i go through this daily plot
waking, working, trudging
first world ease, office walls
wheeled chairs

afternoon run
tupperware lunch
dinner the night before

home again, dinner
dishes again,
play again,
daughter picks up
new phrases, new looks
vegetable strainer toy
"umbrella," she says

i see those eyes, my wife's
and i wonder

what is this place?
these walls, these roads,
those sitka pines and shrinking
glaciers?

how 'm i supposed to be a father
with all these things stretching out
vaster than reason, than comprehension

those talking heads, ranting this or that
liberty's *****, freedom's snatched,
the world warms, the world cools

Filipinos scream in the face  of angry
winds, the prim cut weatherman wildly
gestures at a colorful map, powerful
he says, historic
he says

more dripping mouthes,
government want guns now,
more money to ****** our phones
to send unmanned drones

our president's muhammad,
or jesus, or kenyan, or raciest
a genius or incompetent
everyone knows

just back home
a tiny algae grows and foams
thrashing in the autumn water
brown oxygen choking life
never found on our shores before
kills fish,

i imagine so much more

i hold my daughter in my lap
reading mother goose,
run my hand through her
thin smooth hair,
sometimes afraid
of what she'll see and hear
with her mother's eyes
and her father's ears

My eyelids are folding over my body
As I roll into my flesh bed
I dream, and I dream of you
I bury the dream
And I wake up underground

der Spegel: A Commissioned Poem

commissioned by Megan Spegel


Spegel
- a mirror; a smooth reflecting surface
- something flat and smooth, resembling a mirror (e.g. the surface of a lake)
- a (moral) guideline, used for correcting errors, similar to a mirror

Busted.
You.
Busted.
96 poems.
19 years young.
That's about 5 poems per year.
What's gonna happen when you chill,
Turn
A ripe old
Twenty?

Will you grace us with 365 individual
First Thoughts of My Day?

I suppose falling in and out of love weekly,
Steamy teen kisses
Will inebriate you plenty,
Into writing more plenty.

Truth is I am jealous-angry.

My clocks can't fall back
Because I've fallen for you
And the simplicity of your loving
Poetry

In two lines, you get done
What takes me half a dozen
Long winded poems.

I love the brevity pure
Of your youthful loving view.
For when I look on the
mirror of poetry,
I see, not me,
But the rising tide of the younger ones, poets,
Rising up faster,
Surpassing us,
Correcting our errors,
Who say so much with
So few words.


P.S.  **"Good morning dear
I hope the sunrise found you well."