The light was so bad I made some clouds—
little cotton ***** taped to helium balloons
drifting up to the heavens.

The first were the standard balloon animals:
dogs, sheep, horses, giraffes, lions.

They folded conventionally but
became much more creative creatures
with more cotton piled on.
The orange poodle became a bison,
the sheep a yak, the horse a hippopotamus,
giraffes just puffier and more absurd giraffes,
the lions awesome saber tooth tigers.

I added man, men, woeful enough
that they needed a woman to tell them what to do.
Later I made the men sheep and the women lions.
I gave the dogs rabbit ears.
The sheep were now wolves.

I made the sky ark a canopy
to cover it from the dissolving sun,
a fluffy river to slack its thirst,
filled it with cotton candy gold fish
glittering bottle nose dolphins and ***** whales
echo locating each other’s existence,
populated its banks with palm trees and oaks
to shade all the other animals airy heads.

I created and created until the
creation created itself.
Lions became oaks,
sheep became mountains,
dogs became gods
wanting only attention
and belly rubs,
demanding all cloud creatures
know themselves only through
the smelling of each other’s *****.  

It rained the last of the rain,
the last bit of **** left in their bowels,
rained until they could only ****.  

I was irritated by the smell.
I was irritated by the noise.
I was irritated by how
they didn’t let me play my piano,
or continue creating my house
or not let me go to bed.  

I was locked in place
and couldn’t look back.

I wanted to cover my ears
but my hands were gone.
I wanted to cover my nose
but it had broken, fallen off
into a pillar of salt.

I shouted until someone
or something heard me
and covered my mouth
with a primate hand,
stopped my ears
with a canine paw.

Creation
had stopped my creation
knowing that I hadn’t been satisfied
with what I had done
that very first day
and needed a reset.

The poet makes his gun out of any old thing:
sticks of words,  bird song, the swish of trees,
the pitter patter of the growing city around him,

The poet’s gun is never just a gun.
His poems are never just words.

Today, the poet’s gun is a rose—
thorns of wounding,  
warnings to admire its scent and beauty
from a respectful distance.

He fired it in the air knowing
that a gun that is a gun
is a little brook of death,
but since his gun was a rose,
it was dangerous and beautiful.

His verse exploded
blooming petals
shedding its crimson
like dew on the water.

It felt like rain.
It felt like pulsing veins.  
It felt like life being knocked over.
It felt like love bursting through.

The gun was a rose
and the gun was not death.
Out of anything he made it.
Tomorrow, it would be water.

This soul is not a drip-dry thing.
It’s needs constant washing and wringing
to function cleanly.
It needs to tumble on high heat
to wear just right.
Hand wash it and it will shrink in protest.
Line dry it and you might think
it will smell of heaven but
it is the rancid smell of tussle and
toil that will stink the neighborhood.
And, oh, by the way you should never
bleach a thing that is already bleached.
Don’t use stain remover for that’s its job.
No starch, please.  Stiffness is not needed.
The same goes for heavy or light ironing.
Follow these directions and
the soul will last your lifetime.
It will protect you from
all the stains of the world.

I am not a sailor.
I am meant to die on land,
ashes spread above sea level,
or in a coddled urn above the hearth.
My voice is paper and
where I choose to exist,
a white world that is not sky—
this voice of mine.
I have no ensign.
My heart beats soft, beautiful words,
a language of stars,
that knows that the twinkle
was once magnificent suns.

It’s in the shading.
It’s the way the light is written.
It’s the way the observer takes it all in.
It’s the way it convinces one that the world will last.
It’s the way it plants a seed in the mind,
the way it touches one inside, lives inside
the streets of memory, inhabits one’s emotional house,
sunsets, harbors, all the great perfect things
that exists in the brief eternity that loop eternally,
that convinces one that the extraordinary
is the purpose of existing in ordinary time,
that every moment lives for the perfect still life.

Poetry can **** you
when you shut
yourself inside of it.

It doesn’t want you
looking for better words
in other poems.

It wants to cage you
to the corners
of a sheet of paper.

It doesn’t want you
to breathe the thing
it won’t allow.

