Countdown

Kiss me,
airport style.

Pretend our hearts
are breaking.

Make like
you and I
are a dance
of stars,
the fated breach
of gravity
and time.

Then say
goodbye.

The things you write in the dark, after drinking two margaritas

I get tangled in what
I want to say


Her poems were too
much like
the hair
left in a brush


The switch from first to third:
a writer's oldest trick

---

I want to write boldly, 
like the earthquake
and not
the seismograph 

I want to rattle
the cage,
Explode from 
the branch

I want to be the hair
coursing down the long
switch of her back

The fever,
agitating,
before a sweeter 
delirium

God, let me write
and not be constricted
by the what 
and even less
by any whom

Let me smash that dam
into atoms,
recycle it into
kindling 

Let me break myself, 
in perpetuity,
and free the awful flow

and carry it forward 
until I can't

and kiss the end
of the road

Waiting Game

December,
out at the lake,
and everything's the same
dispirited shade of

picnic-table brown 

except for the water,
whose Crayola hue is 
the slightly more colorful
dirty sock soup

But the pines
will maintain,
as stiff as saints

and the sky
still startles
to the provocation
of crows

and it's fine,
in its way

this waiting game

I'll take the crumbs
that fall my way

like a want
of horse flies
to chew up my legs

the promissory sun  
after a week of rain

and a few crusty leaves
that just refuse, 
by golly,
to budge 

Which is the kind of old lady
I hope to become

though that, too,
can wait 

Childish things

What if 
instead of his color

we saw first

the two arms,

the two legs,

the two eyes 

of a man

Or a kid
just like us

trying hard 

to be big,

trying not 
to show doubt

What if

the hardness of trying

became a defense
of what our families
had filled us with

What if

instead of his color

we saw our own fear
and alienness
reflected back
like a photo's negative 
held up to the light

What if the shock

made us throw up 
our hands:

caught,

chastened,

shot through
with pain, shame,
mercy

What if #blacklivesmatter 

were #whitepeoplesproblem

What if poems were cover

What if games of pretend

were the law

and empathy became 
policeman to all

Wassailing

(Photo by Paul Rockett)

Beneath the crust
of first December

I went yawning for
some inspiration

when I saw the ghost  
of Glenn Gould's hands

and felt the echo of
a reflection of Bach

run across the roof
of my mouth

to make of me
a church