The back door.  Green eyes and smelly fur!  The werewolf comes for our kid.   Its time!  White Knight teddy armed with a wooden sword and Judy the red Raccoon and her magical red powers!  Its time to vanquish this nightmare before it even starts!  The werewolf tears down the back door and howls in the darkness.  All we can see is the bright green eyes shining in the blackness.  And there awaits White Knight Teddy and Judy the Red Raccoon!  W.K.T lands a flurry of blows with his awesome unbreakable wooden sword as the werewolf cries in pain!  Judy the Red then emits waves of magical red beams that knock the werewolf out the back door as it screams in fear and scampers back into the woods!

And so W.K.T And Judy the red Raccoon triumph over the would be nightmare that was trying to haunt their kid.  NOT TONIGHT!!!

Some of her hairs grew longer than the others
In the outline of her silhouette in the afternoon sun
they shined in rebellion
sparse and lovely and greyed with age
I'd never seen a lady move so elegantly
Defying the subtleties that marked her age
She could run and play
And speak and charm
At rest she looked her youngest
She smiled in content as her chest raised and fell
She mimicked a breeze in late spring
In the dawn of the afternoon sun

Dad's bark is worse than his verse.
When he hits it doesn't really hurt.

The dirt outside the house is soil.
The mouse inside the house is life.

Can't escape the printer or the car, IV
bag, heart monitor, a billion trillion stars.

Snow descends, each flake unique.
My sons' friends, each infinitely

a Greek or Trojan hero. Our morals:
hit not the girls, nor ****. Love more

than you are loved, by a little. Give
but stop before it hurts. Stand together

or fall apart. Which candidate you vote
for less important than to vote. Don't

depend or dote on leaders, housekeeper
and president are gods equally

remote. The human body is a thing of
bone, a strange upright animal, and the

telephone a mystery to other animals.
Everyone and everything is spinning

electrons and the space between.
A great crunch, inverse of big bang,

yr big sister told.

Rereading the poems of others
and my own. Community across
time and graves. What's left
exceeds in significance
one's last moment. Yet
his last moment must have been
exceedingly important
for the poet.

Nothing he did that day will seem meaningful.
While we prosecute the war
a pileated woodpecker and red squirrel
compete for sunflower seeds.
A winter slow
to assert itself.
I can still see my mother's father and his bowl
of filberts, almonds, walnuts
quiet weekday mornings.

Both grandfathers read sports
pages religiously. I don't know
if my grandmother who gave me the
anthology of, to date, dated
unreadable poems read poetry.
I remember my mother's mother spoke
rarely as an animal.

Writing but not knowing where I'm going
unlike Joan Didion justly
cannibalizing candidates
who didn't read the Constitution, Bill of Rights or
Federalist Papers. It's late,
I have not vacuumed or shopped for food.
Instead I reread
Phil Levine's Salami.

For the accountant, the librarian, on this cold day
there is no revelation. He will go his own way
to the roar of the tinnitus in his ears.
About our war what is there to say. Yesterday
a flock of bluebirds was the only color in the woods.
Have they arrived too early for their good?
Of Judith and Inanna I have Korf's fears.

Inanna is generous, Judith is dangerous.
On each the wise elders depend for sustenance,
protection. Agriculture is ******
and wars end when men remember *******.
To savor the young woman's thighs and the old one's food,
to water her womb and cut her wood.
Is this not what's real, the actual, the animal?

The women I have known were bluebirds and crows, such
nuthatches, cardinals, robins, an occasional thrush.
They did not consider their bodies holy,
they found my seduction easy. What good luck
on the bed, in the light of the land, in our youth.
Our enemy eventually becomes our brother,
his misery lifted by coming to her city.

I've mentioned the new puppy before
so it won't come as a surprise
that I'm reading a book about how dogs think.
I want to know how the flea collar feels
around his thickening neck, next to the skull
and crossbones collar, and why he tucks
his tail under when he sleeps,
and if when he is, for a few hours, in the crate,
which seems cozy enough, he devises
a plan to pay me back for this captivity.
I want to understand his relentless
drive to be where I am, to trod down the hall
and back again with his heavy paws
("That is going to be a big dog," everyone says)
even into the bathroom, which I typically
prefer to be private.

He won't go out in the rain unless
I'm standing out there too, both of us soaked
to the bone. He won't sleep without one eye
on me if I move from the space beside him.
Why would this animal
devote himself to me so utterly, I who
really can't be trusted not to throw shoes
or swat a nose when his love bites bite
too hard.  I who throw a fit about the ***
just inside the door, I who deny him access
to the cat.  I who write poems
about his private life and study him like a ******,
while he goes on sleeping.

And without even realize it
I've been thinking about you all week
I want to hold you
Hug you
Tell you I've missed you
Kissed you in the most sweetest way
Make love to you..  
And this time we're gonna go slow,
we'll take our time
Enjoy each other
I'll spend the night for the first time
You're gonna kiss me in the forehead
And tell me that you love me,
that I'm special for you

I want you to be mine
And mine only
Not because I gotta have you
this time is different
Different for me

Little did I know that love
wasn't just about love

My instinct tells me to run
Run as fast as I can and disappear
Because its getting real and I'm feeling too much
But I want to drown in your world and never let go