35

#35 on the menu sounded good,
though not pronounceable by my Minnesota tongue.
With a Thai accent, the waiter asked
how we’d like our food, mild, medium or hot.
My friends and my wife opted for mild but I chose hot;
I’d heard really hot peppers turn the key
that unlocks the endorphin cabinet,
and being a child of the ‘60s, I knew what was inside.

I chose boneless chicken, carrots cut to look like flowers,
green beans, and broccoli with mushrooms and rice
lightly sauteed to just beyond crunchy,
all sprinkled with red pepper flakes.

After the first forkfull, my tongue ignited, my lips kindled
and my face took on the color of a cayenne sunrise.
With the second taste, salt water,
the ocean we all carry inside our bodies,
reached high tide on my forehead.,
Waves of sweat broke on the beach of my face.

I gulped ice water and beer, glass after glass, but the heat increased
as in between ice cubes I shoveled more delicious coal on the fire,
unable to stop until my stomach could hold no more
and I had to ask for a carry-out container.

After a night of flaming dreams,
I woke with my lips still atingle, my tongue crackling.
Gasping for cool air, I remembered the take-home box,
half ran to the kitchen for well water and ice,
filled a pitcher, placed it in the fridge,
salivating with anticipation of lunch
and another dose of #35.

Antarctica
let loose an iceberg armada,
enough ice cubes for ninety-nine zillion
pina coladas.
So have a couple, just chill, don’t spill,
as Earth keeps warming as you know it will.
You know it’s partly your fault,
but don’t sweat the gestalt,
just add some more salt
to the glass rim of your next margarita
while you ponder the meaning of Karma.
Though we all pay the bill
for the oil and coal we drill,
you can feel fortunate if you live mid-continent
and get the Manitoba/Minnesota discount-
less firewood to cut,
an early start to your garden-
while coastal dwellers have floods in their cellars,
the Eskimos lose all their snow,
rising tides leave drowned ocean islands
and islanders with no place to go.

Use your turn signals, **** it.
Keep your speed close to the limit.
Use your side mirrors.
Come to a full stop at stop signs.
Pull over and sleep when you’re tired.

You’ve got a map;
you know how to follow the red highways
between here and there.
You know where you want to go;
but all those other fools on the road
don’t have a clue,
may not even see you.
Just use your turn signals, **** it.

That’s enough advice; you know the rest--
how to light up your eyes when you laugh,
how to keep an open mind,
open hands,
an open heart.
Be honest with yourself.
Use your turn signals, **** it.

Silent songs
perch on the strings
of his banjo
like birds frozen
to phone lines.
Those un-played songs
wait for someone
with some pluck
to take their hands
out of their gloves,
warm up those chickadees,
set them to singing.

A romantic realist such as Thoreau
or a magical realist such as Garcia-Marquez,
unable to fend off fate
or rain
might say to a tree
thank you for allowing me to ****** you
to put a roof over my mortal head.
To which a cynical but congenial tree,
as valuable as a metaphor
as it is as a roof beam, might reply,
that though I, with my brothers and sisters
gave you every breath you’ve ever breathed
you murdered me for momentary expediency
and possess the audacity  
to write your poems on my dead skin.
Well, breathe as long as you can,
you romantic **** ant fool.
I’ll be a roof beam a hundred more years.
You’ll be nothing more than evaporated tears.

Larry Schug

I remember that day
as if it was a painting-
two giggling little girls
wearing party dresses,
cautiously feeding horses
carrots and dandelions
from open hands.
The sky is vast and blue;
woods and fields
dress in every green there is.

The songs of meadowlarks,
raucous calls of crows
and the humming of honeybees,
crawling all over the clover
blend into intricate harmony
while a herd of a hundred horses
swish tails and shake manes
at buzzing flies.
The little girls laugh every time
a horse’s lips tickle their hands
in search of another dandelion.

An anonymous passerby,
someone on their way to work,
perhaps some bicyclist,
took the time to remove the cat,
hit by a car in the night, from the roadway,
place it in the ditch among wild violets
before more tires, feasting crows
and other agents of decay
could begin their work on the carcass;
a small kindness, this,
to foster a measure of dignity
during these times of anonymous death,
unmarked graves.

The animal caged
inside the caged animal
knows by the sound and rhythm of footsteps,
who approaches, their intent, their mood,
hears the sound between steps
the same way a musician
hears music in the space between notes,
the same way a poet writes between the lines,
the same way a lover reads the silence between
I love yous.

