Oh, come on you black-eyed
***** Night. Spite me
with sleep. Strike me, like
a cottonmouth. Sing me
your dark song, like a footfall 
in my hallway, like a night watch-
man dropping his lantern,
a last turn of the fan, a whisper
of a mystery, a kiss with wisteria
and moonshine on your breath.

I miss the holy ghost of her smile.
The silhouette of her head in the night
on my pillow. Her beauty alight.
  
She was rain on my fever. Rain
through my window. An innuendo
of heavenly morning light. Heart heavy
as the moon on its way to Montana
  wearing my blue bandana.

The last time we kissed
I broke out in hives
from the honey on her breath
and the sting of her lies.
I swear, I'd die a thousand deaths
if she were the queen of my hive.

I feel like a foreigner
standing on a pier
waiting for word from a lover
across the blue water of tears.

I like her black dress,
the way it pools at her feet.
How she walks to the bed,
spilling over my sheets.
I drown in the depth
of her eyes.

Dead leaves, a dying tree;
silent in a tattered hat,
pausing in his quiet task,
reading poems of T.E. Hulme.

A professor explained to me once
how there is a limited number
of possible designs for making
an arrow point function as intended.

You can't stick a round rock on a stick
and expect it to penetrate like a dart.

It has to be sharp and hard, yet light
to fly like a feather straight and true
to the heart. I said, you mean like love?

She said, yeah, like love, kinda like love.

I gave my hand twice
on the battlefield of love

Now let me ask you

how's a veteran pick up
the pieces with both
sleeves pinned-up

and why the hell does
a blind man need a crutch?

I was ten when
I got caught stealing
blue chalk from the pool hall.

My daddy wore me out
with a black leather belt.

He said *What'd I tell you
about writing sad poems
on the back of the stones
at the orphan's graveyard?

He stuck two sticks in the mud
Forked like a moccasins's tongue
To hold both poles while we smoked
Camels we stole from the coal
Truck man and drank homemade
Wine swapped for a knife and a dollar
To the drunk up the holler and a can
Of sweet corn ten years old still dusty
And rusted but the trout hit it hard
Anyway like slow flies on a slow
Golden Saturday a long time ago.

Hello Poets.
I received a copy yesterday of my good friend Timothy's new book "Reflections in Short Poetry". An excellent book with some of Timothy's finest poems.  Many of you are already familiar with his work. The book is very affordable and now available at lulu.com (by Timothy Salter). I highly recommend it. Congrats to Timothy for getting off of his **** and doing what many of us would like to do. Check his work out here at HP, too, if you aren't already familiar with his writing.

r

Her kisses were moonshine
and bullets, three shots
to the heart, like a rose
on the canvas of morning,
like art, an eyelash on a poem
that always makes me pause,
three xs at the bottom of a page.

Oh, sad Poet,
cartographer
of the heart,
mapping the geography
where sadness
is the topography
of your soul.

Oh, Cousteau
of the changing tides,
like an oceanographer,
an admiral  spying
the enemy on the horizon.
Your sorrow comes and goes.

Oh, builder of sad dreams
in your house of many rooms,
but one door. Like a grave,
a casket shellacked with
black paint, a mural
of a shadow on the wall.
Architectural sorrow.

Oh, you sad Poet,
open your eyes,
paint us a poem of a rose.

You may as well dance
to the tune of a blue moon.

Or sing a lullaby to the sun,
eat a bellyfull of stars,
try to keep away from bars. :)

How do we write about love?

It's too hard to capture in words,
and in verse it's even worse.

But the hardest thing of all
isn't when we fall,
it's when we let it go.

How do you say that, you know?

When the seed
of envy grows
into a big tree,
the fruit is bitter,
and the tea
from the bark
stains your soul
and your poetry.

If you think of me in the spring,
think of dogwood petals
in my hair, greener grass
and new beginnings.

If the summer solstice
finds you walking alone
in the garden of the moon,
remember that I'm somewhere
walking alone, too.

If you sing of me,
sing in the fall
in blue flannel and jeans
like the saddest song of all.

And if I pretend to die,
and you pretend to weep,
I promise to do it in the winter
when there are no flowers
to send in your pretended grief.

I spit the moon, a fingernail,
in the black eye of night.

Stardust was born
from the dirt of a lifetime.

I had the universe at my fingertips,
and blew it away like a kiss.

The world is a better place for my loss.

