What fools we are to spend our lives
not painting or *******
What feels better in our hands
than a brush or a lover
To feel the paint spread along the canvass
And tounges pressed against our flesh
To explore and mix colors before our eyes
And tangle and twist our limbs
To merge heaven and hell with water and paper
And lust and sin with lips and skin
Push the sky with oil and knife
Open legs with mouth and breath
Make flowers bloom in eternal night
Draw moans from throat and *****
Let the paint and nectar flow
Melt flesh and expose our souls
Passion paints desire
Desire burns our bones
Lets not waste our time
And hold brush and lust and love
And paint our every hour
and grind hips to lips to sin and moan
Lets not waste what little time
We have to make life beautiful

Photograph an evening sunset
of a lake, wide and long,

one thousand times more
blue than the morning star,

and vulnerable, like a late
October Rose of Sharon

blossom, minutes before
fall’s first killing frost;

hold the picture close, as
it is your life, our lives.

It is hard to say father;
the thought of you stumbles through me when I see
a Gerber baby food jar or a wooden pop crate.
Once you came to mind when I saw a Polish flag
on TV; that is humorous because
the only Pole I know is a pale man at the gym
whose left eye is shaped like a rotten pear.
Do you still burn your fingers when you
fall asleep smoking in a recliner?  I hope
you still do not trim your fingernails while
sitting on the toilet stool; that seems so un-American.
Today is your eighty-fourth birthday;
I hope wherever you are you do not think of me.