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