Poets coming into Rochester,
Welcome to the perfect poetic city!
We're dark in November,
Blinding in May.
Sleepy streets,
Winding roads.
Dinner at a diner,
Welcome to your second home, it's a winner's city for sure.

Everything is normal
so not much to sing or say.
No summer thunderstorm,
the snow was magical only for an hour.

Old men
aren’t removing women’s ******* with removable dentures.
A belly laugh now and then,
an empty belly’s holy.

With simple joy
mortals may forget to fear their deaths.
Simply put,
we do not survive. But what an adventure!

I heard an archangel cry
Don’t hurt the trees!
Also, save democracy.
Also, stop barking, believing in that higher power.

What’s Ken doing today?
Watching TED talk lectures,
planning next Spring’s garden.
It’s Death, not the Jewish king, in your rose garden.

As climates change
species escape predators
and predators chase down prey.
Choose sacrifice or blame.

I look at faces
and they look at mine, mute, animated spirits,
black wet rocks,
victims among flames.

I like my anonymity,
lost in my own city,
in the shade of a gazebo,
a mosquito’s acceptance of its position among a million mosquitoes.

I found the city a pitiless thing.
It smelled of steel, concrete and the bay.
I use to sit on the sea wall that edged
my old college condo, the one I shared
with a black cat, and sing Otis Redding-
skipping the whistling part of his song
because my lips could never purse the
right tune- and watch the tide roll in
catching rainbows in the sun’s glint.

It  was the inhabitants I couldn’t take,
all rude and loud, smelling of salt
and stale fish scales and crab shells,
so snared in tiny toils, frail and idle,
their itching needs thirsty and *****.  
I lost my wonder in the traffic dust,
the night haze and starless nights.
I avoided touching that life less
it should defile me in its lost light,
night terrors and phantasms.

Then, in the small church in
the out of the way corner,
I found her, a strange vision
trembling, ready to emerge
just past the reach of my mind
and the urge of my will. She existed
beyond all jaded aims and
drab  dissemblements,
something unfounded, unbuilt
but ready, waiting to be built on.

On my birthday she bought me
a lounge chair to grace my
unfurnished balcony, on the
very day I purchased my own.
And there we sat (my desire),
watching the city unseal itself
across from me in a sweltering love,
constantly revealed, being
forever built and rebuilt on
in pain and unfathomable will.

my romantic loves, traditionally, have not been healthy
wrong, forced, cruel, hurt, anxiety-ridden
a healthy relationship hadn't found me.
but in every other sense, I am surrounded
my friends, my family, my city, loves me
unconditionally, warmly, easily
they make me better and wrap me up
the healthiest, truest love I've ever known

I wander through this secret city
mapped in the words we only know,
and we can only define.
I am the citizen of you
and you of me.

Everyone we know drives bye,
their cars filled
with everything we own
flying out the window.

The next vanishes
into the mist
beyond  the curb
of what we once were.
Or, is it, will be?

Where they went,
we know.
Where they’re going,
we know.

Our eyes and ears
want to follow,
it’s so bright and loud
and hard to hold inside,
even in all the shooting.

About an abandoned city,
where the wind is the only inhabitant,
knocking on windows and singing
through the empty streets.

Cauliflower glow dances gently so
on window pane as fog billows,
my dreams tucked safely in
nestled embrace of familiar
blanket and pillow.

The rain falling on concrete
like feathers dancing in the wind
soft neon lights reflected on
the puddles as they began to pile
on the busy pulse of the city.

ESCAPE, GET OUT, FREE YOURSELF

splattered across billboards,
a promise of freedom on
sunny beaches and vacation homes -

But what freedom is there
when one is made to return
to their cage.