Ragged clothes on the sidewalk, toddlers murmur and cry
cold morning air where abandoned row houses
smell of whiskey, sage, and molded cotton

diesel exhaust belches into light breezes
forests of burning coffee beans mingle
into their hearth, the children, this is their nostalgia

everywhere leavings of life scatter driven by wind
cover unhoused, distressed, makeshift families
they stand shoeless as fortunate people drive past

Glut of humanity smells of wet newspaper
grey gulls picking at grimy cellophane
cardboard litters muddy sidewalks
above the billboard the wealthy jeer at them

sitting by a liquor store with bars on the windows
shut out of row houses with black wrought iron gates
basement stairwells filled with trash

men in alligator boots ready to lunge
into the lives of slick, bright, vacant women
this is the fate of feminine mother love

Thriving in dead landscapes
growing lost opportunity
under skyscrapers where it is always
almost dusk

The bronze-scorched mud knobbed unhinged sculpture grows
Cinderella down to root knots, ground is grubbed

chapped hats of acorns hit porticoes before snows
honeybees cake their hives closed and wax hubbed

humiliation hardens as color dapples
swelling seed-commas split beneath the frost

piety’s ignored until next year’s apples
night sky is grape-leafed, blackberry sauced

ineffable brutes grow cold to the pinnacle
rhetorical dross groundswells legislations

the long-legged wind tramples our spectacle
rains mock each leaf into pickled munitions

rocks are nothing but hermitages sent by the moon
prescient hardness sets its chin to the ground

hankering for battle, totalitarianism thrives by noon
each soldered twig unloomed, unraveled, uncrowned

we have severed ties to reason’s substantial contents
in the muddle it’s not the empowerment you had

democracy dies bewildered blind with miscontents
unhinged, unconcerned to find the hanging chad

we’re scissored down to our primary chaos all
paralogisms who dwell in a dream that justifies our fall.

Reading John's book
Seal Rock
sitting on a pile of burned driftwood
on the beach
where people are scattering
like jacks
beneath a beach ball
slapped into the air it falls
amongst the group
a few dive for it
someone throws it again

While sanderlings
dance along
the fray of the waves
the sun disappears
in dark clouds

I open Seal Rock put it over my head
as raindrops fall
poetry satisfying so many needs
my wreath, my hat
my shelter
in bustling adversity
I hop over puddles
in sprung rhythm
while gulls
haggle over shells
the words and memories
trickling into my scalp
right off the pages
as we are all climbing
towards the parking lot
stones sliding beneath our feet
a beach ball lodged under a boy’s arm
I keep this slick shingle on top
word pendant
a dream shroud whispering
shedding the storm.

I'm not a pair,
I'm odd.
The ark has sailed
Without me on board.

such charming colour every bloom*
richly decorating the room
a Grecian vase held an array
spring's loveliest hues did display

the eye captured by flowers
profuse each ones gorgeous powers
of orange and white highlighting shay
with olive green leaf midst the lay

portraying an artistic glory
petals of impressionist's story
the painter scented beauty at play
applying the tones of May

such charming colour every bloom
*on applying the tones of May