Wild Things

They marched through the city,
Singing songs of lament while
Breaking everything they could
With their hydraulic hands.

We stood on top of the barricade
Watching them approach. A sea of
Torches lit the night, so many faces
Gaping wide.

They howled like their lungs
Had taken this all personally,
And wanted to attack on their own
Two feet.

They washed up below us, breaking
Against the boulders, the riot gear,
And when I gave the signal
The wild things caught fire.

We watched them dance, more beautiful
Then they could have ever known.
We watched their mothers fill the streets,
Beating their breasts.

At dawn, the street sweepers whirred
And all the trash men lined up,
Eye bright with the promise of overtime,
Their arms filled with silent refuse.

Halloween Poem

They came up out of the swamp with
Moss dripping from their shoulders,
Eyes gone and abandoned to time.
They staggered down our street,
To our house, and knocked on
Our door.

I asked them to please come in.
They sat down on the couch and
Slid out what was left of their legs.
I made tea, hot and black, and we all
Sat together drinking in silence,
Remembering the old days
Like they were somehow better,
Instead of merely different.

We sat for so long all the tea
Evaporated from our pores and soon
No one could remember
How we'd gotten there,
How all of this got started.

The Leaves Change

And here I am walking in the gutter,
kicking dried leaves, drinking from a flask.

The leaves snap beneath my feet like fine bones
Calcified unto the ages and then the stars come out,
Rendering the gutter ridiculous.

Beneath such an established crowd you can only
Confess your sins,
Say what you did wrong and when
You go home the night hums in your head,
Crackling like a fire that gives no warmth,
All coats useless,
Your skin stretched so thin
I can see through it, a map
To a world I could never go
Without losing my way.

I'll find you anyway.
I'll hold my flask to your mouth
And you shall drink a toast
To the cold path
That brought me hence,
Smiling with such idiotic certitude.

Fallen Bridges

I read today
That philosophy has chased its tail
To the end.

We have run into linguistic tangles;
There are no boundaries to Fantasia.
We started out looking for answers
And found only more questions.

Build all the bridges you want,
Make all the friends, allies and lovers,
But you will one day walk back to that wall
Which even the hippies could not tear down.

Pile all your stones, make all the heated,
Alcohol fueled arguments you want while all the
Bridges continue to fall like the sound
Of nails sliding down a dry easer board and
Every day someone great dies in New York City
While the sun slowly wears itself out,
Breathing heat into a vacuum that always
Wants more, wants to know why Socrates
Took that hemlock, eyes focused
On the stars.

Poems from the Foothills

"Where I'm From"

I'm from blueberry cream cheese
French Toast,
Home sewn clothing and laughter.
Motor oil, lilac bushes, and
Visits to the doctor.

I'm from grassy backyards,
Baseball, football,
Old tractors and even
Older men.

I'm from lakes and sweet corn
At the end of July.

I'm from books, lots and lots
Of books, read deep into the night
Until the world was silent
And you could hear your heart
Beating along with the sound
Of the train, rolling by
Just across the road.


"Postcard Haiku"

Boise desert hills
Silver sagebrush, dry creek beds
Shade beneath the trees


"Sounds"

The willow tree rattles
Leaves crackling like dried
Rice Krispies,
Bending like a reed
Before the wind.


"Ode to the Bullfrog"

O Bull Frog!
I cannot see you
Except for your dark beady eyes
Bobbing above the water
But your deep, car bass voice
Calls to me, as if you only want
A froggy hug, lonely as you are
In this desert pond and the mountains
Around you must seem very high
When you're caught at the top
Of one world,looking up
At another.

But O Bull Frog!
You're brave, dude.
You're brave.

Boise!

Lawn sprinklers pop out at midnight
In this arid desert steppe terrain.
Quiet neighborhoods (except the fireworks).
This is not where I grew up
Nothing like it at all
Except, well, it has humans here, too...

America is a big place,
You never know where it might lead,
And all of it home.

My God, how did I get here?

On Poetry

All poetry
Is nothing.
Like we are nothing.
Like the world
Is nothing.

And nothing,
As Janis said,
Is all we have left
To lose.

3 Poems Written During One Afternoon At My Temp Job (on yellow post-it notes)

The Desert

They were lost.
The sea had run aground
And they could do nothing
But get out,
Tighten their shoelaces,
And walk.
The sun in the distance
Like a coin waiting to be collected.