It wants you to use
just enough imagination
to finish it and
throw the overflow away.

For the time you write it
it has its own imagination
that refuses to acknowledge
that yours exists.

Until it’s done
you are it’s prisoner.

Only then will it open up
and let you breathe,
let itself breathe.

The seed planted with our small help
becomes a crop.
The flame carefully kindled by us
ignites  civilization.
Now we must
**** our blighted hearts
to feed the moral fire
of our hungry minds.

Man has
a map of the galaxy
for his body,
a map of his genes
that are his universe.
He has
a defense or attack
for every chess move
housed in Watson’s memory.
But precious of all,
he has
the ability to
grow crops,
to put water in the
hands of the thirsty,
to make
the right screws
to fit the peace machine
that makes our
better angels fly.

There once was a race of cake men
equally divided between
birthday and wedding types,
each born into whatever flavor
was selling that day—
usually chocolate or vanilla,
but towards the end Neapolitan-
whose faith was strong.

They succumbed to the next door
country of cake eaters,
who reveled in their two week
long cake eating festival.

The eaters would line up with
their forks and plates
and slice off a big piece of
cake men as they fled to
the nearby country of pie people
who granted them asylum and citizenship
because their people were
mainly rhubarb and mincemeat
and we’re suffering through fruit blight
that was destroying their fabled variety.

Soon the festival yielded
to a full scale invasion.
You see, the cake eaters were
tired of waiting in the sample line.
They ate the cake men to the last crumb.

With all the cake gone they ate the pies.
But by then the idea of cake was a lie.
The cakes were now  mostly pies.

When the last forkful of pie
was in the cake eaters mouth
it screamed:

I will not be eaten by anyone
who can not see my beauty.

The eaters never thought that a cake
could be admired and never eaten.
They had no sense of the art and beauty
that was the filling of the cake/pie men’s faith

That last bite of pie became poisonous
and from then on the cake eaters
(who were now forced to make their own)
could never fully have their cake and eat it
without throwing up or dying.
They were now forever doomed to eat
their meat and vegetables.

What will happen
when we
stop writing poems?

What will poetry become
when we stop inspiring
and the beauty of words
is silenced or rejected?

We will leave the writing table
and descend into the valley
to find new sounds and laughter.

We will drink the last water
from thirsty mountains.

We will listen
to the resounding
music and laughter
of our own dark forests.

When the giant bagel fell from the sky
everyone complained when it blocked the road.  
Even when children cut it into pieces
and passed it out, lathered with shmear and lox
the town folks refused to eat the manna.
A host of angels descended to clean up the mess.
The town folks rushed to the angels,
still neglecting the heavenly bread.
When the last crumb had reascended to heaven
and the angels began to flap their wings
and take flight, the town folks begged them to stay,
but they would not. Instead, they left behind
a talking chicken to remind them when the sky fell.

I asked the haberdasher
to make me a new soul.
something inexpensive
and lighter than 21 grams
with a loose fit.

He made it,
draped me in it
then disappeared.

I went home
and hung it in the closet
.
The next day
I couldn’t figure out
how to put it on.
So, I left it in on its hanger.

Overnight it got darker
and had become a shadow.

In the light it went white.
I draped it over arm
and went for a stroll.

It feel out of my grasp
onto the sidewalk,
picked itself up and
followed perfectly behind me.

By twilight it had become invisible
and was complaining loudly
that it wanted to go home.

I took it back
to the haberdasher
like it asked of me.

The store was closed
and empty of every soul.
His tools had been left out.
Sadly, the master had gone home.

I am scared, mommy
like I was in the summer storm
many months ago.
I tremble in my feet and hands
as I was in the deep puddle,
eyes open, screaming, shaking, mommy,
dark words want to come off my tongue.
Mommy, I am shaking as I come
down the stairs, light as a ghost.
Make me some milk, mommy
milk, if you see me there.

Gone in the labyrinth
of dense words
is the thin golden clew
that is the salvation out
for the gathering of lost poets.
The thread doesn’t exit
to the center,
to meaning,
just a thick grove of forest
where they meander forever
in the definitions all around them,
each footfall erased in
the revision of those before.

