on a twisted vine the flowers sway mumbling
over questions of time
(the wind is wondering)
fond
all-everything
brushes
sudden lips
with an
unseizable instant;
my heart sizzles
into lopsided
candlewax
at the confrontation of your eyes
(snowy villages
onto which
bashful snowflakes
from nowhen
gingerly descend)
i at your briefest utterance
allatonce may turn
inside out, or
altogether vanish -
you are the
deepest dreams
of strawberries, and
my nearest star
(which without effort
births an innocent purple lily
whose nectar nourishes
silent minutes infinitely)
the only country i belong to
is your unhurried smile
at an intersection of vast expanse
from an open truck window
a man yawns into the cool evening air
amidst the rumbling of idling engines;
across the wide intersection,
passing cars honk approvingly
at a new bride and groom
still clad in tuxedo and dress
as they trek down a long crosswalk,
photographer trotting behind,
dropping her camera on pavement,
shedding debris and memories -
i wonder if they are truly in love
and wonder obligingly, briefly
if i and everyone may be
in time not far away; but
if they are truly in love even just
in this minute, this second, this is
cause for an eternal colorful festival
that goes on and on forever
where everyone is spinning smilingly
and the trees are singing cherries,
the sky is teal cotton candy
and there's no such thing as worry;
the couple passes by,
laughing with dimples
at the swirling pink sky
from which we are observed by
billions of expressionless stars
simplicities
a young woman
at a construction site
on 29th and Eliot
is selling tamales and tortadas
to stained workers
out of the back of
a covered pickup truck
stacked with aluminum pans
giving off a warm aroma
that could unite all peoples;
i am not a worker here
nor do i have paper bills
so i pass by without
tasting any of the
homemade fare;
i am not dejected long
for i recall the clean clothes
tumbling in
the coin dryer
which i will
wear comfortably
in the coming week;
thunder and rain knock
at the apartment window
later on
and gazing out of the glass
i wonder
how this will affect
the young woman's
weekly earnings.
happenings ii
while the sun hides itself
(as our hearts sometimes do)
steeples compete with the skyline,
vainly poking their heads
from a sea of steel like a
crowded family photograph;
suited men pick up the pace
to pass the people with a singular face
clenching crumpled cardboard -
a weathered woman sweeps the concrete,
sometimes wiping her head,
looking past the skyline while
bikes whizz by buzzling like cicadas;
a mother and daughter plod
along the promenade
blowing bubbles, barefoot,
giggles floating toward the clouds
which will capture them, pocket them
for a sunny day -
but alas,
the first spattering of wet droplets:
the sermon is over -
in unison we all rise,
marching back to our silent apartments.
vanilla
someday it may be so,
but we cannot know everyone;
even better to know
is we'll never know (wholly) anyone.
however brief or long or kind or mean
every person I've met's a vanilla bean:
concealing cryptically, masterfully
a richness
which a fortunate few may
occasionally witness -
(i do not know why the orchids sing
people into existence,
plucking thoughts as if they were clouds,
all i know is any wisdom
worth knowing is
whatever flowers allow)
happenings
i receive inspiration from
looking;
joy, from listening -
if i'm worried
i am blind: blind to the
construction worker
sitting in the
honeybee-like truck,
entranced by a black phone,
neglected cigarette
dangling on his chapped lips
while cement churns
behind;
the spanish-speaking women
exchanging pretty words
(seemingly) that i
haven't learned; the
wee jumping spider
lounging on my crossed
denim thighs; or the
picnicking people
reading riverside
sharing caprese salad
(complementing their pathos and novellas
with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella)
waking life
the pressing issue of today
is how i might while it away -
for each day is
a nameless painting
in which i am
a single blot,
like this
congregation of trees
stretching their
crooked fingers
up towards
the suspended
puffy islands
hanging in the sky,
which
harbor every wish,
sometimes
sprinkling
mirrors,
daydreams
flowerspeak
i use flowery words
because i enjoy their
fragrance and
their colors
which float my soul
heavenward
and are wise as all mothers;
i have learned more from
the quietest lily's whisper
than any
human words or
devastating liquor,
or even loneliness
(life's parenthesis)
which is a
tin mailbox
standing in the
listless rain
spill
two nights ago i dreamt of
a land where no one wept;
right-side-up was
upside-down and
men who lie
ran every town.
the people were gray
and never held hands,
and there was no sky -
(no one cried until they laughed
or laughed until they cried)
i fled this unfortunate country
and leapt off dreaming's ferry -
tears are bitter raspberries
filled with friendly seeds
that linger between our teeth, and
weeping is the waltzing
of a million golden mornings
(from which maple leaves frolic together, flirting)
sunday sonata
living's music plays
everyways and allthewhen
even when we're not in
the room and the door's unopen.
this important tune
swims out of every subtle lagoon:
old facelines and wrinkles,
loitering forlorn dust,
young laughing nosecrinkles and
the way everyone trusts -
if i find my self deaf
to being's notes then
i am the
splintered wreckage of sailboats;
for this permanent song plays
even in silence, which is a sundress,
and when the whole symphony is heard
i become a
red silk ribbon
fluttering
in the
wind's
childish hands
nothing is unperfect
i am in love with every person
as i am with every pebble, and
every i in this good city is
unmatched in its beauty:
walking sculptures from
bronze to gold and
ivory to opal,
watercolor freckles on
faces precisely speckled,
bumpy and angular noses
each more handsome than all roses -
the lushest olive isle
pales in comparison to
a stranger's slightest smile;
we will all
miss each other,
and our selves,
like a whisper of chimneysmoke
watches itself
dissipate into colorless everywhere
meadowhead
i'm delighted to be a magnet
bound to the ground;
if i stretch and jump and try to
greet the clouds
like a balloon-string swimming
from a child's palm,
the soil, in her loving,
beckons me back down.
workers tinker and wink
with hellfire, numbers,
and other things and thinks,
trying to make one giant leap -
but i am rooted here pleasantly;
i am an old oak, a snowy mountainslope;
my nails grow summits,
my eyes water rivers,
from my self grass sprouts -
if i were cast off from land,
floating away,
i should be a loveless moon,
barren -
and I shall say to the nearest star,
even you with terrifying power
would envy the bravest blue flower
1
it goes
without
saying:
life.
why write?
without
saying,
it goes
federal
my shadow leads the way
through new city streets -
airy drone of faraway cars
gliding into starry ink;
skittering of kittens amid
back doors of cafe kitchens
(glass clanks, plate clinks)
crispy leaves crawling,
scraping asphalt;
i go on and on,
strolling past lit windows
of the cuddling stay-homes,
then past
a ripped can
of tomato paste
next to a
dangling
payphone
2018
walking thinkingly
everywhen and allthewhichway
the sea-sky puffs fluffs of hooray
over crinkled love poems
sailing away from trees, the
wind kissing bouquets of roses
on cheektops and
tips of noses
on the hill
sprinkled with little i’s
where
weeping and laughing
climb the same summit.
i wish to peel away all pavement
so the bacteria
(living’s puzzledust)
can have,
at long last,
their exhalation.
but leftward,
on cool pavement
sits solitary, idling,
a car
painted blue
holding
behind its glass
a pair of eyes –
unfurling lilies
from which
warm droplets
come tumbling
interstates
we are thrust forward uniformly –
a congealing, dispersing swell
of fidgetings and farewells
and out of nowhen
suddenly between sounds
we feel with lusting fingertips
the leather of the wheel –
and with it,
a paradox that doesn’t exist:
(our loneliness)
and again we are compelled forward
by this
infinite smallness