Tucson
From atop Mount Lemon, the city lights
boil the desert to a sludge of dark.
The higher air hums in static windstops,
fluttering like manes around blackened rocks.
The peyote settled, I would begin
my descent, stepping off a large boulder
which sprouted wings and flew to the ravens.
The dark bird within me sighed and whispered.
I ached for my mattress, cool on the roof,
the heat swelling up in the morning sun.
Tonight my bed would be leathery tough
and my dreams a practice for creation.
The rooftops of Tucson are littered with boys
alert under stars, mad ravens deployed.
Bully Poem
Today’s poem is going to kick
your proverbial ass and show
no mercy. It’s going to ram
a size-13 wingtip so far
up your sphincter that your breath
will smell like shoe polish.
This poem is going to steal
your lunch money, then hack
into your Facebook account
to replace your profile picture
with a pornographic image
involving unicorns and your sister.
This poem is going to collect
all your letters to the editor,
along with your teenage poems,
and self-publish them in a book
entitled, An Idiot’s Guide to the Universe.
And then this poem is going to post
crass and disturbing reviews of the book
on Amazon.com. A dozen per day
for a year. Eventually, you will
receive a long missive from the entire
publishing industry insisting
that you emigrate both from the country
and from the English language. They will offer
a one-way, first class ticket to Tierra del Fuego.
Take the money and run. It’s your only chance.
Otherwise, this poem is headed directly
to your home, where it will proceed
to break all your dishes and clog up your plumbing.
This poem will smoke camels in your bed
and forget to feed your cat. It will leave
behind a trail of mold that will require
a government agency to remove. This poem
takes no prisoners, and you are no exception.
Living Room Ghazal
The guitar in its stand is lovely but mute.
The guitar in my hand is a sorrowful lute.
Dogs sleep by the fire dreaming deeply as stones,
but soon they’ll awaken to snorting and bruit.
A clock on my wall has ticked down to silence,
as if time has become increasingly moot.
The light through the window sways in a mad dance
to music from the lake, refrains of wild coots.
In tonight’s sky, I will mark the red planet,
but for now I’ll sit with this sorrowful lute.
Wraith
When I dream of my parents,
they appear in the future,
as if memory had slipped
beneath the glacier of time.
Audrey peers out over the bay
toward Alameda and asks if I can see
the ghosts on the bridge. I can’t, but
they make her smile. “You should look harder,”
she tells me. “One day you’ll need them.”
Her eyes are hazel again and clear.
The cataracts and foaminess evanesced.
Conrad is hanging feeders brimming
with black-oil sunflower seeds
for birds which have not yet arrived.
“When you no longer have birds to feed,”
he tells me, “your land is dead. And son,
I hope you never see that day.”
But I already know it is coming.
Dad is tall and thin like in the photograph
where he is pulling a jack-o-lantern on a sled
in Alaska, waving. It was mom’s favorite
and she insisted on it for his funeral
because he looked happy and he was waving
goodbye. Dashing in his uniform, he disappeared
in and out of our lives on Air Force missions.
I want this future: my mother the beautiful
officer’s wife, my father the mysterious pilot.
I wish I had recognized it then, and that
it was all ahead of me. The clear horizon of my past.
Words With Friends (found poem)
for Sleener, Nyquil98, & Tatbaar
Your jihad is a corny hoax,
a slew of puttee apart from a few
oaks and “ahs.” You are a hilus
in my spleen, as cute as a shined fiver.
Get it? In the past, your have towered
over this game like dormers in a luv slit.
Still, the mirror of the lake
is hoed like foil, a duet oared
between zeal and loons. Like dates
cured within vents and cutty.
To fix Dixie would be good, and require
the aim of a swat team. So sip away your spry
stash. Abide the fee, and go “ha!”
Oh, how I delight in the limit
of your puny cheetahs. They whelp
as I axe their gruff areas. Crazy, eh?
But you’ll wait by the shores of the heeders
in a tub of soviet figs. Bye.
Sex Ed
Why let a teacher talk to your kids about sex
when you can just take them out to the farm
to observe, first hand, how Nature
tackles this delicate subject?
Watch carefully as Herman the Muscovy
rapes each and every other waterfowl
on the surface of the lake,
male or female. Bring the binoculars
so you can truly appreciate his technique
as he mounts his intended, gently grasping
the back of the lover’s neck with his beak,
and shoves his or her face under water
until the consummation is complete.
Now you can begin to explain to your offspring
how homosexuality is not natural, how Herman
is a special kind of drake, a Caligula,
if you will. Then you can explain Caligula
and spend the afternoon reciting the poem of Catullus.
Don’t get too technical or hand the kids
any pamphlets written by a psychologist
of German descent. Keep it metaphorical
and awkward, as is the family tradition.
Eventually, the Internet will explain
it all to them in high definition.