The poet signs his words to the deaf.
The screen behind exposes his faulty hands.
He is silent.
His hands a fire.

He knows there will be unintended words,
new meanings to old and familiar lines.
The muddle is his creation,
their new meaning, new poem,
both treachery and rebirth,
their dawn and twilight, their light and moon,
both hawk and silver fish gliding, swimming
high in the silent moonlight clouds and sky
of the noisy rewrite of their imagination.

He reads his words on their shirts.
Cloth sells better, than ten thousand books.
The swift river of lines comes in their colors too!
His restless words settle in for the show.
He feels like a naked stranger in an open door.


When his hands stop, the applause comes.
The deaf are enthusiastic clappers.
Something about getting off on the vibrations
created by their hands, he figures.
He’s happy when they come up to him,
signing new syllables
to be printed on upside down books.

There will be a time when God leaves you.
Maybe summer. Maybe winter.
The last thing he will say:
Keep searching.  Keep finding.
Seek me in the trash, the womb
lungs and heart.
He will leave you agape and stirring,
just a memory prayer
to say as the sun rises
and you wonder whether
winter or summer
has the holiest months.

The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth.
Walk with me.  Fall with me.
Be the helmet light in the tunnel.
Hold my feet less I fall into the abyss.
Shackle your friends to you,
foot to foot, arm to arm.
The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth.
Pull me from hell, while all the others
**** us to heaven’s salvation.

Mommy, esta di descubrí el lenguaje de los fantasmas

Ghost talk? What are you talking about, Jonny?

Si mommy.  En serio descubrí.  Escúchame.

Ghost talk? What do they say?

Para saludar dicen: hoo hoo.

Para decir que sí, dicen: Hoo

And how do they say goodbye?

No lo sé.  They haven’t left yet.

Mama, today I discovered the language of ghosts.

Line 3:

Yes, mama. Seriously, I discovered it.  Listen to me.

Line 5:

To say hello they say: Hoo hoo.

Line 6:

To say yes they say: Hoo.

Line 8:

I don’t know.

Writing poetry for me is like fishing in the wind:
You shoot your arrow-net into the air
and after many failures you snag an ugly bird
that you make beautiful the more you see
that it really resembles you.

The world is the ultimate trick
It grants man thunder yet steals his lightning
every time.
It makes him think he has the sweetest smell
of every thing
even that his **** does not stink
that taming fire was his best theft
of all time
that a caged dove heralds peace
in our time
the best of love
that time is a curse and not a gift
that the wolf is the enemy of pigs
that the world spins straight on its own axis
that he has a mind of his own design
that the red rose blooms for him to smell
that cancer is part of its mortal revenge
that nature taught man how to frown
that it would steal his nailed smile, if it could
The world is the ultimate trick
and it poisons him to think she’s his motherland

I gawked at her nine mind years
hooked three heart weeks later btw
f’ed a year before the day btw
three dogs, no kids
but she can really cook
so we lived happy btw
friends, church, family, dogs, house,
night, day, time all slipped away btw
yes, we aged, grew old-er btw
fell into cancer,
bad weather, lost it all, but well insured btw
no perfect couple, marriage but still around btw
until our slow last gasp,
last glance in the sun’s cast btw
on our old back porch with no one

God,
           do not send the sunshine
           down in thoughtless
           torrents.
Please
            do not obsess on light
            falling on all of your making,
            graciously falling
            everything on earth.
For  we
            are things of the shade,
            and the light falls too
            ******* eyes
Blind
            to all your light.

