You knew about the Yugo that blew off the bridge, but...

Holding Tight Off The Mackinac Bridge


On September 22, 1989, Leslie Ann Pluhar drove a
Blue Yugo 190 feet above the Straights of Mackinac
To visit her boyfriend on the other side, but
Gusts of wind took Pluhar over the 3-foot railing

The Yugo--this is what people remember
Yet she, and you and I, and the others
Were sung to, caressed, brought up
Or held tight by a mother all the way

There were five who were building the bridge
Diver Frank Pepper rose too quickly from below
From above, Jack Baker & Robert Koppen
Plunged from a catwalk, first day on the job

26 year old James LeSarge lost his balance
Albert Abbott fell just four feet into water
From the scaffolds of the Mighty Mackinac
To be cut on a plaque at the hungry straights

In the Fall of 1978, in a fog, a private Cesna
Hit a suspension cable, tearing its wings
Sending men from on high into deep
Named Virgil, James and Wayne

With intent, Richard Daraban drove a Bronco
Over the edge at the end of his adolescence
Others jumped; more than a dozen
That we know of.  Most were recovered

Zero in on Google Earth for the footings
Made of teeth at the North Shore, where
The Mackinac Bridge Authority will drive
If you are unable, or unwilling, or mad

Because balance is required on the bridge, where
In 1988, Mindy Lou Arnett stopped her Honda
At 2 am, unbuckled her infant daughter, Jersey
And held her tightly all the way

For the pulpit

Moon Almighty

Rising over Lake Monona
An opal wafer: The Body 
Of Christ, a colossal Tylenol™

Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani!
Into thine hands I commit my spirit

   Thanks be to early man, lifting

   Torches with one hand to

   Spit pigment at the other 

   Tagging claim to concave earth

   When fire danced with moon

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to Heironymus

   Bruegel the Elder, Shamans

   Everywhere, Yup’ik, Tlingit

   Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw

   Under various moons 

Thanks be to the Moon 

   Thanks be to soldiers

   Of thee, Great War, packed

   Stoney and stolid and straight

   In boxes behind a drum   
   Beneath the rotting moon

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to Sigmund, Jung

   Kafka, André Breton-wandering-

   Mexico-City, Man Ray, Ernst, Dalí,

   Frida, Miró, Magritte, Klee    

   Footprints peppering the moon

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to those who

   Wept at Angel Island, scrawled

   Names in Dachau, Abu Ghraib

   Are lamenting at Guantánamo

   In cells without moons

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to Why-eth, Eros

   Broadband, the 99%, Blume

   Bones in the Sonora Desert
   Hopper and the dialectic

   Drawn between poles of moon

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to Tanguy dreams

   Castellón unconscious where Cornell

   Boxes Burroughs in mirrors with Apollinaire’s
   L'esprit nouveau et les poetes

   Bajo una luna surrealista

Moons, the bones of words

Words, the sinew of sentence

Sentences, marrow of thought

Thoughts, arithmetic of art

Art, a crow, landing

Directly in your path

    Together:

I believe in the Moon Almighty

Maker of Mind and Motive

And in Poetry, Son of Experience

Conceived by the Holy Pen

Born of Virgin Ink

Suffered under Otto Pilate

Forgotten, dead and filed

The third day He rose again

Ascended into heaven

and sitteth on the right hand

of Art, the Father

I believe in the Blank Canvas

The Holy Palette of Hues

The Communion of Artists

The Forgiveness for realism

The Resurrection of Memory

And Image everlasting

AMEN

In a world where beauty aligns with dismay...

Take a Closer Look

     For my friend, who is surveying the rubble

Take a closer look:

Over nine years past

How they tumble into sticks

The forms we cast

Most of the structure:

Fallen away, fascinating

Still, you say, a stout

Monsoon course

The rubble: You’d pick

Its dusty bones and names

But shards and boards

Run shallow to the sea

Relations aside: Hum

Ming in and out of tune

Eating Chinese for a year

In Guangzhou

That voicemail Voice: You

Selected over your own

In the middle of your connection

You have reached a number

Of course: You stay

With café tables until close

Until she is asleep and served

By documents

Buddhism: Surprise

Ingly has courted disarray

As some would flirt with helplessness

Eyewitness to a perfect mess 

But you: are standing in

The tidy ruins of your time

Listening to air pour into

And out of, cracks

Take a closer look:

Over nine years past

How they tumble into sticks

The forms we cast

Simplicity, albeit through chaotic voice and grammar form after Typhoon Haiyan.

