All Weather Wear

Today, I’ll wear
a starched shirt of sun,
trousers of pressed trees,
and shoes of tasseled grass.

Later, let rain
trickle over my ears,
like long silver hair
under a broad gray hat.


Providing for my worldly needs has taken precedence over writing and visiting blogs. I apologize for not getting around, but next week I should be back to normal, hopefully.

Don’t Do windows

I’m lying in the gutter of this keyboard
begging for a long, hard drink of words;
swill from a rusty can of sentences, or
backwash from a brown bottle of lines,
anything to slake this blank page of thirst.
I’m not embarrassed to put it in print;
I am what I am wallowing between these keys.
Spare me a guzzle or two of letters,
I sure as hell won’t wash your windows,
but I will type out a line or two of verse.

Whooshfulness

The ceiling fan droned on and on
about the fruit of its whirling
being a full blown relative to wind.
With the evidence breathing down my neck,
it was hard to deny some validity to the claim.
As the only witness, judge and jury
to the “whooshfulness” of this argument,
I accepted it as a techno cousin of a breeze,
but not enough oomph to be a sibling of a gale.

When The Wind Blows

Trees, why do you tease the wind
with your green tasseled skirts
lifted above your waists?
What can you hope to gain
from your flirtatious wiggling about?

The wind is nothing but pure lust;
no semen in the thrusting of its loin.
You know this, yet, you continue to undress.

Don’t you hear the mocking bird
laughing at your silliness? The cardinal
flew behind the neighbors house
embarrassed by the gyrating of your trunks.

Enough! Enough! of this XXX exposé.

It’s not so much I mind you acting like a tart,
I’m just tired of cleaning up your mess.

Day Moustache

Morning has come,
like the milkman used to,
picking up empty stars, leaving
a blue basket of Grade A clouds.

I have a haircut at nine,
grass to cut after that, then
the rest of the day is mine
to drink it in at my leisure.

Moonlight Prayers

A boat in dock
collects more spider webs
than leaves do sunlight
on a hot July day.

Maybe, they’re attracted
to water as we are:
leaning into mother’s breast
when no other comfort will suffice.

They weave their moonlight prayers,
fragile tethers to nature’s pangs.
But, for the sweep of a black bristle broom
their fate would be a midnight feast.

Waiting

The leaves are listening,
being very still
for any murmur of wind.
Are they waiting for gossip
on rustling cousins two streets down?
Fire and brimstone sermons
from root-ripping itinerant clouds?
The air hasn’t spit out a hint
as I watch, and they wait.
Most likely it’ll be neither,
just silence on a long hot day.

Harvested

Your eyes,
sad as rotting tomatoes on a vine,
now, past wanting
the hungry pull of a hand.

I can’t imagine
the fruit wouldn’t have been
chin dripping sweet, but

there’ll be no tasting,
no savoring juices
exciting the genitals of a tongue.

When death
lays like polished granite over your eyes,
the pain will be gone,
the fruit finally picked.

Small Rewards

I sweat dream-drops
into the diamond-tipped dust
of callused hands and concrete alteration.

The sun burned passion into my thirst
causing me to strike the cask of orange stone
many times without speaking a word.

I may not cross the waters into Canaan,
march around Jericho and topple walls, but
the job is done, and I can sleep in, in the morning.

Working

Working out in the field this week. Will return by Sunday, I hope.

Saturday’s Ghosts

Well, now it’s Saturday.
The long neck ghosts aren’t rowdy
punching holes in the walls of my head,
but they did wake me up talking about:
pine trees chewing on the chin of the sun,
egg rolls swabbing tongues with duck sauce,
a Texas Hold-Em game that held me up.
Their chit-chat of Friday’s antics make me
determined to give their pop-top cousins
something to talk about in the morning.

Miller Time

Friday again,
my favorite day of the week.
The day I go to the lake,
grab a half dozen, or so,
bottles of Miller Lite
around skinny forty degree necks,
watch the brown glass sweat
as I drain their chilled-out lives
down the stressed-out throat of mine.


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Shoot For The Stars

It’s been awhile
since I shot my potato gun
at the stars

never hit any

but the thunderous fire
that bid farewell
to the missile of its birth

was close enough.


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Toast And Jam

The sun—
a favorite poetic theme,
spread its honey-gold jam
over the lightly toasted ravine,
with the far crusty edge trimmed off
by a serrated muddy creek.

What better way
to take the first bite of day?

All Used Up

His body rummaged through
drowning lungs of inevitability,
searching for the proper breaths
to accompany him to death.

There were only a few left—
short, gasping rattlers,
but he used every one
before the next occupant took his bed.

Water-Wool Thread

Water-wool sheared
from wild herds of rain
spins the finest crystal thread.
The first time I kiss you
will be stitched to the last, and
you’ll never feel the scratch of a seam
from our beginning to our end.

Heart Of A Storm

I watched your jowls
flush up with fury,
jagged electric veins
pop up and down
your stout gray neck.
I listened to you threaten
cowering trees, and neighborhood cats.
Yet, underneath all that whoosh and fume
beat a heart full of tears
for thirsty roots of dying souls.

Dressed For Love

Silence draped the night air
like a satin gown flowing
over moonstone slippers
stepping on the cracks of a ruffled sea.
It was formal and eloquent,
articulate in whispering soundless words,
definitions beyond meaning, expressions
tangled like tongues in a midnight kiss.

Sorting Echoes

They called at 8 p.m. last night
while we were listening to seagulls
squawk about being seagulls,
waves and sand arguing over boundaries
neither have, nor ever will honor,
an over-the-shoulder retort of a red hot sun
shoved into the silence of a watery night.
We decided to wait to return the call,
our ears were busy sorting through
the echoes of all we’d just heard.

A Mother’s Chill

She sits wrapped in a towel,
trying to stay warm in a poolside breeze.
Her children, a boy and girl,
swimming with wings holding her breath,
unable to feel what she feels.