Bless the blessings.
Bless the moon
for bestowing dreams
that illuminate the soul.
Bless its beams.
Bless the way it reveals
revelations in the dark,
black letters inked on white vellum
daring to be read
that release the heaviness of the mind
in the lightness of eternity.
Bless the idea
that frees, not oppresses.
Bless words that shed
their flesh for the revolution.  
Bless the protest sign
that replaces the trigger.
Bless the chalk mark that teaches
and not outlines a body.
Bless the creative mind
that marches with determined feet.
Bless the gravestones never needed,
those living bodies never
requiring  homicide reports.
Bless all the never used bullets,
the limbs that remain whole.
Bless all those who die
in their right time,
their memories properly recorded.  
Bless their smiles.
Bless your laugh.
Bless the eye
that sees, believes,
that still has vision and faith.
Bless all the prophets
who were right.
Bless the heart
filled with good emotions.
Bless the choir of our tongues,
the hymn that uplifts.
Bless all the times
that God has granted us
the chance to do the right thing.

The hot night rain drenches me in sleep
opening a bow to prayer
amidst the lunatic birds swarming
in the dark heat.
Magnolias are split in dreams
heavy with bolts and tears,
flowing in the cascade
of cracked mirrors.
All is unmoored from my memory,
surviving on communion.
Dear Jesus am I not more profound
than thy mad swirl?

From form  
vile evil
in the shade of hades
sire and rise
the lived devil,
the tornado donator
that is the heart of the earth.
God denying, dog hating,
it listens for silence, the license
to edit the tide to its whim
and sink man’s canoe in its ocean.

Wise are the parents who give
their children difficult names.

Names that are a chant to God,
a sacrament with every utterance.

Or names that light a fiery rebellion
in the mulling brain.

Names that speak of the glory
that was before the slave ships.  

Names that display the wonder of sky,
the Eagle, Buffalo, Wolf, Deer.

Names that should hurt and choke
when mispronounced.

Braves names spoken
by brave and unafraid people.

Names shouted loud by those
who fearlessly, openly love.

Those who dropped their names
in the easy English soil, reclaim them!

Speak it in the accent of the old country,
the tribes of the African plain and rivers,

the screech, rumble of the clouds, creatures
that gave you your forever sound.

Gather your jewels from the ashes.
Mine them until they get their attention.

Collect the pieces of your lost continents
from their miscomprehension.

Your difficult names predate centuries
of their arrogance, ignorance, prejudice.

You are history
not their rewrite.  

Don’t explain your name’s meaning
to those who have forgotten your story.

You are the original and
they are the stereotype.

Bend your syllables, vowels
into a new understanding country.

Keep your difficult names
proudly unassimilated.

Keep it
your home.

Today I will be
an apple bringer,
a sower of Job’s tears,
a healer of grief.

Today I will be
the tarty sweet fruit
passed hand to hand
in the peace caravan.

Today I will be
the cooing melody
among a flight of doves.

Today I will be
the candle of the night
that shines the best
of my country.

Today I will be
the wind that spreads
the camphoric cries
that can not be blown out.

Tomorrow the world
will grant justice
for the obstinate tears shed.

Tomorrow God will
dance and sit amongst us
in the wake of his beautiful moon.

Tomorrow the residue of his love
will turn the screams into almonds
that we will eat with him.

Tomorrow we will witness
the miracle of all fallen songs
blossoming into tulips.

The tears fade in
the screaming inside howling brick.
It is our cancer
swirling around,
stone, flesh and home.
Our history is in its eye,
our profile in this wild night of carnage
slouching towards mornings. We turn
away and the brick frees us.
We turn back and are inside
our granite selves forming in the sculpting wind,
erring in the perfect sad light,
different, broken-whole.
Our names are erased from brick,
letters spreading like smoke
in the all defining wind.
It drops in the field of its birth,
a flash in the silent mud and clay.
It shimmers on my wife’s white blouse,
and when she walks away,
settles in memory.
The wind chisels a robin
falling, dying in my stare.
The cloud of my neighbor
floats towards me, pale eyes
trying to define me
but I am not a window.
Her face is lost in the brick
and the wind erases her,
the street, their signs,
the names of those in houses behind.

