Do not look up nor down. Look out.

Conversion Will Squander Blood 

When I was a Christian, a Christian

Told me about Christ, how to be

Saved.  I interrupted, told him who

I was.  There must be some mistake

In his eyes, a bent glow of conversion

Conversion, the sinner’s prayer

Bible study, onus and sin and

Feeling up Laurie Smith on the roof

Of the church while taillights on the 101  

Unzipped below, squandering

Squandering the Holy Spirit, prayer

Forgiveness, tithing my teen job to

Missions, for famines, for heaven

I don’t mean to be pedantic; worship

Your idols and demigods at will

His eyes rose porcelain and wide

To heaven and told me, “I’ll pray for you”

My devil’s horns rose, stabbing

Through his buffered soul, sucking
His bumptious Armegeddon blood

Blood lines are befuddling when born

Into a suit of human flesh. If you are

Ready you may open your eyes

Bring your attention fully back to earth

Do not look up nor down.  Look out

Written on the night train down to New Orleans in the observation car.

He's Told All Heals By Prayer But That Is Wrong

He's told all heals by prayer but that is wrong

The horse--emaciated--tells the sky

Its mane dances swiftly in a leap

All it sees is free but lands awry

A country croons unzipping North to South

In steel rhythms clipping over tracks

Wondering with fire what will peak out

Cold to hot they scream to carry black

Tangled limbs misguided from the bogs

Branches lusting crowded into clouds

Over skeleton of horse with broken form

Moonlit twisting thrusts above the cars

A boy sees all he needs from on his back

Under a blanket of dark is bliss

Hopping trains is calmer and relaxed

What we get away from is relative

Grain elevators sway abandoned in the air

Rust built towering above the sticks

Power plant looms across Jackson’s tracks

Hunkered up with metal upon bricks

Entering Yazoo City where a stork winds

Down its head in saccharine slumber

He curls warm and low in riveted bowl

While whistles go unnoticed in a blur

There is no wisdom past this murky hour

As station man pulls his humble lever

His peace is pummeled by a scrape

As gravity of stone surrounds his quiver

He wasn’t fifteen but loaded with pursuit

If only he could squirm to keep aloft

Not even swagger crushed his wince as

His steel room filled high with rock

If he could keep his chest above it all

And hold his breath into the night

Who would guess a burial by coal when

Like Vesuvius, dust turns to fright?

We wonder where boys who wander off

Have gone and dream to spot them in the sky

Though they are never far from us, we

Breathe their dust and burn them into light

I've wanted to say this for years.

The Deep and Heavy Work of Man

You never tried poems, Dad, you just drove truck 

You took some in, I’m sure--your claw strong hands

Folded in the congregation, thumbs hammered flat

And stubborn.  What would they have written had you

Spilled more ink than wine? 

About rubber, asphalt, engines, lightning reckless

On the highway?  Morning stars and TV snowstorms?

How you shifted your International with the grip of gods

Kissing the divine spans of Los Angeles, steering planets

Into their cosmetic lanes?

Still, I thank you for your mal-fitting, dirty jeans, Dad

Your Liberace photo, “To my friend, Tom…”  Your pencil

Stub with which you died, the board with your raw words

As your heart was throbbing out before you sprawled

Across the hood of your car

Driving it home to sell for 27 hundred dollars 
Through the windshield: You and your fingers

All I could wonder was what you'd have written

With your stubby pencil had you been given a wand

Of books and sense

Write on, Dad, about the way you held the wheel tight

What weighed you down, hauling your loads to bury far

How your thick hands gripped steel and wood and stone

In the sprawl of your austere life, waking early for the

Deep and heavy work of man

1917 2014 1914

1917  2014  1914

YouTube the melee in Sochi

2014, Cossack. Watch one

Hundred years after Bolsheviks

Drank to Molotov and masses

Bog save us!  Na Zdorovie!

