I'm calling this a Mirroratras. Each poem mirrors each other, but backwards. Both become one poem, united yin and yang.

Slipping through our toes The grit of organic muds This evening among strawberries You are in your row, alongside Studying a berry in your palm How the flesh glows red and gives The teardrop underside Will it fit the open lips As you turn it toward sky? In your bending, ripe and green Your breasts drip to touch Upon the tips of grasping leaves Will you hold me, dirty As the sun dips pink At the end of our rows? Of the Flesh

Of the Flesh At the end of our rows As the sun dips pink Will you hold me, dirty? Upon the tips of grasping leaves Your breasts drip to touch In your bending, ripe and green As you turn it toward sky Will it fit the open lips The teardrop underside? How the flesh glows red and gives Studying a berry in your palm You are in your row, alongside This evening among strawberries The grit of organic muds Slipping through our toes

Sugarplums on my second Xmas alone

Sugarplums on the Second Christmas Alone

­

My icy hand waves as they go

Back to the mausoleum in the cold

I’ve cleaned the tiles to the stone

Vacuumed carpets free of dust

Scrubbed slick the perfumed rooms

The dirt that stays is in my blood

With a leaden echo as it pumps

My family’s gone to celebrate

By way of gifts and scents and food

I am the father who chose to stay

While children and the wife went on

Ignore accept deny the shame

Songs doped up in me are mute

Not a sadder Christmas in a book

My home is three-times full of bones

Their whispers rising thin and cold

A Christmas tree stands stark in folds

Without a little hand to touch its limbs

Loneliness is a four bedroom house

With surplus loft like sayings such as

Happy holidays to me in this abode

This is my second Holy Night alone

Once before in dark San Cristobal

A plot with trash and weeds and moans

Some fireworks and weak array of sky

But sound asleep until the wisps of light

Tonight ajar with visions of sugarplums

A star and kings dancing in my head

Conjured by memories while driving along the Russian River in Sonoma County, or was it near Big Sur? Nevertheless, don't we all engage in such otherization?

        

         Peering

       Up and Down

             the River          

        How strange

     The undone dwellings

 Along the river

How the wasted property

  Below the highway

       Unaesthetic

           Along

   the river

        How strewn

     The stoops, unwound

 Along the river

How toys boards cars litter

  Below the highway

       Uncouth

           Along

   the river

         How wretched

      Lives, dumb lives

 Along the river

How they hide inside

  Below the highway

       Unsocial

            Along

    the river

         How our canons

     Tumble and decay

 Along the river

How judgment winces, peers

  Below the highway

       Uncivil

            Along

    the river

        How I long

    To hurry heedless free

 Above the river

How low to have to peer up

   Above my dumpy home

       Unrestrained

            Along

    the river

Better, the life of a zebra

The Zebra
     With thanks to Robert Sapolsky, Professor of biological and neurological sciences at Stanford, whose research 
    on zebras, baboons and other species has led to advanced understanding of stress and tranquility.

The zebra, Equus burchellii
Targeted by leopards and croc
The hunter, the lion, the trader
How many walls covered by his
Stripes, the zebra? Hides.

Its ears indicate the brain
Tall above the grasses
When calm--so often calm
Alerted, pushed forward
Angry, back like a dog’s

The silent zebra, a canard
Their whinnies are common
And when they feel afraid
Snorts and barks and brays
Baring teeth. Preparing the kick

But mostly calm, the zebra
So often calm, after fleeing
From hyenas or big cats
Their brains release the fear
When the ears go tall and still

On the far side of savanna
In hut or keep, on cot
Asleep, a human brain
Brays alarmed for hours
Doddling anxious in the rain

Man, baboons, the primates
Sleepless, unsettled, sad
Our brains grown wide
In the vacuum of free time 
To worry, wait and war

Better, the days of zebra
Brains serene, masticating
The grasses of free space
Sheltered from torrents of stress
Calm, on the sure plains

While packing groceries into car, a receipt blew underfoot

The Receipt

While packing groceries into car

Underneath a security lamp

I wouldn’t have bent down

Without noticing the scrawl

A desperate wide-eyed receipt

Blowing crumpled underfoot

Along the asphalt ice

In the parking lot of winter

A sorry scribbled line of who

And two of reminisce

Penned curves of a woman

Erratic slants undotted i’s

I note the purchase

Two lines printed calmly

Same price.  Pharmacy

Thank you for your patronage

My grocery bags loaded

Behind the wheel of an investigation

Does one retain this receipt

Or let it blow?