In the Charleston marketplace, a boutique auctions off
detailed limited edition replicas of black history: a slave
who hugs his chains upright over his porcelain hands,
is sold for $1200.00 to a man with a black Amex card,
a horde listening to the Emancipation Proclamation
goes for the same amount, Malcolm X gets $1000.00,
MLK just a little less, the OJ bobble heads sell for $60.00  
in the store’s gift shop while the white Bronco in
slow pursuit complete with flashing police lights
and breathless live commentary garners $2400.00,
Rosa Parks languishes at the rear eventually getting $300.00,
Eric Garner, Treyvon Martin, Rodney King are
part of lot sold for $500.00 clearance and a free
Black Lives Matter T-shirt, George Floyd gasping out
“I can’t breathe,” enshrined in a porcelain halo nabs
the same price, while the last figurine, of his murderer
being embraced by a very happy Donald Trump is
purchased by a man in a MAGA hat for $10,000.00.

Pick a day.
The random date generator chose:
January 13, 1835
There are still generations formed
from those that fell in
love, married,
birthed sons and daughters
on that day.
Each an unrepeatable existence.

Family lore and crests
enshrine the first kiss,
the birds that soared the sky,
the color of flowers in his/her hand,
words spoken and written in the heart,
the dress she wore,
the beard he had
and discarded or kept,
the Fahrenheit/Celsius of
the exact hour, minute second
of their first heat,
the time that their fingers
stopped accidentally
brushing against each other,
the number of teeth
shown in the first smile.

Count the time
from first hello to last goodbye.
Enshrine that number
of seconds, minutes, hours,
days, weeks, months, years,
in the tales told about them
by their children.
Knit together
all the overlapping
welcomes and farewells
into the colorful threads
of all the houses born and fallen.

I look at that history
and I love you
solidly in the echoes
of all the past.
You fill my time,
even my sadness.
I have gazed too long
Into the light of you.
I only see
the burnt-in after glow
of all the whiteness.

The oaks perceiving the assailing breeze shiver off  
their nuts, swallows and squirrels

upwards to a dark fearful sky
that camouflages broken peace in the wild promises
of the swirling winds.

Night breaks night—
smashing every compass point in impatience.
Bricks stem to snow, the wind ghosts every leaf
in mournful woe.

The wasp tail shears enter in breathing
a final winter to her old house.

Inside her chest the wind hornets sting her,
with the loneliness of the yet and not yet to be.

The sofa pillows fly down the stairs
saving her small barking dog ascending the dark.

She hears black birds caw to her in the chaos,
the bully air stabbing in sharp awe,
stabbing her aware.

She knows it now.  She sees the reason and agrees.

I am oxygen for you are the sky.

We exist only
because rain has formed the sea.

Our memory is buried
in every tide.

It waters swim inside
the roots of our blood.

The fluid of our language,
rippling stories in the school of words.

The bits of dreaming
are collected in clay pots.

Our thoughts are birds skittering
in the branches above the swirl.

Existence is the milky fish eyes
floating lifeless on the ocean’s surface.

Our kisses evaporate in the air,
not even dripping onto the
silent sea life nor sinking into the marl.

Our love is a bowl of feathers
waiting to form flight.

Until then are only meaning
waits in the icebox for the oven to warm.

Underwater, famished mermaids are eager to eat
the dreams and hopes of our sated angels.

My dog finds a conch nestled in the sand-
half dead, half alive- in the foaming tide,
She paws at its exposed pinkness
ignoring the hermit crab seeking shelter.

The conch shrivels beyond its lip
the scent of dead flowers pouring out,
my dog in a frenzy to taste its exotic flesh,
this beautiful creature sheltering in place.

Resisting the urge to pluck it from its shell
I pick it up and toss it beyond her scent,
beyond the fear, disease, the quarantine
I must always return to in silence.

As the shell sinks back to its home,
I now know everything dies in the sand.

For my reversal and recovery,
For my wife’s lost womb,
For a future free of cancers,
For the old brick house
toppled in the wolf tornado,
For the new cradle being
raised on an ancient cry of earth,
For the mothers who died
never seeing their children wed,
For rescued memories stuck on cardboard,
For dawning days of gray hair
and salt crusted smiles,
For all the altars yet to be built and crossed,
For all the twisted trees floating on rippled tides,
For all the roads, maps, stains and travails
that forged our life, created this prayer,
this hymn I sing.

