I was born into late November,
a time of umber and ditchwater
brown as pine needle muck

and the wind-raked oak leaves
huddled among the ankles of
willows that edge the marsh.

The sky is flinty, gravel colored.
I fracture along the old lines,
like the web of tar-patched

cracks in the road.  My days
are like the voice of Elvis Costello;
it’s a strain to reach the highs

but the low tones resonate
with a sadness that is oddly
comforting for its familiarity.

There’s plenty of coffee
and people to watch
but the coffee’s ordinary
and the people more so —
balding, with overweight children,
unattractive in sweat pants.

Eggs and sausage
and even a waffle maker,
but I keep to
the yogurt and raisins
and turn my back on Fox News.

There is life
in the hotel breakfast room,
just not mine.

The feast of Thanksgiving —
partaken by the souls who did not starve —
has become a rite of gluttony and football,

prelude to the national day of consumerism.
Black Friday, they call it, a celebration
of corporate profit and home electronics.

They can tell me the greatest freedom
is the freedom from want, but with
such food and comforts and diversions,

I want to be free of the freedom of want —
to be hungry, to face danger, survival
uncertain, to live or die by my wits.

I have no use for the father,
moody, jealous, egotistical law-giver,
impatient, vindictive flood-bringer, plague-maker.

Nor the son, too passive for my tastes,
too lamb-to-the-slaughter, though
I’ve got nothing against peace and love-thy-neighbor.

I do fancy the mother, pretty little
Jewish girl, works as a nurse I think,
but she’s not a type I could worship, a nag.

I’m sure not one to believe in ghosts
or saints, just things I can see
and hear and feel here on Earth.

Which leaves us with the whore,
washer of feet, tender pleasure-giver,
the only one in the whole damn story

who lives as I do, embracing
the pain and pleasure of living
with her miraculous arms and legs.

A happy birthday
with my mother, as it was
fifty years ago.

A rainy Wednesday
like a day in Seattle
nineteen fifty-nine.

Half a century
in my book. What verse will I
write on the next page?

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
of a blurry world
rolling by

seems like the heart’s
always skipping
a couple beats
ahead
of the brain

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 from afar
like from the sky
what is signified
but for now
it’s like the train
with the present
slipping past &
no clear view of

what’s to come

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.

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

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.

“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.