When the textile factory collapsed in Bangladesh

On the Collapse of a

Textile Factory, Dhaka

Soils, lichen, buds

Rise on tippy toes

To birth in silence

Subduing burdens

And scars

One widow shuns

Easter, disdaining

Lilies, lilies dropped

Fifty years ago into

Her son’s grave

Reshma Begum

Rose from the dirt

After 17 days of stench

Of factory compost

In Bangladesh

Reshma bloomed

Where 1,127 did not

Pressed, unfolded

Our clothes half

Finished

When shall we look

Again, at lilies

Or press our pretty

Outfits white as

History suits?

From a placemat at Denny's

Tying It All Together

    (On a placemat at Denny’s)

            The world looks better

            Through a great cup!

A great day deserves

A great cup of coffee.

Denny’s is all about great days

We freshly brew a special blend

Of premium roasted beans

To create a bolder, richer

More satisfying morning

Than ever before

Darker, deeper, and always

Steaming hot.  Mmmm!

A cup of Denny’s Breakfast Roast

Ties your whole day together®

Orchestrate the trees

Master the stars

The world in 5 key points

At Denny’s

Get the humor of

Tragedies and cry

In the comedies

Through a great cup

Tear up child.  Weep

Obliviously.  No need

To be vigilant

Than ever before

Become kindling

Smolder, flames

Of a controlled burn

With a great cup of coffee

Ice of depression:

Crack free of me

Let my bones thaw

Darker, deeper, and always

At Denny's, America's favorite restaurant

At Denny’s, America’s Favorite Restaurant®

Grading essays; french fries

Late, Heinz joins me at my booth

Ladies, careful as surgery

Scootch into theirs.  Voices near eighty

Their make-up, fragrant

Raise shields of colorful dishes

Glossy as lipstick, in Denny’s

America’s favorite restaurant

By windows large as maps

Worlds away.  La familia:

Baby hispanica, pigtails

Takes smiles from the ladies

Her mother, father

The picture of struggle

She is expecting, sullen

He wears a work-worn stare

His mother and father still

Sit by fires in a smoky valley

Considering America on TV

And glossy restaurant chains

Their chiseled Aztecan boy

Wrought with macho

Steak knifes his comida

Like the pics in la carta

Silk spice pie, Silk

Road caravans arrive

And camels breathe hot
In Denny’s parking lot

Diaspora of hungry planet
Unites at Denny’s to eat
Together from whence
We came.  Olduvai, the caves

Lascaux.  Gladness evolves

Onto faces in hijab as waitress
Leans desserts across an oblong
Earth and all hear the soundtrack

Just a LITTLE human condition

Man

Shards of city noise bend

Up into a room where a man

Sits finally in his chair to choke

Down another bitter day

And below in the street

Dogs nest in piles of cinder blocks

       And in this room

       The grappling of his hands

       And in this room

       A neck vein pulses violently

       And in this room

       His bellowing winter cough

And in this room

Blinking Christmas lights

Surround a crucifix like barbed wire

Sending red, green rebounding

Off walls, while wrinkles

Curl across linoleum in a shadow

Neck vein, hands and cough go

Placid, as a man bends into himself

Stark

       (A man dies)

Christ echoes screams through the red

Green of the room.  Horns honk

       Amen

A confined structure, just like the ailment.

I Know

     For my friend

I am constrained to tell you of my woe

You, proud Swede, erudite you—woe

About such plague that vexes in your veins

Hiding diffidently, roaming deep

Shading your shadow with implications

I am in a state of distraction, res angusta domi

You, good Friend, high-minded you—distraction

By eclipse of your round levity, and the tears

Elaborating your exile, blunt tears, holy

By the incongruous you; yes it’s true

I am out of humor, there is none more sound than

You, militant Saint, zany you—humor

Still, from your vertical depths, unleashed

Where vis vitae was built upon a precipice

The milieu of you, sure you, koo koo

I am lonely; can it be my friend has left?

You, generous Cynic, Spartan you—lonely

As a skull in pensive mood, dolorosamente

As a crier in your wilderness, but I

I will not raise a hue and cry about you

I am calm.  The very thought of you

You, true-hearted One, honest you—calm

I know the river’s peaceful end ahead

I know the sanctuary songs begin again

You’ll sleep tonight, though dark, and then

We construct for an end we construct

Constructing It

Constructing it can take some time

And time is all you need

And time is all you have at all

Alongside soul, the seed

And time can come by laying still

And still it comes by speed

And inundates constructing it

Though planned so carefully

Over tombs built down below

The cornerstone is set

From spaces god knows when ago

The time spills over it

Build on, severely, and in stone

So that it might last on

Under the blankets of the hours

Cooked by a drunken sun

So time pours over all of us

As pigeons who have come

To peck the crumbs from which we go

Constructing it, alone

Imagery from a rotten time is fruit for the present.

I Will Pick Their Flowers In The Sun

This July, when Alice died, we buried her

In the backyard and threw in a lilac bush

As the sun made sweat drip from bent

Bodies to the muddy soil

And in August, dogs were unleashed in the

Bedroom, gnashing at the chain link fence

Where I grabbed your arms for you to hear

As your ears were in another land

Like so much slush in the streets

A thaw howling gray for all to see

The winter prescribes cold therapy

Casting rock salt onto ice

Arms linked in incoherence, angry

We circle in confusion with our verbs

Growling with our choices in the rain

Dogs nesting in piles of cinder block

When the flooding stops, the mud line

Across my eyelids burns of sewage

Yet the surface of the water, still

Reflects the sun as a mirror

Branches above the flood line bud

Above the carcasses of bloated dogs

The aromas a crescendo with the spring

I will pick their flowers in the sun