The Cossacks are coming

Horsewhips for the crowds

Chest thumping the skies

To the ground, throwing Pussy

Riot, quelling her pink shouts

In Sochi or any other Russian

Toast or Potemkin Village

Necks fresh with Black Sea gold

Will soon swarm into Crimea’s hive

In a matter of empire or Crime

Odd man out in Gospodin’s P5

They’ll grind for the balaclavad

Mother in unflagged uniforms

Whipping international law, zapad

Vladimir’s Duma to the line

   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

   Molotov, Vyacheslav = Protégé of Joseph Stalin
   Bog = God
   Na Zdorovie! = To your health!

   Pussy Riot = Russian activist band

   Gospodin = Lord 
   P5 = Permanent 5 members of the UN Security Council

   Zapad = The West

   Vladimir = Lenin, or Putin

   Duma = Russian Parliament

Weekend getaway in northern Wisconsin!

Owning 60 Acres, Stolen from Indians

They were the Ho Chunk, or the Fox

In pretty paddle boats on the waters

Where they used to “roam,” it is said

Selling off dark and braided daughters

Their stories slung low as effigies

And conifers bent down for hunts

We own a basket made by them

In the attic of our cottage, munched

Faces painted, dancing, wrapped

In wigwams, fornicating in latter

Roaming with the buffalo, or was that

The Sioux?  It doesn’t matter

My ancestor was kidnapped

By a band of warriors, dark

Riding horses crippled, bare

Until they vanished, famous, stark

Photo books for the coffee table

The gift shop sells them in a row

A white young lady is at stake

Settlers’ barrels straighter than a bow

Cream & sugar on the deck

This morning above Bear Lake

I think I shall fish today where

I hold the deed by no mistake

The refrigerator magnet proclaims

How many ways they saw the sky

Above the sofa, in acrylic

Chief Seattle whispers “Why?”

This exercise was to create “a fresh, cutting-edge, 20 lines or less poem using two or more of these overused, clichéd, and stale words: beautiful, bunny, grandma, trunks in the attic, rainbow, heart, pretty, & unicorn.” So, for fresh, I used all of them.

citta eht ni sknurt ekil     

daed si ynnub lufituaeb a   a beautiful bunny is dead

nwal eht no daed   dead on the lawn

nepo syal nosiop fo xob eht   the box of poison lays open

citta eht ni sknurt ekil   like trunks in the attic

esromer ni eulb si traeh s’amdnarG   Grandma’s heart is blue in remorse

ssarg eht ssorca ti gnitriuqs   squirting it across the grass

erehw sehsub eht otni   into the bushes where

egrog lliw nrocinu eht   the unicorn will gorge

ynnub gnillor kool kool   look look rolling bunny

wobniar a edam evah uoy   you have made a rainbow

tew gninnips tsal eno ekat   take one last spinning wet

kool neknurd ytterp   pretty drunken look

We are not so exclusively human, but a combination of other pre-human DNA. We therefore retain the biological connection to all strains of who and what has lived before, wondering inward toward the trunk of the tree of evolution.

We are many

We are puppeteers, peddlers, Ivan the Staker

goddesses or Asimov, grunts, healers and diseased

Lingering in our marrow, DNA ghosts. Our lashes

we barely see when squinting are our thickset cousins’

Roaming angelic with the fowl, proper and Neanderthal

the Far East, Norubians fornicating on rafts of reeds

Moving inward toward the fleshy trunk of evolution’s

stocky tree, we can sniff, sniff what we have been

Retaining the fur, the bio insides, connections to

Canine howls, puffin snortles, drools of megafauna

Species is our construct, a wall of attraction, hiding

swathes of fenceless genomes under berry bushes

Painting new cliffs from which to jump, we alone

an illusory perception, making sense of who we aren’t

Laying upon each other through strata of bodies

at ancestral orgies—oh, the fun we’ve had

As sun melts frost and memory from our proud core
Along a ridge of the free sky run synapse and sperm