There is an avalanche of syllables
uploaded day & night. It’s a wonder
one can find a verse to connect with
in the mountain words. I’m grateful
for those I have found. It’s like those
two hands reaching out to each
other, painted on the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel by some dude a
long time ago.

And I’m trying to read the longer
poems, those that might take
3 - 5 minutes to read—oh, the
commitment—the same amount
of time it takes to brew a
cup of tea. In both cases, it’s
time well spent. If you read this
past the first few lines, thanks.

Adam, having just popped
out of the ground like a

time-elapsed plant, is
enchanted, almost

mesmerized by the snake.
Eve descends to earth

via parachute from god
knows what height, and

points out that the snake
is clever, creative and,

by-the-way, poisonous.
The snake shapes itself

into, the not yet invented,
letters of the alphabet.

“It is speaking to me. It is
creating a visual

language,” proclaims Adam.
“First you must charm it,

and then use it carefully,”
implores Eve.

But it is already too late.
The snake bites Adam and

he dies. Eve, ever prescient,
looks up to the sky and says,

“I know. This is what we
have to look forward to.”

A dead chicken
on the sidewalk,
embers—little bits
of  burning paper

drifting in the
air, a man asleep
in a king-size
bed in an empty

warehouse, a “she
done me wrong”
song with a slow
cha-cha rhythm

playing somewhere
distant, and no one
there to talk to, and
no where to go, and
no way to get there.

The centipede inches
along on the ceiling
as she watches
contemplating its future,

and he sits on the chair
and opens the half-
finished historical novel
which is illuminated by

the artificial overhead
light, while their young
child parts the curtains
and kneels at the window

to gaze upon the night
sky and the brilliant full
moon which appears
to have a human face.

Now, in the other world,
we are building a bridge,
from one thing to another,

and of course it’s a
metaphor for our
condition, since

this word is broken,
a hell, of our own
making, like most hells,

so, in the other world,
we build our
envisioned bridge

which is as real as
a broken clock, as
tangible as a body

floating face down in a
lake, but now, in this
world that we destroyed

there are no longer any
bridges, so in the other
world we build our way

to a destination
yet to be known,
yet to be reconciled.

How to describe
awareness: deploy

an adjective and  
a noun that say

nothing, then depict
a keen eyed hunting

dog, then an immense
space, then draw a cat,

slowly on the
prowl, and label it

a verb, then a
sentence about the

vast beauty of the sea
that is left incomplete

because it is so

The rain ends.
All is lush,
and glistening,
and verdant
and a
beautiful
young girl
yawns from
boredom.

White paper folded in
the shape of a house,
next to an egg
in the sunlight,
casting a long shadow,
on a pastel green
plastic table top.

She wades in the
river teeming with
life, holding her
sandals above her
head, her bronze
face illuminated
by the brilliant
late afternoon sun.

Awareness descended
on me as it ruthlessly

cut off my head
and split me open

exposing everything,

then left me dead in
its open field, where

I’m now fertilizer
for everything green or

golden or blooming, and
ready for whatever

new thing nature will
make of what was me.

The very tall man, the owner of
a cosmetics company, is reading
a detective novel about a con-artist.

The little girl in the corner of the room
is calculating how long until the end.
The end of what? the very tall man

wonders. In the room above his head,
his wife, a chemist at his company,
is having an affair with the town’s

only physician. Outside in the tall
weeds, lit only by the dim glow of a
waning crescent moon, a fortune-teller,

formerly a lawyer in the public defender’s
office, is giving a reading to the
very tall man’s chronically ill twin sister.

Using ordinary playing cards as her
vehicle, the oracle looks like she’s
playing solitaire. She stares blankly at

the ill woman for several long seconds,
then states flatly and decisively,
No hearts, my dear, simply no hearts at all.

The morning snow falling
silently. The children

are absorbed in their play.
The house is murmuring

and sighing. The dad with
the noisy mind lives in

his own world.

