Category: poems

  • The Day Job

    A firefighter I am going to be a fire fighter just imagine confronting all that fear. They need certain people for all the small spaces. Just imagine how great it will be: write a poem; slide down the pole; write a poem; drink some beer; write a poem; put out the fires of dragons.

  • Maker’s Mark

    Phil says the writing is made out of reading, but it is more a matter of overwriting, of under- writing, of something erased coming to the surface, the long years, random papers found in a box. The box is not a window. The papers are turning to dust. I take myself out of the box […]

  • Poem

    Graphic       as a flower    blooms a split lark’s    minor       stream

  • Petals

    the stretched out to never look at feet in the same “evening” dim lifts the crakly feet of sum animate animals straighten backs o r Spokey bike crush, portlandly scuffed up leg. electric track – esplanade St. John’s Bridgely. Christ Biota scaling petals that to some may seem indicated. II. it’s not the indication when […]

  • On the Edge (2001)

    Neighboring islands, North of storm. Words hold as much As words allow – White indiscriminate Waves and rocks, A tempest Friedrich Would have painted Stratocumulus, astride Some distant, German peak.

  • Collection Plate    (to Romare Beardon)

    We take doctrine particulate, pocket-money in nomine Patris who begets a settled mind its own occasion without predicate, grammar, and a period. Time compounded fastens the difference with a lick. A gummy envelope holds heaven and earth, a note and a song.

  • Poem (Coriolanus)

    Put down my name and stepped toward The awful thinking. Where is wound? Where harm? I entered the city gates and fought alone. Wounds? Mouths? Lethe is a river in a vein — pulsing through a body that bears a name others name — forgetful behind the eyes. Where is wound? Where harm? I fought […]

  • In Baja   for T.M.

    We veered from asphalt to endure fifteen miles of tooth-rattling washboard through scattered organ pipe cactus and jagged road cuts, around hairpin turns. We arrived at a village that had escaped the cartographer’s attention. A few houses roofed with tin, a cinderblock church that would never grace a postcard. Where unpolished stones of the road […]

  • 12:44

    To conserve ice, I rub it on burned fingers before putting it in my drink. The egg burning still. Lightning and sun on the leaves, blue-grey behind the brownstones. Too powerful, the bird call outside, above the chainsaw. Engine; bark; brakes: constant sounds of the city, not often helpful. I’ve brought no clothes for a […]