Blind Verse 2
I need to read you in braille, in cool wind
on the shore of the lake. I want to smell
you with my tongue like a serpent winding
through the garden. When evening droops over
your shoulders like a shawl of negative
light, the horizon will glow lavender
and lift the shoreline to its lips. And then
we will hear the dark moaning through our skin.
The county dogs howl like snapping timbers
in the fire of another decade.
Wind-chimes play colorless chords for the deaf.
The tree line is silent, remembering
through the darkness the outline of your face—
which can rarely see itself—forged in grace.
Snapshot: Weed
Before Nancy and Ronald appeared
on our television screens like mutant Howdy Doodies,
we just said, “Sure. Okay. I’ll try some of that.”
We didn’t know better; we had no
presidential supervision regarding pleasure.
We thought it felt good, but Nancy
informed us that such pleasure would destroy everything.
I imagine her sipping her third glass of Merlot
as the mantra fermented within her brain: “Just say ‘no’.”
*
In a hotel room in New York City, in 1964,
four moptops met their lyrical hero,
a waif-like Jew who insisted that
“Everybody must get stoned.” Giddy as schoolgirls,
they stuffed wet towels into the bottom
edges of the doors. John made Ringo
try it first, and after a few moments
he announced, “The ceiling’s coming down
on me!” The others giggled, inhaled, and drifted
into strawberry fields forever.
*
In 1948, Al Capp introduced
a mythical creature, known as the Shmoo,
into his Li’l Abner comic strip.
Aside from alcohol, Shmoos
fulfilled all nutritional needs.
They gave milk, laid eggs,
and depending upon how you cooked them,
tasted like pork, chicken, or steak.
They multiplied spontaneously and
exponentially, and consumed nothing.
Soon they filled the surrounding fields and woods
of Dogpatch like rabbits, and everyone
ate for free. Needless to say,
this posed a dangerous threat
to Capitalism and Democracy in general.
After all, you can’t have people
eating for free. That’s just un-American.
And so it went for marijuana a decade earlier.
In 1937, the weed was declared illegal
by a congress whose collective pockets
were packed with pharmaceutical cash.
Throughout all of human history, cannabis
was known for its non-addictive little miracles.
Aside from the enjoyable buzz, it provided
relief from a wide variety of pains and conditions:
arthritis, glaucoma, nausea. Plus,
it’s organic and anyone could grow it for free.
But that’s just un-American.
*
The ancient Muslims had a patron saint
of cannabis: Khizr. He can come to you
as a white light or as the gleam of a blade of grass.
Khizr breaks the trance of the ordinary.
Carly Walking
Our quarter-mile driveway serves
as her personal track, and she hikes it
for hours, Howard Stern perving her earbuds.
The path is full of adventure. For over a month,
she insists there is a monkey in a tree
near the main road. I walk down and,
indeed, hear a screeching up among
the treetops. But I cannot see anything,
and why would a monkey be on my tree farm
in Arkansas? Eventually, a neighbor
unravels the mystery: one tree has collapsed
against another, and they rub in the wind
like a violin out of tune. We are seriously disappointed.
Another time, she is nearly trampled by deer.
A dead snake won’t scoot off the road.
Rabbits spring from nowhere.
Hawks circle above, squirrels jabber
and flit among the pine branches.
Through it all, Carly walks and walks
like a woman on her way to the end of time.
Pussy Riot Speaks to Amerika
Mr. Putin will make you love your country
the same way you came to adore the man
who walked up from behind, choked a hood
over your head, and locked you in a dark
basement that smelled of fear and piss.
Every breath belonged to him, every
minute was his to interrupt or ignore,
every sip of water suckled from his teat of kindness.
Your own country is confused by all of this.
Your free press will publish photographs
of women being viciously whipped by a Cossack,
yet determine that our name is too obscene to print.
Are words truly less than a picture in America?
Does this onslaught of feline vaginas and art offend
your inky wretches so much that they would deny us
before the cock has begun to crow?
We are not invisible, Amerika, and
we are not unnamed. When words become
more delicate then crushed flesh, your own name
becomes the berserk boot heel of history.
The New Communists
are not under your bed, in your closet,
or dropped to your roof by silent drones.
They wave flags as they crawl over your fence,
treating your property as theirs to roam.
They cannot see purple, cannot read signs.
Here in the land of the free, anyone
is free to open up the boundaries
unless you were to enter their own homes.
They kill deer and call it a harvest,
mark their paths with trash and spent shotgun shells.
Their minds spin with excuses to enter
your land, to leave behind their bloody trail.
The new communists leave death in your woods,
then head off to church to learn what is good.