If I look long enough I'll see
mammoth bones with butcher marks,
a broken flint blade between the ribs
- an empty crib, Madonna's face, a swan
on a snake with two heads - instead
of lightly stained pine grains
on the back of a dusty shelf half-
full of myself, old books and odd things
with lost words waiting in the wings.

Listen, it's a beautiful thing
when distilled to its essence;
reduced to its purest form.
A paradox and a paradigm;
a paragon of perfection.
Epic in its arythmetic
progression; poetic.
Like Chinese arithmetic,
so hard it hurts. Yet soft
and exquisite, like a bubble
of love caught in a beating heart.
That place where poetry starts.

Before my brother died
I trusted man and medicine,
science and doctors,
maybe even God.
But now that he's gone,
I can't even trust myself
to write words that mean
a thing at the end of the day.

I thirst in my search
for words
that came first

in verse and in song
what's been here all along

since Peking (wo)Man
singing in the womb
at Zhoukoudian

when the first moon climbed
above branches frozen in time -

our rhythm and rhyme -
a memory of a memory
of the history

of how a poem came to be.

I like old glass
with bubbles

Pockets of breath
of the dead laid to rest

I break and I breathe and I taste

Their spices
and vices

Kisses from wives
Curses and verses

Songs of themselves
Wine of their wrath

Salt from their baths

Smoke from their fires
Sweet tastes of desire

Shared sighs and cries
Dead butterflies

Air.

I took a walk before dark
after the rain broke and had
to pass through the park
choked with winter briar
empty vials needles dog ****
piles and broken pieces of slide
rusting out beside a swing set
frame with rusty chains holding
up empty space while the whole
******* place looks like it could
use a tetanus booster if we hope
to have any kind of future clubs.

I like the sound of the rain
washing away the silent day

And the lonely call
of a home-bound train

A mournful morning
kind of pain

....Give me the sound
of a blue bluejay

over the busy noise
that mocks my ways

I want to pack my bag
and fetch my dog

Whistle a tune
while we walk along...

Come on girl
It's starting to rain

I hear the sound
of the lonesome train

and the blue bluejay
calling my name

(Here's where yer sposed to whistle)

It only takes one bullet to **** a king
But you can't **** a dream

The talk is talked
And the walk is walked today

It's a shame the bridge is named
for a hood who wore a hood

The good General turned grand
in the land and time of dragons

that feasted on Sundays
and still would
if we let them

Or maybe not

Maybe it's a fitting reminder
A bridge to a kinder
gentler place

Because we're better than that now
Aren't we

new light comes early -
low and uncertain
- cold and unsurely

slowly

winter is waning -
fading her darkness
away

- begins a new day.

you have to be careful
what you put in your pomes
and how you word your critiques

some poets are unique
and their retorts
are silenced

like their critics.

play me an air
   a bluebird lament
something meant for the breathing
  to remember

  all i want to hear
is a soft melody
  sad as the winter
still on the wind

     let your bow waltz
on the strings of my heart
     let the sound
  of your fiddle
set sail

play me an air
   like the bluebird did
     while i dance
  with the snow
in my hair.

There's something about
that new weatherlady

in her form-fitting dress
not too short or so long

she's got that Kardashian
thang going on

******* like cumuli

waiting on a strong
Southern breeze
to stir up a warm front.

:)

there's a picture on a shelf
of a former self

stuck between two stacks of books
looking for all the world
like myself

with no one else beside me
somewhere on a highway
going my way

hair and sand in the wind
sun in my eyes

looking free.

everyone's talking
about freedom of speech

as if it should come at no cost
like something you teach

it's never been that way
and it never will be

we need to be reminded
of what it means to be free.

a pentagon study
determined that putin
is an anti-social control freak
kind of vermin

(really? this required a genius
kind of keenness? really?)

darpa should stick to cool things
like the internet and invisibility cloaks
and drones armed with pork parts


a rodina rodent in the grain
needs spankin'
with more than just sanctions

cuz knocking out their incisors
doesn't make them any nicer

- a rat with no teeth
is still a rat.

home in the mirror
appearing nearer

but i'm not driving
or even trying
to turn around

i'm burning down

bridges behind me
all I can see

over my shoulder
looking for closure

the colder and closer
i get to the sea.