I wake early.
You sleep beside me.
The taste of your pink butterfly
lingers on my tongue,
on my lips and mustache,
coats the inside of my mouth.
My nostrils still smell it,
my fingers smell of it.
I write this poem
while your butterfly is cocooned,
its fleshy pink wings folded
around my whispers and moans.

I’ve read the advice of the sages,
about being present in the present,
accepting what is for what it is,
but it hasn’t stopped raining for three days
with three more days of rain forecast;
this, after a winter that has lasted into April.
I’ve got cabin fever
and there doesn’t seem to be enough Zen,
enough rhythmic breathing,
enough yoga or tai-chi in the world
to still my pacing room to room,
my constant glancing out the window
toward the garden, untilled,
where I envision myself on my knees,
my hands dropping seeds in tiny furrows,
then covering them with soil and prayer.

can’t get a hold of HIM tonight,
phones are busy, lines are jammed
in this reverse marathon telethon
where the callers are the beggars,
pleading for donations from the Lord.

The Lord is busy right now.
To leave a message after the tone:

press 1 for health
press 2 for wealth
press 3 for love
press 4 for all the above

press 5 press 6 press 7
if you want to go to heaven.

Coyote prowls the swamp behind my house,
searching for a duck or goose nest
hidden in tall yellow grass,
thinking of eggs for breakfast,
perhaps a downy duckling or gosling,
maybe some baby mice for dessert.
Coyote sniffs around the nests people make, too;
people who seem unaware,
can’t sense coyote’s presence anymore,
so go about their business
as if coyotes are merely the stuff of old stories.
They seem surprised when coyote finds their nests,
say things like “We didn’t have a clue.”
or “It came right out of nowhere.”
or “It happened so fast.”—
poor excuses for inattention, sleep-walking,
made after coyote has ravaged their nests,
scattered sticks and moss and grass,
then laughs about it when the moon is full.


And There Are Coyotes

that prowl the land inside you, too,
seeking to feed on fears
you thought hidden even from yourself
like prairie dogs in their dens.
**** those coyotes, so wily,
digging up burrows,
feeding on carcasses;
they survive all the poisons
you douse your insides with,
the traps you set,
laugh at bounties on their hides.

If you walked through the woods with me,
at first opportunity I’d do you the favor
of blistering your skin with tree sap,
scratching you with thorns,
making places for blood and mud to mix.
I’d jump on your back, push your face
into the loam of last year’s leaves,
stuff your nostrils with earth smell,
cake your tongue with earth taste,
mud your eyes closed with earth sight,
all for your own good.

When you remember where you come from,
that even you need water and air to live,
I’ll let you up again,
let you chase me,
pleading with me to buy your shares,
help you divest of your past life;
but I’ll be way ahead of you,
laughing like a nuthatch
all the way to the riverbank
because, like I was commanded,
I love you and not your sins.

Eyes wide but life-less,
unfocused,
she stares out the plastic window
of her sealed box house
like someone depressed,
glassy eyes watching  a tv
that may or may not be turned on.

In her back is a key hole,
a mechanism to animate her
in some pseudo-human way,
to speak simple words of need,  
shed tears of frustration and sadness
that she must depend on another
for what little life she has—
a toy taken out, then put away
at the whim of someone
who only wants to play, or worse,
merely place her on display.

Six lovely red, unspoiled apples
lay atop a heap of typical American trash,
call me with a snake-like hiss,
feast on us, feast on us, feast on us.
Come on, Adam; it’s why we exist.
But you’re in a dumpster, I reply,
mingled with garbage, waste, refuse.
What about germs, sanitation, hygiene?
What about my middle-class American pride?

Alongside the apples, a blood-stained newspaper
speaks headlines of disaster—
starving children in Myanmar, Dharfur,
the refugee camps in Syria and Uganda.
I think the sin, not that original in this land of plenty,
would be to let these apples rot, so I pluck them
from the trash, take them home, devour them,
their sweet juice running down my throat
as I write a check to a local food shelf
to assuage the guilt only the full-bellied feel.

Carmelita and Maria
burn with sorrow dressed as anger;
fire in their black-diamond eyes,
hot enough to scald tears
before they roll down
the brown lands of their faces.
Both quiver like chamisa in the dry wind
but the pride of long-suffering roots
will not concede to any withering wind.
Carmelita and Maria
are born of the same stubborn stone
as the ageless mesas around Coyote,
though pain carves arroyos in their souls.
As even the desert Rio Chama overflows
when the thirsty earth
cannot drink the rainstorm fast enough
and brings flowers in sand,
Carmelita and Maria will not admit it,
not to one another or to themselves,
but both long for the desert inside them
to blossom after the winter,
to be the sun,
each to the flower that is the other.