Allergies
Last night my wife stayed up late
wondering if she should jab me
with an EpiPen. My left ear is so clogged
that vertigo has set in and when
I take the dog out at 3 a.m. I stumble
like a one-legged zombie. Allergies
and their seasons have been the one constant
in my life. My first major breakout,
as an undergrad in Flagstaff, resulted
in a nurse ripping my clothes off and shoving me
into an ice bath. I could see hives
reflected in her cold eyes. The doctor
who tested me suggested that I quit eating
or breathing in general. Everything
is an enemy to my immune system.
The best compliment my allergies ever elicited
came in a restaurant in Little Rock. I felt
it coming on like a freight train, turned to Carly
and announced, “I’m going down.” Fortunately
the entire graduating class of the local
medical school was on hand, and rushed
the table while Carly calmly sipped
her wine. When I came to, a woman
asked my age. “Really? You don’t look fifty!”
I don’t believe in the afterlife, but
if I am wrong, the first person
I will hunt down on the streets of gold
is Dr. Spock, who advised my mom
to cut off breast-feeding as early as possible.
I plan to punch him in his fat face
and sneeze all over him. Then,
I will finish him off with an EpiPen
filled with the nectar of April.
Tiwesdæg Pantoum
For the honor of the day
I allowed the wolf to bite off my hand
One day, he will swallow the All-father
and I will die in the teeth of dogs.
I allowed the wolf to bite off my hand,
but it was never offered. The creature was bound.
I will die in the teeth of dogs,
but without the weapon of my hand.
It was never offered. The creature was bound
in miraculous ribbons forged with six elements.
Without the weapon of my hand,
how could I wield a sword?
The miraculous elements were forged with six elements
of a metaphorical nature, now gone from this world.
How shall I wield a sword
for the honor of this day?
Þunresdæg
for Farley (2000-2014)
Forget the myths for a day, even
if they belong to Thor. Today
belongs to Farley, named
after the great Canadian defender of wolves,
not the comedian. Today, Farley is going to die
and I will bury him in a watery hole.
I was born on a Thursday, so I figure
that I own it as much as anyone.
When I first brought him home,
the lake was solid ice. Farley slid
all over the surface, but on land
he ran circles around everything:
tractors, four-wheelers, even deer.
Then his legs broke. Surgeries,
tumors, deafness, confusion.
Farley limped through his final years
like any athlete too great to retire.
He was the Mohammad Ali of mutts.
He stamped this world with his face,
and limped off among the greats.
Frīġedæġ
Frigga knows your future,
but she’s not telling. Perhaps
it is a good day to plant potatoes,
or a bad day to set sail. Either way,
you’ll have to get through this by yourself.
Frigga will spend the day spinning clouds
or assisting midwives. You will take
a nap and miss the entire weekend.
Frigga knew this and fed you dreams
of your husband departing to far lands
while his brothers divided your time.
But even Frigga mistook Loki
for a woman and fed him
the wrong secret. Loki handed a shaft
of mistletoe to a blind man
who flung it like a butterfly into Baldr’s heart.
The Irish Poet
Kevin Higgins has the worst posture
of any poet in Irish history.
I suspect that if you pushed him
down a flight of stairs, his
lanky physique would respond
gracefully as a slinky, bouncing
down stair from stair to our collective
amusement and amazement. I suspect
aliens will want to study him one day.
The history of Irish posture is thick
with pain, like yoga in a gravel pit.
Ireland’s greatest hero, Cú Chulainn,
had to prove himself by crouching like a dog
to pay back the death of an actual dog that he,
himself, slaughtered. Seamus Heaney tilted
like the Leaning Tower of Whiskey.
And Yeats dropped to his knees
to hear the whisper of a fairy.
In African folklore, a frog
swallows Cinderella and vomits her out,
but she is crooked, leaning to one side.
So he swallows her again until
he gets it right. But that original purge
is what explains the Irish Poet:
imperfect, tragic, and a little bent.
Ireland
Even the weeds smell ornamental,
short sniffs of lavender and liquor.
The pale sun moans behind old clouds,
wind-shifting between waltz and nostalgia.
Birds inhabit insane kings,
heroes play the roles of dogs,
and the crowned princess of the bog
lifts her head to the shovel’s scrape and ping.
Alaska
Among the wolves there is no past.
I am shoveling snow and they stare
at me like today’s lunch.
It is 20 below zero: my breath
turns to clouds and my heart freezes.
They know I am alone.
They know a shovel will not save me.
They know they can run me down.
And they know, strangely, that I am not afraid.
The Evil Sister
is filled with money.
Mercurial dimes clog her arteries
like river sludge. She is the darkest
corner of a vicious alley
off the Avenue of Rage.
She is the cult of lies and herpes.
When we were young, her fists
fit my body like grooved shingles.
Her eyes were bursts of madness.
She craved the company of spiders and moss.
She worshiped the science of pain.
The evil sister lost her way
within a man beaten down by dullness
and hubris. His brain a cracked rock of ego.