Does one search a parking lot

Random cars for one in tears

Or a napper?  Wondering what if

I start my engine

Sometimes, even so

We start our engines

In parking lots, accelerate

And let it blow

Drafty mess of mind finds clarity in poem. Writers from the stacks lend charity advice.

Consider Bowing from the Granite Cliff

   With apologies to William Blake and Pablo Neruda

To see the world in a slice of toast

   Hold infinity in a bite of stone

And eternity in an egg

Yet, in the living room, monotony

   In the pants of college town, burn

In the head, a faint and clumsy whirr

What catalysts were in the glowing mind

   Each chamber loaded large and packed

Expansiveness of space loud whined

O species dumb and couched

   Your fathers’ mothers' cursing gods
Drilling further into the hot core

O irrevocable river of things

   We cannot bend your course expanse

Burst your banks and flood the land

Look out from where you’re sitting still

   Expand the davenport of devout think

Consider bowing from the granite cliff

     First stanza, adapted from William Blake’s "Augeries of Innocence," 
     written in 1803, from his The Pickering Manuscript.  An augury is a sign or omen.

     Line 13, from "Oda a Las Cosas," from Pablo Neruda's 1954 book, Odas Elementales. 

For those who suffer from schizophrenia. Roughly 50 million worldwide.

                

Do Not Judge the Owner of Stained and Crooked Teeth

Do not judge the owner of stained and crooked teeth

He may be free from suffering and experience peace

May the mind that occupies my trill cold cranium

Concoct that same round quality he may know wide

From calm and heart, full as pods with seeds of maybe

Of monks or Victorian adventurers from church to trail

Of mahoganied Royal Geographic Society lure

Forget about regret, loneliness, the desperation of hurt

Forget Freud, discussing the heavy burden of Can’t Know

The underbelly of insects when shocked/afraid to die

Women, hopeful, bellies ripe and sunlit upon. Poems

Spilling into the stream of canyon where carved enigmas

Like Havana’s jazz, sequoiadendron giganteum stands

Words crooned confidently through chambered branches to

Optimistic gardens of sky where amniotic sacs loose floods

Philanthropists, fresh fruit and conscientious objectors

Fan firestorms of past where peace evolved.  Men:

Ascetics in their thirst, fed lame birds til they grew stuffed

Under thunderheads by the riverstones and reeds

Walloped by rain ‘til their down degenerated into internet

My teeth have fallen out, kicked away, I’m scared

All I’s.  All me’s.  Bald spots.  Why are they snickering?

Where is the poor man now?  Being born upstairs with rags

This is the part of the poem where I ask you the question

Yet you’ll never respond, reader.  Never respond

                  But this is where you pause, and move on

How the flesh while strawberry picking

How The Flesh

Through our toes, the slip

And grit of organic muds

This evening among strawberries

You are in your row, alongside

Studying a berry in your palm

How the flesh glows red and gives

Will its teardrop underside

Fit the open lips

As you turn it toward sky?

In your bending, ripe and green

Your breasts drip to touch

Upon the tips of grasping leaves

Will you hold me, dirty

As the sun dips pink

At the end of our rows?

Moans of vacuums in the church...

The Church

Moan, go the vacuums in the church

The Minister is home without a wife

His deacons chew on peanuts that are stale

The rest of town stays up late tonight

He busies through the kitchen with a knife

Attempts to bread an aubergine that’s cooked

Parishioners grab coats from naked hooks

He bows and eats with dogs and reads the Book

The Shawl Group ties its four millionth yarn

Karate America pays the building fund

A gay film plays in the Young Out Group

While the masses yearn to drink and grind

It was his calling--not the flesh—‘til

His yelping dogs mounted in the back

Keys are grabbed with a mugger’s zeal

For a sacred city’s reverend snack

Charles Bukowski, in the end, sorting letters

In The End, Sorting Letters

For Charles Bukowski, 1920-1994

In the end

When Charles Bukowski got

Leukemia, he puffed out his last

With a daughter and wife

Near, puffing out

Just serene, says his ex

About his face, transparent

No smell of clutch

Burning out, just the puffing

Words have a hard time enshrining

Such a thing that’s regal

As dying

As art lived foolish and fun-fucked

Forget about me.  Grab a hand

No weaping

He’d say, sorting letters

Grab a hand, a close hand, breathe

Squeeze it, scarred as you are

Yours in theirs

One reason for valor

At the races or match

Is everything

Fits here, he says

Your full blown ass cupped

By my blistered hands

But that’s the calm

Way of letting go

Of drink, lies, life: Austere life

Descending from the clouds... the Messiah: Googlability

Finally, the Messiah

Finally, the Messiah:

Everything is Googlable

Descending from the clouds

On high:  Googlability

     Googlability: Googlable

Earning everlasting life

As public servant, duty

Rounds, meds, injections

Filling out their forms

     Forms: Googlable

After triage, my students

Wait with puckered lips

For me to unwrap straws

Hands lifeless in their laps

     Lifelessness: Googlable

Unwrapping straws, the

Satisfying push-through

The end of sheath: How

Are they joined at end?

     Straw Wrappers: Googlable

Some recline for blood

Transfusions, but those are

Tomorrow.  Today, breath

Inserting straws, breathing

     Breath: Googlable

Into them, lungs pushing

Out chests, chests falling

Monitoring pulse, color

Stacks of wasted straws

     Waste: Googlable

Straws to be burned

With the needles, pus

Viral bedsheets, hair

Shaved from bodies

     Incineration: Googlable

When we go to heaven

Father, when our shifts end

Can we Google ourselves

Lonely, in your search bar?

The shooting of Malaysian Air flight 17 represents a clear breach of international law by Vladimir Putin, both in jus im bello and jus ad bellum.

Malaysian Air

How could you do this to us, Bes,

Aiming your guns high above Donetsk
In Shakhtarsk Raion by the River Mius?
Smells like spinelessness and flesh
Scald the throat with a Malasian Air

Your nom de guerre sums up your fire

Your aim is thirty thousand feet in the sky

Shoes thump later into ploughed troughs

While towels float in puffs to sprawl

Upon the sunflower fields of Rozsypne

No one takes the blame, though voices

Of shock are recorded and photos

From satellites show blast scars

And children of the village press fingers

Into the tire pits of a Buk launcher

Come forward cowardly Putin Russia

Raise your true Olympic flag in the stadium

Of airspace in Ukraine before us all

Under the stranded limbs, and Kleenex

Whisps in the trees of Hrabove

For Robin Williams, 1951-2014

Laughter

For Robin Williams, 1951-2014

I.             The act of kissing

                                Tongues sculpt one another

                Of thinking well

                                Amygdala and frontal lobe

                Or thought-less-ness

                                Walking that writhing path

II.            The art of fight

                                Hot oil onto marauders

                Of running from

                                Tunneling.  Camouflage

                Or right struggle

                                Piecing together shards

III.           The chore of laughing

                                When gods abandon

                Of keeping pace

                                With giants, youth

                Or kicking the habit

                                And it falls back to earth

               

IV.          The man of tears and mouth

                                Feverish creative

               Of stage, Robin Williams

                                Hanged at sixty-three

               Or numb and wondering

                                If lungs filled and feinted with

V.            Laughter

Both of us, but can you imagine?

Both of Us, But Can You Imagine?

You could want suburban home, laundered, pressed and fixed

And I remain in surly concrete, or you might hate the backyard

Digging hole in the middle of yard--or I might--but the muds ooze

With rain, from the window:  Engineers losing ground, cackling

Vacations to the ruins, colonial poverty, beggars ingratiating

Palms to humid skies, or the iced cakes of cruises and pearls

And dynasty rooms ordained in packages by agent, or maybe

On the highway, kayaks hurling free from their racks like storks

Nature, sand’s edge at water, camping pit toilets, how bugs visit

At night, listening for our breathing to calm before assaulting us

Or one of us--can you imagine what if only one of us?  Both

As a marvel of our swollen lips at morning, can taste the same

Inconsiderations, how you stoke up fire.  How I veer off cliffs

In the Rockies, sailing back and forth as a playing card swoops

Can you imagine what if only one of us careened downward?

But the two of us, big headedly, watching the children, muddied