Body Count

I am getting enough

Sleep.  Pursuing work-life

Balance.  Say to my students

Your essays will be scored

Don’t worry.  They are expecting

10,000 or more to be counted

After Typhoon Haiyan

In the Philippines.  Days later

The stench hovers and seeps

I have lost everything

The only thing, pulling, dragging

Counting.  Introductions, bodies,

Conclusions.  Exasperation has

Transformed into toil.  Water

Supplies and sewage intermingle

Dying for a drink.  Headaches,

Moans, sleep and searching

Salt stings the eyes.  Evidence

Bobs bloated in the cistern

After class, lines of them

Pounding stakes into mud

My family swept away

I held her hand until I couldn’t

Anymore.  Nothing.  The walls

Are down in Tacloban

Sitting at my desk, smug

Crates are dropping from the

Clouds.  I have what I need

There is nothing to do but

Count.  Identify.  Zip them up

Nothing left to balance upon

No paths to follow now

The fishing boats are buried

At sea, the only thing to think

Upon is under the surface

One fist, then another, pulling

Dredging deep or skimming

Wondering if style or grammar

Or just the content in the net

These are someone’s loved ones

Reduced to a score.  Hopefully

Yours will be recovered

As they rise or turn at shoreline

By a friend or brother, laid

Gently down in a pit

Ormoc, Cebu, Baybay

So close, a family

I will visit them tomorrow

But first, under this tree

Muddied, bowing my head

                   Stopping count

It's hot in there! Prison and Feudalism

In San Pedro Sula

You’ve heard it’s dangerous in there

Coagulated odors, thick in minions

A fenced-in village of felons

Pigs and raccoons wander food stalls

Women sell fruit, tacos, rugs to keep you

From the ground, and themselves  

Do not cross the yellow Linea

De la Muerte, guards will take aim

Have their eyes gouged out

For crossing in.  Officials take a

Cut, secure the perimeter while

Fusty air indentures the body

Strongmen rule by edict and money

Setting rates from $fifty to $750 for

Cells, or sleep in the corridors

Squirt down toilets, trap rats, work

The hierarchy as serfs for a cement

Castle, heat-trapping its subjects

His name is Betancourt, elected

When the last was beheaded after raising

Rates and hanging men from rafters

Whose heart was fed to his dog, and

Tattooed faces from Teguchigalpa

Howled before they clubbed it too

Clerks never stop carrying in

Boxes of cigarettes, bananas, money

Beer is three times the rate outside

The walls.  Drugs or sex, the same

Madness, theft and sorrow, brawls

So you keep an empty at your head

Profits are distributed, $6K a year

To officials.  Warden says the state

Would starve them all if he didn’t

Give the go for profit--profits make

A little murder, beatings, fear

But keep the rest alive in here

Betancourt will provide eight security

To escort you on your tour of

Corrections Facility, San Pedro Sula

Careful of the puddles.  It never

Dries.  Built for 800—somewhere

Over 2,000 are waking up

Under the metal roof.  A woman

Hurries past.  You used to read

About these settings, always rolling

Hills with patchwork fields. Brueghel

Showed us happy figurines toiling

Swearing allegiance to the Lord

While bushido bowed its head and

Caravans brought riches to harems

Who clutched silks to their breasts

So Samurai and swordsmanship

And horsemen and round tables

Held court in a kingdom of stone

Today’s kingdoms reign thru fried

Chicken fumes mixed with sweat and

Kickbacks and strongmen clapping 

Raised hands to end a man's

Debts while hip hop stridently bangs

Forth against cinder block

The poetry of capitalism

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A travel guide I wrote

When You Are Crossing Borders

When you are crossing borders

Do not consider the wet mop

Dancing at your feet

Resort to stories you can tell

The weather, the souvenirs

When you are crossing borders             

People run across the freeway                

Waiting at the median, staring in