I’m a fashion model turned actress and in my new

movie I play a cave-woman, a Neanderthal, whose clan

is massacred by a bunch of ****-sapiens. It’s a tragic love

story—my character was in love with a handsome ****-

sapien who ends up being one of the killers. It’s a

group dynamic thing. In real life, my boyfriend is a

stock-broker. I swear that guy can predict the future—

in terms of business. He makes a killing in the

market all the time. And he looks like a male model—

I’m not kidding! Anyway I hope you’ll go and see

my movie. The working title is Neanderthal, A Love Story

but we’ll see what happens with that down the road.

Alone this winter,
an elderly man,  
with an eyebrow
raised at half-mast.

Living on
the roof of
hell we tend
the flowers
that perfume
our sacred
interim home.

Nearly drowned, the
fisherman runs from
the raging sea as it
swallows his boat, then
looks back to marvel at  
its stunning power.

Five things
that I know
about her:

the uncharted
bottom of
the ocean,

an algebraic
equation
in the guise
of a woman,

a woman in
the guise of a
summer rain storm,

a poem
written with
disappearing ink,

she flows around
immovable
objects and
back to the sea.

I am standing with
five rolled-up pages
of poetry in my

hand, ready to lunge
forward and smash it
into oblivion, when

she says, Don’t ****
that fly. Can’t you
see it’s praying?

In the explosion the nouns
are blown to pieces—short
words, syllables, and letters
scattered along Main Street.
Action-verbs and state-of-being

verbs are maimed or dead
in large numbers. Forensic
investigators attempting
to reconstruct the original
scene are, so far, unsuccessful.

The great author declares
herself to be a bright white
blank page. The enigmatic
costume designer, La
Gioconda, dresses the entire

cast in bright white attire.
The terrorists: the adjectives
and exclamation points escape
to another realm. Luminous
question-mark-shaped celestial

talent agents hover above the
scene and announce that the
new narrative will be wordless
and staged in the park, among
the saplings and baby strollers.

This new and experimental
production, entitled How It
Starts will begin its run sometime
in the early spring, according
to the publicist Mr O.B. Pieriod.

The green
grass is
wet from

rain. Her
elegant
footsteps

have left
their delicate
impressions.

I am the dead man,
lying face down on

the living room floor,
blood running from

my ear, a used
ticket to the

opera in my pocket,
a recently retired

insurance adjuster,
never married, and

on the blaring
television

the blundering, but
lovable sit-com

character, does a
slapstick prat-fall, and

on the floor the dead
man’s broken drinking  

glass that was
half full or half

empty, which amounts
to the same thing.

The finch
sings its

song as
if it just

discovered
itself in

the wonder
of nature.

The old woman’s
gardener plants the
sapling in her
front yard. Then a
night of fierce winds
and rain. The new
tree remains intact.
You could write
a poem about that.

He is on the porch,
to escape his wife

and kids. He smokes
a guilty cigarette.

It is yet another
New Year’s Eve.

Having toiled in the
garden, the young
woman sits in the
shade of an ancient
tree and sings a song
—as if serenading the
tulips and tomatoes.

Children imitating
flowers in the
school play. A
father in the
front row falls
asleep,
missing their
great allegory.

The ailing king hobbles
from his throne to his bed
and dies, but his ghost
continues to rule, and he
accomplishes nothing,
just as it was in the flesh.

The dog is chasing
the cat around the
barnyard, while the
widowed farmer
is planting the corn,
while his daughter is
reading a fashion  
magazine, dreaming
of the runway, while
her little sister
selects a green crayon
to use in her Let’s
All Save The Planet
coloring book, while
the dog continues
to chase the cat
around the barnyard.

The summer sky is  
a vivid azure blue.
The red hibiscus
is blooming on the
white porch. Below
lies the old photo of  
a man in a gray suit.

The yellow kite,  
tethered to the
handrail is waving
in the breeze,
as the photo
suddenly
flies away.

My father was
a salesman, all
of his adult

life. But I don’t
know much about
him, really.

Old and ill, he
fell into a coma
for many days.

Then, suddenly
his mouth opened,
round and wide,

like this world.
And without a
word, he died.

Just the outline
of the thing, the

stench of something
rotting somewhere,

the inexplicable
puddle of water in

the front hall closet,
but for some

a chance, like
the universe,

to emerge
from nothing.