Dude,
you were born
with a phone in your hand,
thumbs twitching.
I was born with a pencil,
a scrap of paper,
an envelope,
a stamp

and patience

I hope you notice
you're reading this on-line.

Turning the pages of Sunday’s paper,
eyes spilling tears upon reading
of the ambush killing of a local cop,
and  elsewhere, cops as killers,
the horror of the murders
of twenty angels and their guardians
at a small-town school,
people just having a holiday party,
going to a movie,
people attending church, for god’s sake.
I make my way to the sports section,
that fantasy-land of touchdowns,
home runs and slam dunks,
only to find stories of drunken outfielders
and homicidal/suicidal linebackers
wielding pistols
followed by a half-page ad
for the Guns and Gear store,
urging me to get in on the deals—
an assault rifle, only $649.99,
semi-automatic pistols from $319 to $549,
all the ammo a person could need
to shoot up a school, a theater, a mall, a business,
a synagogue or mosque or church,
even an army base.
My sorrow vinegars to frustration and anger,
that my letters to so-called representatives
must be written on thousand dollar bills
to even get a reading,
answered by a staffer’s reply that says nothing,
and, in the end, dear god,
I’m left with prayer and poetry,
the children of necessity, drowning in futility.

Mending my leather mittens
for the third time this winter,
I sew them with waxed string
made to repair fishing nets,
hoping they’ll last
until the splitting maul rests
against the shrunken woodpile
and the *** and ***** come out of the shed.
I find myself praying.
Blessed be those who have laced together
the splits at the seams of this world,  
repair its threads of twisted waters.
Blessed be those who stitch together
the animals and the land,
repair the rends in the fabric
of wolf and forest,
of whale and ocean,
of condor and sky.
Blessed be those who are forever fixing
the tear between people and the rest of life.
May we all have enough thread,
may our needles be sharp,
may our fingers not throb or go numb.
May each of us find an apprentice,
someone who will take the needle from our hands,
continue all the mending that needs to be done.

My advice is
live in a sweat, man,
intense:
moonlit skin is lovely,
no matter the color.
I say
Be open-eyed,
open-handed,
open-minded.
Microscope your telescope,
tune up your stethoscope,
run in rain,
willow in wind.
Jive in the jungle,
Jim.

Only in a democracy
do the fire hydrants
and car tires
elect the dogs
that **** all over them.

Through an artist’s eye
A thousand word poem
Whittled down to a
A black and white image,
An apricot
So ******
It makes me cry,
Is permanently installed in the main gallery
Of the museum of my consciousness.

The white cells,
seemingly not fearful of  
oozing,
festering,
metastasizing,
fear black cells,
wearing hijabs or dreads.
The white cells
are fearful of the brown cells
that **** and process their chickens
and mow their lawns for them.
The white cells fear the red cells
though they like moccasins, canoes,
and wild rice soup,
fear yellow cells
may be smarter than them
so they label them
***** and Chinks.
The white cells  
don’t seem to mind
asphalt-coating,
starlight-stealing,
convenience store sprawl
devouring healthy green cells--
alfalfa cells,
forest cells,
swampy, boggy cells,
black-eyed susan cells.
The Chamber of Commerce
calls it growth,
progress;
but this town
needs a tourniquet,
maybe chemotherapy.

She’s perched a small pumpkin
on a candle stand atop the kitchen table--
an autumnal centerpiece.
Though it’s close to Halloween,
no jack-o-lantern face grins at you,
no flaming eyes flicker.
This little pumpkin does not move, of course;
there are no miniature horses to pull it
like a coach from the castle at midnight
and no fairy tale slipper has fallen from it.
This pumpkin is more a lesson,
a how-to on silent meditation,
a guide to learning to be what you are,
to live within your pumpkin-ness, as it were.

Mother Gaia hears each tiny drum
shudder out of rhythm, then stop.
She gathers fallen wings,
heavy as earth.
These wings are her burden,
the stones she must carry
in the pockets of her daydreams.

Mother collects fish eyes at low tide,
picks through night's deposit of death
on oil-stinking sand.
She fills a fruit jar with eyes,
blind, no matter where they look.
These are the eyes
that allow her to see in water dreams.

