Monsanto now Bayer's verdict
drifts over the fields
marked as no spray zones
for the hardest of yields

These varied sustained with sweat
soils needn't a yellow crop duster
to spread sour poisons
on our fruits or our clustering

perhaps vain cabbages
to stifle the single ****
that reaches to sunlight
among mono-cropped seed

Once,
there was a sound called breathing,
called idling, called waiting
in your car for a "whatcha doing
next Saturday", for an "I'll call
you tomorrow", for an "I had a good time
tonight", for a paralyzing moment
of fear to end, for that should
I just say goodnight and go to end,
not knowing in the silence of our breathing
that all you wanted was a gentle goodnight kiss
before I darted from your car.

Short-timer finds time
on an afternoon bent
with wrestling weathers

winter and spring claw
at each others' throats
and uncertain maples
warily release their
saps

Short-timer finds time
on an afternoon wet-shod
in a gray rebel snow

defiant on the nether
side of everything
melting to a smirk
that'll linger 'til
June

Short-timer finds time
on an afternoon shorn
of the lost time spent
dawdling careering

A prairie skink on the edge
warming his stripes
on the granite palisade -
crystalline quartzite
redder than the short sun
amid the prickly pear
above the cling trees
and cliff swallows
swirling for the bugs
from spit mud hollows
twitter down where
the snapper lifts a
stone head from the
murk still water
below the falls
logs cans and tumble
down rocks and ******
dams until the blue
tale fades away.

Rocking on the third rail spark
and grinding on the steel wheel
taking a well arced curve on the El
winding its transit plan to the loop
passing second story flat dreams
and the messing about before
the office coffees are brewed
and the day begins as an abstract
smelting of glass concrete steel
and the eyes drift from a hand-holding
two, to the crochet hook fingers of the
night shift lady, to the suit and tie
guy with trading in his eyes,
to the bronze trumpet girl
sure footed, on point
below a new sky.

But the train bends down
for the subway
a spine bends for a dropped book
the train bends down
and yellowed signs cracked
at the corners flicker on
and ceiling lights flicker on
a fist tightens on a pole
and we look to our shoes
our papers, the news.
Eyes avoid eyes
and the sick blending
of massed perfume
perspires a choking distance.
A spent soda can rolls
the one last connection
from foot to foot
and each taps it away.

Small,
Still small.
The storm knows
As Nietszche knew,
the botched and bungled
fall. When the one great love
stalled with damp points and punch tires
stuck on the shoulder blinking out
flashers to no one in sight , the rise
behind - just wet exits and no beams bright.

Live!
Deliver!
Emit no on-time reviled evil.

No devil ere lived on.