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?