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