We still call the homeplace mom's
Calendar in the kitchen unchanged

Two years past
The old clock ticking

Branches tapping against a window
Iron Mountain through frozen rain

Like a silverback
White along the spine
Cold and silent

Strong against another winter.

r ~ 2/2/15

She likes an archaeologist
cos he does it in the dirt

and the older she gets
the more he likes to flirt

She likes the way he smells
in a faded work shirt

hard and lean
but not mean
just a little bit assertive

He still let's her roll
her own cigarettes

and handles her gently
like a gold statuette

while they dance
with the shadows
down low

you know.

I don't know the word
for this restless almost breathless
feeling  in my chest -

the opposite of a bluebird
- a ******* crow, at best

a last call cawing
or is it a raven's kraa-kraa

this feeling -
like a shadow in clothes
- a fly in the eye of those

who pray for repose
of my soul.

It's unseasonably warm
for a January morning.

I was dreaming of a girl
and blue western skies

...a faded bedsheet
sideways in the breeze
on an old clothes line.

I was dreaming
she was mine.

light travels in straight lines

but truth often gets inverted

when worded through the pin-

holed window of closed minds

and blinds us with distracting

theories refracting on white walls

in a world of royals and riyals

and unnamed dark chambers.

An Oklahoma politician
wants to outlaw hoodies
in the hood

It's true, it must be
I read it in Fox News  :)

I'd sooner be in Missouri or Cleveland
or New York City where you don't have to
wear a hoody or raise your hands to get shot


There are other things more pressing
than hoodies in the hood
that don't need ironing

like hoods in suits
and the elephant in the room
that needs shooting.

low, fast moving clouds
make me feel
like i'm standing
still on a mountain

wisps of cotton candy
and wind in my hair

there is a change in the air
a slower, colder
turning motion
all around me

my head in the sky
my feet in the sea.

This is it
The only one

Everything between the rising moon
and the setting sun
is all you've got

It'd be a shame not
to make the best of it

It's a new year
What's done is done
Today is here

Move on.

ants lean left more than right
it's true, it must be

i read it in Fox News

especially the red ones
that wear berets
like Che

the impertinent invertebrate
arsonist fire ants

who tend to get stepped on
by the man
who exterminates

according to anthropologists.

:)

Throw me a line

I don't care if it rhymes

As long as it tickles
my posterior cingulated cortex

Spin me a vortex of spells

Yarn me a tale

Take me to heaven
or your own personal hell


Mesmerise me
with your poemetry.

i saw the movie, once
- a sad one

this time i am hoping
things will be different -

good, friends
should be allowed
to be friends -

Viva Cuba.

r ~ 12/18/14

My glances surreptitious
and from a distance

with a certain amount of concern
and now i've learned
that i am not the strongest person

i know and my life is so,
so small in comparison.


r ~ 12/17/14

She wants me to come to Kansas
Said she'd introduce me to the band

I asked her if she'd thought anymore
about letting me be her man

She sings a mean Bonnie Raitt
and she wails it from the heart
Gonna tell the truth about it
Honey, that's the hardest part

There's a white train a'comin
north from Wichita

I want to make it to Lecompton
before the snow begins to fall

I know just what she needs
when she's low and when it's dark

She needs that white train
running north from Wichita

I need to lay beside her
and listen to her heart
Gonna tell the truth about it
Honey, that's the hardest part.


r ~ 12/15/14

I like how my lips
fit that hollow
by your collar bone

I could sing an anthem there
or whisper sweet
sweet nothings.

i met her at the crow bar -
a mescalero from amarillo
- her name was lily
and she was in from the field

wearing tiger stripe camos
cut short like i like 'em
and she liked to hike them
- all commando

she had a tattered boony hat -
a kevlar vest and a tat
that said - the wild, wild west -

her shoulder holsters
were packed with two .40s

- lordy, lordy -

she said they bolstered her
fire power


we were commando stylin'
...on the blue mesa.

12/5/14  
:)

it isn't all black and white
the choke-hold of history

shades of red and brown
paint the scenery, too

the documented imagery
forgotten in the fray

a little big horn playing mournful
songs as the cavalry marches on
to the tune of galleons and guns


no passport required
when the port was young

émigré and immigrant
displacing native sons

who also once were pilgrims
breathing in the sun.

when my son was younger
he asked -

how old are the mountains
from where did the First People come
why does the sun sleep in the ocean
what is the color of rain

now that my son is older
stronger, wiser and bolder
he asks -

how old are the mountains...
...what is the color of rain


some things don't change.