I never thought brick dreams could tumble in the wind.
My wife collects our scattered memories in a undersized bin
like a child on the tide line collecting beach glass and seashells.
She listen for the sound of blood amidst the dying wind
mistaking rustling pages for her breath cycling in and out,
her pulse beating on the surface of paper, cloth and wood.
She searches for artifacts that match/mismatch my cancer-
the progeny the tornado left scattered in the brick and wallboard.

I listen to the wind and rain ping on my ward’s windows
unaware of her scavenging, unable to sleep in the harsh light
that doesn’t erode the pain or the glitter of memory,
the constant Kabuki of nurses, doctor and blood drawers,
the chant of machines that make me mistake
the sterile for the sacred, the soundtrack for the profound.
I see my wife in the mud, inches from my eyes,
putting away the jagged, clear granules of our life.

I loved this old crooked tree
that refused to grow straight
with the sky but willed itself
to stretch with the horizon,
limbs resisting what every oak
near it wanted— to kiss the sun.

It had a brother, long since cut down,
its stump never uprooted, ground to chips.
Decades of weeping, trying to caress its kin,
had left it defiantly stunted, a hunchback
to its grief, its refusal to be another proper tree,
limbs desiring earth’s comfort to cloud’s hope.

The tornado swept south and
my old brick house was
left a blasted finger to its whims.
The old crooked tree was uprooted
like all the others oaks, yet granted the mercy
of caressing its waiting brother in its final fall.

My wife spent the time after the uprooting
like all the others after the storm,
dealing with the adjusters, collecting
the ashes, saving the memories that remained.
No thoughts of trees preoccupied her
and I was convalescing from cancer surgery.

Before we moved into a temporary place,
before the winds of rebuilding where beginning,
I asked for a quick drive by to see the damage
because I only ,imagined the destruction
from the aching confines of a hospital bed
and needed to firmly root it to mind and soul.

The reality was a little worse than the imagining.
The roof was gone, only an L of bricks remained.
The PTSD, anxiety, the sheer exhaustion
was already planting in my wife.
I cried for her. I cried for the last sight
of the old tree hugging stump, earth beneath.

One night when skies have donned their stars
         And parted the lunar drapes
Scattering silent bats to afar
         To huddle with their mates,
We’ll fix our eyes northward, my dear,
         To distant lush Spring realms
Where musicians play songs with cheer
         And nothing overwhelms.

And we shall travail lovely streets
        With restaurants and bakeries,
Serving all your favorite treats,
        And just your recipes.
Here we shall build a ***** manor
        With ovens to bake tarts,
Rooms I can pen my psalters,  
        Hearts sharing each’s art.

Wait, I spoke
to the highest star.
It winked
and bowed to dawn.

Wait, I spoke to the low sun
that set.

Wait, moon.
It just glowed on,
gracing, gifting me with bright words. 

Wait, I spoke to my sad heart.
It beat as a heart does,
disobedient less it stop
trembling and just soon die.

Wait, to my brain
questioning all the high lights,
the bright horizon near,
all the lunatic noise.
They looked forth
changing faces, never silent, stopping.

Wait, I spoke to my love.
She answered,
Yes, heart.

In the hospital room
the doc watches Death come,
last breath a quiet sigh
surrounding the crash of stats.
He has visited Death’s country  
and left with its blue bruise stamp
on his wrist and heart,  
very thoughts.
No goodbyes.  No regrets. None.
Just schemes to betray it
when it tries to betray him
wrapped in a hospital sheet.
He save what Death stole.
He pull life out by the heels.
He rebirth it again,
give it years.
Death’s revenge took his mom first.
His dad made it two grave stones.
Today his pockets were all full
of Death’s black-blue pebbles.
The plague was blooming,
the pollinators were keen.
The world was a Kaddish,
torn cloaks and moans.
He saw blood through the sheets:
the new nature was just
now beginning its Spring bloom.

Elvis loved his peanut butter.

Gladys, who loved him the most,
as all good mothers love their children,
would feed him grilled Hawaiian bread
sandwich after sandwich of peanut butter
with chopped caramelized bananas,
or gently mashed fork bananas,
sometimes with bacon, sometimes without.