You’ve seen the way they look

Edited, in magazines, but this

When you are crossing borders

Diesel, needles, pus and sorrows

Are not allowed in the hotel

Down at your book, translations

Of drinks they don’t drink

When you are crossing borders

Grab your child’s hand tightly

So she can feel your pulse

Teach her lessons, conversations

She will never have

When she is crossing borders

Trickling up from the unconscious

Heed Nothing

Tear up child

Weep obliviously

Heed nothing

Orchestrate trees

Master stars and

Earth in 5 key points

Get the humor of

Tragedies and cry

In the comedies

Become kindling

Smolder, flames

Of a controlled burn

Unleash to run

Along a rooftop

Of burning sky

Croon lyrics

Of a moving still

Unwritten song

Raw ice of gloom

Crack free of me

Let my bones thaw

Tear up child

Weep obliviously

Heed nothing

Parable of the Cypress Cone, Figs, Gravel

Parable of the Cypress Cone, the Figs and the Gravel The gravel allows no footprints on the ridge road of mountain Above a widespread ocean amongst manzanita, sage, cypress Where limbs lift along its slope where road ends, gravel to dirt Distant bird in silhouette onto night soars affluent circles        Sitting a long time, into sunset cold, finished with my long walk Where the gravel, where the bird, where limbs, slope, ridge Ground littered with cypress cones—closed until fire comes Cone to my upper lip, me and your breath of God Ignore me, Father, bury your ears in disputed deserts Deny me your oceanic eyes, that once washed me Make me to walk the hot coals of your teeth, drown me In the subterfuge of your tongue, lodge me In the minx anger of your furrowed brow, strangle me Of breath by your bold memory, crashing your curling Blame as waves against the balustrade of my calm Suck the blood from my heart by the vacuum of yours You have cursed away my figs.  I have screamed down the rest Through the years, for the maggots, under a drunken sun Once heavy with figs, my branch:  Waiting on the ground Full of plump, giving fruit.  Now, on the other side of storm My branch:  Sapless sticks, clean of fruit, asking the sky Wishing to sleep again on the slope under a blanket of cypress Where squeezing a resolute cone while bird aloft, you and I Where the walk ends, cold and ocean close, and gravel is silent

He had been my friend. He died.

I Did Not Go In

   For Ched Neuhaus

I did not go in to see you, Ched

There in your white room

I was told your head had swelled

And color had engulfed you

They exit in tears, seeing you

Hooked up like you had never been

Ched, in your white room

In the paper I learned you left

Before sunrise, without your helmet

I saw your skid mark, and the pole

There is a rumor of foul play

In the ward.  Some debt you had over

Drugs.  So much has changed

Since we were boys

Forgive me for not joining you

I wanted to recall our past

When our lungs filled and fainted

With laughter in the cul de sac

Biking to Jerry’s Liquor for candy

Aba-Zabba contests, watching the fish

As boys do

Remember our slumber parties, Ched?

The living room wrestling matches

With Hoheimer, Burleson, Domke, me, you?

Halloweens—the hiding, running?

And how about the Sandy’s window?

Or the time we fought and the next day

We were friends?

I visited your grave, Ched, and cleared away

Crab grass crawling across your name

It had been ten years since that morning

Yet the sun burned warm above the mountain

And over your plot; we would have laughed

Together like we could not

When you were in your white room

From a page in a Lego catalog

Skeletons

Aren’t we all descending

Exploring the depths

Swimming for sunken treasure

Clamping mouth to hold breath

Watching out for skeletons?

Aren’t we all avoiding

The green snake, mouth agape

The giant squid, a snappy crab

The pressured floor, currents

And throned skeleton?

Aren’t we all loaded

Breathing lungfulls of algae

Combing ancient sea troves

Buried and we're scraping

Scraping sand like skeletons?