November 23, 2009 at 11:55 am
· Filed under 22514602, fiction, flight, flying, poem, poetry, short poem, train ·Tagged poem, poetry
riding marta southbound
5 points to atl
drumming pit-pat rhythms
on a starbucks venti cup
tapping dit-dot code
echoes of a caffeinated heart
as the mind squints
to discern fog-
enshrouded semaphores
from a blurry world
rolling by
you know
trains and planes
can make me
feel like something
‘s ending or beginning
again
airborne
i read a short story
a plane exploding
over duluth mn
138 bodies falling
& 12 more dead
on the ground
yet on this flight
to msp I’m too tired
to take notice
of the connections
someday I will remember
this day and see
like from the sky
what is signified
but for now
it’s like the train
with the present
rushing past &
no clear view of
what’s to come
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November 18, 2009 at 3:25 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
Betcha dint know
last year in Michigan
60,000 deer
lept into the paths
of moving vehicles
to certain death.
Jan Tucker on the radio
reads the list
of ambushees
down Ontonagon way,
six since Friday,
deliberate acts.
Consider the odds –
it’s a big empty county
with very little traffic.
With the mill closed,
maybe forever,
it could be time
to fall back,
cede this rough country
to the four-leggers,
let them have
the waterfalls, trees
and the copper
beneath these hills
hunched like the shoulders
of browsing deer.
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November 17, 2009 at 11:39 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
The Road
Walking dogs, moonless
night, don’t think of cougars, or
Cormac McCarthy!
God, Interrupted
asleep on a plane
dreams of immortality
sudden bump — the ground
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November 15, 2009 at 1:06 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
Excoriate me with your rough tongue.
I am raw, the very wind on my nerves
makes me shriek.
Flay me with your sharp tongue.
The red meat is tender, ready for
the stew pot.
Taste me with your articulate tongue.
Your words have cooked
a bitter dish.
Swallow me with your vitriolic tongue.
But chew me well, my linguist,
lest you choke.
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November 14, 2009 at 11:59 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
“A sudden loss of muscle power
following a strong emotional stimulus;”
that is how you made me feel today,
your words cutting like a knife
through my spine, severing
my last frayed strand of nerve.
Why not take my legs and leave me
the phantom pain? Castrate me,
I will still feel the raw ache of love.
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November 14, 2009 at 11:34 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
If my life were knitted of rough-spun wool
snagged on a thorn as I pushed through brush,
would I stop to untangle it, or let it unravel
behind me as I ran, suddenly naked, into
parts unknown. Would you stare in horror
or fascination? Would you look away in shame,
or swaddle me in the thick blanket of your love?
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November 13, 2009 at 3:26 pm
· Filed under 13, Friday the 13th, superstition, thirteen
There is no such thing
as good luck or bad,
just luck, plain and simple,
the random perturbations
of small worlds colliding.
Can you blame Loki,
mad trickster, for the way
the 12 gods at Valhalla
wouldn’t make room
for 13? Or Judas Iscariot,
just one among 13 at
The Last Supper?
If the world should
stop turning today,
so-called Friday the 13th,
it will be mere coincidence,
and I hope mercifully
fast and painless.
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November 12, 2009 at 11:27 pm
· Filed under body, death, fire, poem, poetry, sundown
Burial at sundown is one option,
lest the wolves draw near tonight,
but a pyre, I think, be better,
because it consumes, purifies,
yes, and because heat and light
could attach to our skin, you and I,
while dead words float away,
smoke and ash on a freshening wind.
Let us gather, then, dry branches,
help me wrap this curse’d day
in white linen, and strike a match
to my stubbled cheek, that we might,
together, immolate this wretchedness
before we are overcome
by the stench of rot.
The we can go down into night
and set about living again tomorrow.
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November 12, 2009 at 6:22 pm
· Filed under fall, fire, sunrise
I watched the sunrise flare pink orange this morning
like a wildfire over Dodgeville, a conflagration, an inferno,
a holocaust, and wondered what meaning I would attach
as poets do when they find a small platform to stand on,
a place from which to jump into the flames and be consumed.
I see now, fall turning to winter, of course, for the lesson
of the season is that all things good and beautiful die
before we are ready. We all know the seasons turn,
that life is a wheel, that spring will blossom some day.
But will we be the same tomorrow as we were yesterday,
singed by such flames, the acrid smell of flesh and hair
hanging between us? This is the question that hovers
like a cloud of black smoke, like fine gray ash floating
Earthward, that has the power to sting and choke
in memory after it has dissipated from sight.
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November 10, 2009 at 12:45 am
· Filed under love, moon, night, poem, poetry, stars
Half moon rising in the night
Its dark side does not shine
Sometimes I feel just half a man
Who cannot make you mine.
The half that glows in yellow light
Reflected from the sun
Is like my face alighted by
The gaze of my loved one.
The half that hangs so dark and still
Against the starry field
Is like my tortured soul whose pain
In absence is revealed.
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