Cough, You Mutherfucker

Cough, you mutherfucker, cough.
Why not? You've been doing
It for eight hours a day,
Five days a week, for months
Now. You sit right in front of
Me and we don't even have a
Thin cubicle wall dividing us.
You heave, sigh, yawn, belch, and cough.
So go ahead and
Cough, mutherfucker, cough.


Cats at Night

The door opens and they bound out
Into the darkness, eyes wide
And noses twitching as they attempt
To take it all in, not knowing
There is no end to the night,
That all the curious smells will go on
Forever, that a legion of other cats
Guard their own backyards, streets
Running beyond this city to other cities
Running to the far ends of the earth,
Where all is grass, woods, farms.
The mice there sleeping safely,
Tucked into bed and dreaming of ocean.

Beer with Lemon

I watched the dark clouds gather
All afternoon long and into
The early evening while stationed
At a shared desk on the seventh floor
Of a gleaming blue office building
All glass, all windows. A quiet purgatory
With a beautiful, panoramic view.

Looked like rain all afternoon,
But the storm did not break
Until I had punched out, until
I had driven home my back tight
My stomach empty and sat down at
My kitchen table, pouring myself a
Beer with lemon while looking
Through my open window at the
Fresh green trees blooming outside,
So much sweet wind pouring
Through my screen window I could only
Bow my head, and consider the thunder.

The Widower

You do not remember this,
But I stood over your bed
Reading poetry as if the
Words on the faded page could
Outdo all we had been through,
The life we had shared over so
Many years, clawing earth together
As if that grip meant something,
As if we'd arrive somewhere
Someday, me taking off my hat
As you smiled and curtsied to
Something stronger and higher
Than either of us but tonight
All that matters is how, when
I reach for you, that spot is
Devoid of heat, and only
My own sweat soaked pillow
Rising up to meet my lips
When I try to kiss you
Across space across time
Across town, your grave simply
One among many, something for
Lawnmowers to dodge while they
Hum loudly to the open sky,
So much louder than poetry.

Outlaws

We drove
And drove
And drove

The sun crisp above,
Flat road ahead, and
The rear view mirror empty.

We'd quit our jobs
Freedom seeping through
Our bones so much
Money in leather bags
And I drove fast, but not
Too fast.

At night we slept in motels
Listening to thin walls weep
So much news so much ESPN so much
Pain.

In the morning we drank coffee,
Ate pancakes and bacon.
The morning paper was filled with
Bad pictures of us and when I read
Aloud you giggled and kissed
My picture in the paper until the
Cheap ink rubbed onto your lips
And when you smiled, your smile was darkness.

We drove on
Until we ran
Out of land to drive upon,
And at the end of all that land
We made love
Until the ocean gave way and
Let us walk on through,
Holding hands.

Pipe Smoking

If everything we did made perfect sense
And was perfectly healthy,
How would the dead find peace
Knowing that we were wasting
Our one chance at good living?

Perhaps, sometimes, the smell of burnt cherries
Should rise above us like a ladder to the heavens,
Begging to be climbed.

The Siege of St. Paul

Sheets of ice rose into the sky
So many clouds of frozen tears
And all the rivers,
Done froze up.

He blew into his hands
And checked the temp.
So many clothes to wear, and so many
Hearts that needed jump starting.

The war had been on for months...
Or was it years,
Or was it centuries?

Few resources got in and
Nothing
Got out.

The siege had been on so long
It was a joke, something to drink about
And forget.

St. Paul a dream, a puff of frost
Kissing snow, your tires squealing
As you failed to top that icy hill.

She had no lipstick so she bit into
Her tongue until the blood pooled
And she licked her lips crimson.

The siege gripping every throat
Like Old Man Winter,
Refusing to let go of something
He could no longer remember.

Ode to Beavis & Butthead

Music videos are no longer played on MTV
And your episodes have been
Chopped up by your creator
Into well-packaged DVDs and you
Dudes never even new what a DVD was.
You never knew how much you meant
To all the inappropriate children out there
Who loved you for what you'd do
That we could not do
Because we'd been born unlucky enough
To not be cartoons eating nachos
But we all tried and yearned to score
We fucking yearned to score
And there is no shame in that far greater
Is the shame of the milk toast the mild
Who never try to score who never say
Anything
Inappropriate who go through life pretending
To be smarter than they are, more well
Bred than they are never touching the core
of what they could have been.

Yes, I said "touching the core".
Heh heh, heh heh.