And when I saw her
Eyes shining, looking at me
No one else would do

1
I married when I was young, yeah,
a woman just as hale and hearty as me
and course I still had
to hang out with friends
and weekends I’d be off with ‘em
drinking and spending all the week’s pay
from Friday evenin’ till Sunday night

But my wifey ne’er understood that
and one Sunday night she’a said to me
“Why do you do this, mon? How’d you feel
if you don’t get to see me for so many days?”

“Fine by me, sweetie,” I said
as fast and as witty, even in drink


2
and that night I didn’t see her
and come Monday I didn’t see her
and come Tuesday I didn’t see her
and so on Wednesday and came Thursday,
the swelling went down a little
and I saw my wifey again
hale and hearty
out of the corner of my right eye

John’s going to be
a first-time father
and he calls the hospital
late in the night
and he screams into the phone:
“My wife’s going to deliver! Help!
She’s screaming! And she says something
about contractions! Help!”

And the duty nurse at the other end
with her cool voice intones:
“Tell me - is this her first child?”

And the anxious first-time father screams:
*“No! No! This is her husband!”

children play atop me,
six feet above empty potential.
my body,
a delicacy for no man to enjoy
must the maggots feast on me now.
winter will wipe away all color
pale and frigid as I.
spring will invoke new life
for everything but I.
for I am winter's daughter
and the sun doesn't shine for me.

If religion did not exist then man would invent it.

Religion did not exist so what happened, man invented it.

Sometimes I sit here
all day
reading the poems
having a say
day passes by
nothing got done
leave it behind
outside I'll run
fluff bunnies beckon
don't heed their call
rather be out
watching leaves fall

Something you give
to someone else
while saying
you'll keep it

Google someone
on the Good Internet
it could make you smile.

Like your shy neighbor
the one who doesn’t talk much
not a lot of eye contact
at the mailbox
the one who practices his violin
at the oddest hours.
Google him and you discover

he has a glass eye
result of his heroism
in the Na Trang Valley Massacre in Nam

he has an M.A. degree in divinity

his wife and children died in a housefire
when he was away on a business trip
some years ago

and all you can do
in your shameful paranoid way
is google him
to find the dirt

but there isn’t any
and you wish
there was something
sweet about you
on the Good internet.

a large tree I've hacked limbs from
is staring back at me
through a window
from those wounds
they look like
eyes
and weeping wounded mouth