Mother is a beautiful bag lady
who collects bleached bones, teeth,
human tongues and turtle shells.
Squirrel tails and rabbit ears
bring a smile to her fingers.
Eagle feathers flutter into her grasp.
Gaia gathers the skins of poets and thieves.

No one knows of Mother Gaia's nights,
where she sleeps,
much less the quilt made of stones and straw
in which she wraps herself, heartsick,
grieving as only a planet can.
She offers herself to the sun each dawn,
a lover she knows will eventually **** her
in his embrace.

*A quote from Frances Phillips in her review of Linda Hogan's "Climbing a Rope Ladder".

A poem, a pun and a joke sat down to devour the human race.
Immediately, they began to eat, not pausing to say Grace.

The poem ate quite delicately, not wanting to make a mess.
“These humans can be quite delicious, I really must confess.
Their emotions are very spicy,“ she said, eating the heart with zest.
“A taste of brotherhood and love delight the palate best.”
She ate so very slowly, reflecting on every bite,
She drank the blood of beauty.  It made her head feel light.

The pun, upon the other hand, sliced into the brain.
Deftly and swiftly he cut, not causing any pain.
He entered the cerebellum as swift as a laser beam,
And then was gone so quickly that to the brain, ‘twas but a dream.
Discovering its invasion, gray matter laughed, white matter cried,
“My God, I’ve been defiled and logic has been defied.”

The joke, always an outsider, did not want to know the victim’s name.
It ate only stereotypical beings; it treated everyone the same.
The way in which the joke ate, was very crude, indeed.
Manners and good taste are not inherent in its breed.
The joke was not particular, it would chew on any part,
But it could not reach the brain; it could not touch the heart.

The poem, the pun and the joke blew smoke after eating the human race.
They burped and belched and buried the bones beneath the earthen face.

The would-be King is angry,
adamant that his silk suit trumps
all the other suits and pantsuits
vying for the throne.
His head is in his ace hole.
He thinks all the Queens are airheads,
gropes them as if they are ******
to be replaced when one gets old
and a prettier one comes along.
He shuffles his Jacks,
mere minions, all interchangeable,
discards them, sluffs them off.
His would-be subjects
are treated like deuces and tres;
the cards that do the hard work
of making a winning hand,
mostly with spades,
are clubbed into submission.
Though he values diamonds,
his deck contains no hearts,
they bleed too liberally for his ilk.
With his hair pulled over his eyes
like a dealer’s shade,
he deals from a stacked deck,
under the table, cards hidden up his sleeve.
He can’t see himself for what he is,
the fifty-third card in the deck,
the joker.

e     T    h
                                                    c     ­                 i
                                              ­   a                            s  
                                ­                 r                            M
                                                  G             ­             i
                                                  ­    e                   g
                                                          B    ­t     h



                                                            ­                      

My heart quickens
           as a ragged skein
                 of Canada geese flies
                                         silhouetted
                                                benea­th a full moon hanging
                                                         ­      in a blue Minnesota winter sky.
                                                            ­   When a bald eagle
                                                         flies into the scene
                                  to further confound my senses,
                              I think this may be more
           than serendipitous coincidence.


                  t
                    h
        ­               i
                        s
                     might be
                         g
                        r
                       a
                     c
                    e

Dang it!  I just can't get the top of this to line up.  Any suggeestions?

I say your poems aloud
six times,
speak your words
to the north,
to the south,
to the east and west,
raise my face,
say your poems to the sky,
lower my head,
say your poems to the earth,
sending your unique vibrations,
the ululation of your words,
not to a grave, but to the ether,
where there may be ears
unlike ears we know
that hear your words,
write them down again,
say a muse spoke to them
or know not from where a poem comes.

Mother Earth’s children run wild,
uprooting her garden,
filling her house with smoke,
pouring poison down her well
and torturing her pets.
Though she’s mad as a sandstorm,
Mother’s more sad than angry.
She punishes the children with famine and flood,
but in the end, she sighs like a spent storm.

Time is a prolific father,
but not as kind as I am, Mother scolds.
If you children would stop your mischief now,
I could heal the damage
before the Old Man comes downs the road.
He’ll be fuming like a volcano,
raging like a blizzard
and swinging his scythe, deaf to your cries,
the sand in his hourglass about to be turned.

If you fold up your paper,
turn off your radio and TV,
sit on the steps and sip your tea,
watch the birds and speak no words
as the sun rises yellow and round,
making rainbows on the dewy lawn,
you could fool yourself into thinking
there’s no ****** war going on.