He dreamed of peanut butter and
Gladys would feed those dreams
with Fool’s Gold loaves made each of
one pound peanut butter, jelly and bacon
lovingly folded, like Graceland,
into  two foot slices of Italian bread,
cut by Gladys into pyramids
so the crusty part would never
hurt her Little King’s mouth.

He would go to bed with peanut butter
on his breath, on the roof of his mouth,
his tongue pressed to his palate so
that the peanut butter would never dissolve.
He would greet the dawn with
peanut butter morning breath,
peanut butter on his lips and  
peanut butter cloud swirls on his cheeks,
peanut butter like ant trails on
his satin pillow cases and King size sheets.

Gladys would be in the kitchen
plopping a tablespoon of buttery
peanut butter into  a skillet  
before adding two eggs and Canadian bacon.

The peanut butter shaving cream Elvis used
would still be on his neck and Gladys
would kiss it off in vampire pecks
that still made him squirm.
She would curl his cow lick  
in place, as she kissed his forehead  
smelling the scent of the peanut butter
pomade that gelled his beautiful pompadour.
.
And when she died, and he died,
it was those peanut butter kisses
he missed the most in his world.

Five smooth stones David culled from Elah’s brook,
Shepherd knowing  dense ones to fit sling’s crook.

He released the first on Goliath’s shright
the giant falling back dead with the smite.

Goliath gazing into David’s eyes
felt his blade render head for David’s prize.

Head held high, high and tight, in David’s hand
Goliath gawked at where his body land.

He cursed David ’til his progeny’s end
and Scopus  Crusaders in next revenge,

slung fiery stones onto his holy grain,
his children inheriting Sauls migraines,

Absalom, Absalom! their refrain roars
as they smooth more stones with nuclear cores.

Notes:

The Scopus Crusaders are credited with the invention of the first catapult—really a giant slingshot, that launched fiery boulders at the walls of their enemies.

Saul was the first King of Israel.  He suffered from migraines that made him attack others.  One of his aides was David who suffered brutally when Saul was having one of his migraine headaches.  David later, succeeded Saul as King of Israel.

Absalom, Absalom was the cry of grief David shouted when he learned that his first son, Absalom had accidentally died in the branches of a tree he was traveling under.

The core of a nuclear bomb is about the size of the smooth stone that David slung to **** Goliath.

Footballs always dazzled me,
composed boxes on the shelf,
like pigskin half moons and suns
needing tees from toppling down,
a kick or a toss to send them
hurling to human planets.

The long run, perfect spiral
is inherent in its form,
as is carnage, grace, error.
Its life is moving forward
in the give-take of the game
and the frenzied need to score.

In the flash of flight my dreams
ran thoughts of the gridiron:
the quick release, the jute fake,
the deer stride to the end zone,
the soft jump over the safety
for the champion touchdown—

existed in perfection
on the lined green schoolyard turf
until the surest pass ever thrown
slipped like butter through my hands,
the handoff fumbled down, down…
I was born… to be a fan.

The rear view mirror showed the car on fire.
Metal no protection for burning flesh—
burning down to the color of the night—
a bright reversal reflected in white.
Maybe charred bone? Not hell. Neither heaven.
Police, EMTs too late to save the
tissues smelling like pan steak, fatty pork—
blood emitting its metallic compounds—
the burnt liver of organs— spinal gel    
a musky, sweet perfume less offensive
than wires, plastic, alloys, the circuitry
melting down every(all)things to its base.
He (it) never saw, tasted, felt the crash
coming from the back/front/side. But I did.

The virus news carries me from room to room.
A Verdi aria breaks the solemn
chant of the rising death tolls in my brain
as Italians sing to the sick below,
voice to voice forming a single line of hope,
that filters down to the lonely windows,
my electric screen, all the world’s tablets.  
The music spreads over the mournful lulls,
penetrates through the hemagglutinin,
nucleoproteins singed by joyous noise.
The alarms of Corollas join the chorus,
even the rain ululates with applause.
The gift of every note dotes on the glass.
The ventilated sick duet with their eyes,
pale hands conducting the voices above.
The voices background the daily briefing,
the drone of Trump, and the doctors after him.
I switch to another song, more mellow-
Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, something
in the same tempo, in unison, that allows
my small cautious soul to match their big notes.