Our plight.
Instinct
lost, life
drifting, like a
paper airplane
swept away
on a breeze.

It chirps and
and squeaks,
and whistles
and buzzes.

For twenty-two
million years
the hummingbird
has been

singing that
same song, that
simply says,
I am here.

The dog howls
as a dark cloud
slowly passes
overhead, then
lays down, curled-
up, tail wagging
waiting for all to
be still and bright.

The boy in a new
shirt, when asked
his age lurches
forward, all five
fingers splayed
in front of him.

On the large, flat screen,
the news anchor, with her
perfectly formed, ripe
red lips, describes another
unsavory political scandal,
as the leaf blower loudly
propels autumn’s colorful

debris from the driveway,
while the iron heats up,
poised to press the
wrinkles out of the
white shirt, with its
faint brown stain  
of forgotten origin.

A newborn
in the shape of
an old man,
an old man
in the shape of
an electro-
magnetic coil,
an electro-
magnetic coil
in the shape of
an empty kayak,
an empty kayak,
in the shape of
a newborn.

Tableau (taˈblō) - a group of
models or motionless figures
representing a scene from
a story or from history.


The poet laureate is—
inexplicably—on his
knees, holding a

jack-o-lantern above
his head and the self-
proclaimed Great Leader

has just stepped behind
the pumpkin, with its
crooked smile, which

obscures his head and
the eclipsed moon—
a blood moon—hangs

over the Fool in his
green and red checked
costume, holding his

recently authored book,
Chaos Theory, The Order
Within Disorder, while he

opens the gate of the
lion’s cage, and behind
them, in the far distance

is the black smoke and
swirling fires of war, and
opposite the war are the

masses of somnambulist
citizens, crashing into
one another like carnival

bumper-cars, and in the
mid-distance is a blur
of a figure—probably the

Mad Scientist—next to his
new invention, the eight-
armed Robotic Chain-saw,

The Federal Model and
nearest to us, hovering in
the gathering darkness are

translucent Celestial Beings
holding a banner that reads
Beginnings Are Endings,

and below them, a journalist
prostrate in the mud, deathly
ill, vomiting a bile black as ink.

He is a
yardstick,
a measure
of something.

He is a
body, something
worn like a
suit of clothes.

He is a
string of words,
a sentence
to be parsed.

He is an
individual,
a myth
that is told.

He is a vast
space,
a screen life
is projected on.

Who is it that sits
on the cushion
on the floor, here
in the twilight,
during the final
hours of spring?

The drunken clown
breaks his leg as he’s
singing and dancing,

and the bird in the
room sputters, boxed
in, disoriented, as the

brother outside has
his trained ear to the
ground, listening for

their disturbed mother’s
angry mob, coming to
reclaim her lost home.

How to navigate
civilization

in four steps:
Find a chair and

sit quietly.
Then, dismantle

the chair and use
the pieces to

build a ladder, for
a panoramic view.

Return to solid
ground, and

remake the chair.
Sit quietly.

Nine words
scrambled
in the wind.


are

habitable

They

democracy

a

planet.

and

of

ending

Under the harvest
moon, the farmer
mourns his dead
wife. In his black
suit, sitting on
the white rock,
he looks like
a question mark.

It’s late October.
She is renovating
the newly
bought, old house.

The kids are
making costumes:
he’s a ghost,
she’s Cinderella.

The apple tree,
recently dressed
in red and green, is
now nearly naked.

The pilot is flying the
small white airplane in
circles, for the fun of it,
in the cloudy blue sky,

and below the black dog,
in the red car, is looking
out the window, barking
at nothing in particular,

and across the street
the banker in a gray suit
scurries, preoccupied by
a problem at the office,  

and in the apartment
above, there is only an
awareness, sitting on an
empty chair, breathing.

Fish in
a tub
swimming
in circles.

He can’t help
himself. He

knows his
thoughts are

distorted, but
like a criminal,

he’s compelled
to return to

the scene
of the crime.

The past is a room
with a peculiar door.
I am inside, then
open the door and
exit only to be
back inside again.

A countryside
dirt-road, a black
crow in the blue
sky, a scarecrow
dressed as Jesus,
and trash swirling
in the late
November wind.