These are poems that aim at reflecting something uniquely American in experience. Be it a place. Or a person or an experience. It had to happen somewhere to become something.
We sit and eat
And stare at
The paintings
On the wall
Across the
Street.
They don’t
Really represent
What they
Look like.
Proportions
Off, eyes
Too small
For large
Black heads
Dog and cat,
Couch of
Snake and fish,
Blue iguana.
Staring contest
w/ the cartoon
Crew across
The wall
From them.
GoodShepard
Animal clinic.
“The Doctor Is in.”
Beautiful day
Ruined
By schedules
Subjective
Of course
The day
Perfectly happy
To be perfect
Not bothered by my
Objective
“Off course, re-routing”
The Birds are
on the move
Snatching up the
Last mating
Bugs of Summer
Slow
Oblivious
Fattening up for
Winter’s rest
Or supper.
Anytime I Go
Anywhere, I know
Exits and barricades.
I have to know
Where we are to go
If you’re on a rampage.
Your second privilege becoming our existential threat.
What do I tell my children?
“There there little one, don’t you cry.
There’s ‘thoughts and prayers’ for us when we die.”
“Now, now, there there, don’t you despair.
Run for the exit, it’s over there.”
It’s easy to see
Why Georgia O’Keefe
Landed in Abiquiu.
All these cowboy clouds
and sunshine smiles
So much painting to do.
Rosie red arches
And sulfur burning
With Yellowing tongues
Rising, Lashing out
Lapping up lapis
Skies, with brushes swung
Heavy oil to evoke
American dream.
A land growing lost
To the lush beauty
She acquired on
blank sheets of canvas.
”Stone of lumination.”
“This is it!
We’re done.”
Morning shadows
Got the Sun
Edges browning
still green leaves
“Autumn’s coming”
Says, the trees.
The poet stands sentinel, memory of the City.
I am needed in the streets. Town crier. Breaking Muse. Calling forth the words of this generation. MindScribe. Writing into the minds of the people; making them remember to be free.
We must compose a new poetry.
Democratic verses
aspiring towards
our words in
common.
We call for a new poetry!
We call for a new eulogy!
We call forth the Speaker for the Dead.
He will understand the lost as only the Ender of
Worlds can begin to grasp. He will tell us who they
Were, where They stood. You do not know nor could.
They never wrote it down for you. Never heard them say.
Admirer, lover, blinded still,
your pining overwhelming, what was real.
Their stories told without the Makar’s mark.
Stripped away, our own projections of glories old
And say the truth, no matter how dark.
The funeral can no longer be your poetic elegy.
It must be a poem of record telling the life of the
One who will be remembered beyond the grave.
Their stories a collection of Cities and States.
The Skull
from The Mountains
Bullet Hole
between the eyes
Whole body
puzzle of bones
Bone broken
on winter’s pass
Burden taken
under human foot
Friend fallen
Last farewell
Friends taken
to the woods
Too early
for human foot
Skull‘s burden
Taken home
To rest
I went to buy a book of poems
Hearts, identities, wants, failures
Scattered across pages, books, shelves of books, shelves of
poetic thrashings
Awaking from the same bad dream, writing the same bad poetry
that releases your free will to subjugation and lies
dormant in the pithy pulp, poet after poet
screaming unto no one, until
“I’ll take this one”