She is the way they left her:
silent, shuttered, composed
amidst disarray,
the waiting chair unmoved,
her body draped in final coverings,
spider rays webbing the room,
the overhead light unused,
the bed sagging forever
in the center after this,
the sun fighting
with the weight of shadows
on her bedspread.
The corners of her room are dusty
crying from the lack of human nicety.
A tattered pain lives in the motes
that float to the floor,
bruises
of the past
that cannot heal in the present.
My hands are cut by the sharp edges
of a future I’m blind and deaf too.
I can only grasp futilely as the sun floats
away in the shadow play.
A faint trace of her voice
saying Jon, Jon, Jon
follows me out as I
struggle to lock the door.

The rose has thorns because
it cares not to be touched.
Its color is a warning
for animals to stay away.
Its scent is a scream and
not a delight for us to own.
It exists in ****** stillness
bending only for the sun.
The scientist knows this
having heard its sub audible
howl with delicate machines
that probe its roots.
The poet plucks the bloom
unaware of the pain that
created that beauty,
the aroma that shouts
its death to its vegetable kind.

The world is full of missing images and sounds.
In heaven the blind and deaf will meet:
one will show the other the pictures never seen,
the other will share the songs they never heard.
That is why, what and where, are part of
the essential questions every one asks.

I lose one sock every other washing.
The wisdom of the washer and dryer
says that God is stockpiling the lost one
to be reunited with the other in heaven.
Does that mean those with perfectly
mated, never separated pairs, are
doomed to the spin dry of eternal hell?
But then, it’s Smart of God, not letting me
hop around on one foot in my nakedness.

Socks are greater than love.  
They remind us that things
lost will eventually be found,
show the foolishness of looking
back to see what’s coming.
They are reminders that
rain is the reason clotheslines
have disappeared.

I don’t know if SEE ROCK CITY is
still stenciled in white on black
on old red barns along dusty Southern highways.  

The old black and white photos weren't arrows, more like anchored arks that floated  menageries of tourists to Lookout Mountain
to see miniature Fairy Tale Caverns,
villages of Mother Goose creatures,  
a Lover’s Leap with a view that overlooked
the borders of seven states on a clear day.

Hidden inside  was a falls that turned red, green, black, orange and holiday colors
on Valentine’s, St. Patrick’s, Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas.    

The last two miles were a treacherous thrill ride
up a snaking two lane mountain highway
filled with all the breathless ascent of a rollercoaster ready to be propelled at its zenith.

The tourist coming down, amped up on
on sugarcoated dreams, soda pop,
rainbow squirts and homemade fudge
dissolving like cotton candy in their mouths,
would dare the descent without a  
tap of the brakes, making it the only place
on earth where heaven could collide with hell.  
  
I’m sure those old barns have rotted down,
filling their fields in creosote abandonment.  
Perhaps the whitewash of time has eroded
ROCK and even CITY leaving the passing soul
wondering what there is left to SEE.

The dream still exists amidst fairy tale caverns and meandering limestone/sandstone trails
on the very top of Lookout Mountain
waiting for a family of woodpeckers
to roost in the metal SEE ROCK CITY
birdhouse hooked to the V of my old oak.

Many say the last thing the dying see
is the flap of dove wings
or Jesus caressing their hair.
  
Her hallucinations were full of Him
smiling at her, speaking words
she could not understand.
  
And when I draped the
blanket over her cold feet,
crowned with the blue bruise
of all her past complications,
she was convinced I was Him.  

I played the game.  
“Hush, little one.  
I am here for you.  
Do not be afraid.”
  
I left for a moment.
I wept.
She had fallen asleep.

Before I could
return the next day,
she had passed.

Her eyes were closed.
Her mouth was a half smile,
as if she had heard a bell,
had tasted the sweetest thing.

I wondered what was that last
great thing she had heard or seen,
but she had taken her memory with her.