The question that has occupied the best minds forever, stated one way or other. Is the universe a series of random collisions of spaces and times and bits and particles or is the universe a well-ordered clockwork, all mechanically precise, room for nothing random.

In terms of my photos this week, they are cookie crumbs of randomness dropped into the clockworks.

My anthology for the week is Gargoyle Magazine, as best as I can tell,  a bi-annual publication of Peacock Press since 1976. This issue (huge, nearly 500 pages of text and art) is from 2013. I picked the book  up kind of randomly (there's that word again) because I need something right away. It turns out to be a really amazing collection

As usual,  here's my list.




     





                                                                                                                




I begin this week with a moment with my dog, lovely Bella.













she smells something

nostrils quivering,
she smells something
in the grass
and with the delicacy of a surgeon
slipping silent  through the tendrils of a brain,
paging through all the tiny lines
that tie together the essences of us,
she pushes the grass away
blade by blade with a slow, cautious paw,
then, like an archaeologist gently brushing sand
from an ancient, long-lost artifact, she uncovers the object
for her inspection...

then,
more likely than not,
whatever it is,
she eats it







                                                                                              




First from  Gargoyle is this short poem by Brad Johnson. Winner of the 2012 Longleaf Press Chapbook  Contest Johnson has published four chapbooks, with his first full-length collection, The Happiness Theory, due out last year.












Maria Bello  Naked

She dates men repulsed by menstruation,
disgusted by lactation, nauseated
by gay men holding hands anywhere
within eyesight, even in movies.
The men she dates are all blowjobs and bong hits,
who believe a breast is not a breast
when a child is attached, who thinks a kiss
is not a kiss if two men  do it, who classify
vaginas as unthinkable when bleeding.
The men she dates watch independent films
just to glimpse Maria Bello naked,
her breasts smaller than expected; her ass
firmer, more male; her orgasm mistaken
for an expression of pleasure rather
than the release of unendurable grief






                                                                                                                 


My old poems this week are from October,  2008,  apparently the weather then, apparently, much like now,  dry and dryer.

(The picture, by the way, is 1969-1970, taken in a tiny trailer on the Blanco River where I lived while finishing college on the GI Bill. I wrote my first, and for about 30 years, last poems there.)











weather report

i have
a local weather site
bookmarked
on my computer
where i can check
during the course of the day
and i was about to do just that
when i remembered i was sitting
by a big window
so i looked out this big window
and saw a soft blue sky
and little wispy hints of clouds -

mostly fair,
with a when-pig's-fly chance of rain,
in the lingo
of the weather site






                                                                                                                      
The first  poet from my library this week is Paul Durcan. The poem is from his book, Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil, published by the Harvill Press in 1999.

Born in 1944 in Dublin, the poet was educated at University College Dublin.  Widely published, Durcan has been at the heart of Irish cultural life for 30 years.








Island Musician Going Home

            after Veronica Bolay

Driving home alone the bog road at night in the rain
Leaving the village behind me, its harbour lights
Pegging down the marquee of the sea,
I am half sunk by the stone of my heart.

Mile after mile of bog road in the night in the rain.
Not a single dwelling on the mountain either side of the road,
Not know when a mountain sheep will light up under my
   wheels
My audience all couples canoodling behind in the village.

But when I drive up to my maroon-painted five-barred gate
And switch off my lights, and climb out of  my car,
And I can see nothing, and I can hear nothing,
I see again that home is the skirl of silence.

I kiss the darkness, and all loneliness abandons  me.
A life with a  wife is nothing to boast about
But that's music. I  walk back up the road
Kissing the darkness; and a small mouth of cold gold

In the cloud is becoming aware of its soul. 








                                        




An observational from last week, maybe, as suggested, a lesson in the drawbacks of relying on first impressions.                                                                         













I am reminded of the sour-faced woman

the Thursday morning
men's talk group is in attendance...

thought accompanied each Thursday
by the skinny old Catholic priest
whose ecclesiastical specialty appears to be
free breakfast, they are,
I overheard one of them say,
non-denominational, just Christian
without sub-categorization,  just middle-aged
and older men who want to be seen, and
perhaps see themselves as Christian, though
from what  of their discussion I've overheard,
they appear to me to be to Christ as
a tree frog is to a snow leopard, but, that's okay
with me, having spent more than 30 years
in the business world, I know the type
and the self-justifications they use to excuse
the things they do, but if you hang around them
long enough, eventually their real self
will emerge and it's  possible to do some business.
possible even, some good, with them

~~~

 I think of  them  this morning,
having their little meeting at a long table
across from me, and am  reminded
of the sour-faced woman I saw yesterday
while walking my dog...

young
well-dressed
judging  from her determined and purposeful gait,
apparently a healthy woman,
and I wonder what turmoil must  roil
her heart and soul to generate
such a permanent pickle
face
and
thought it might be presumptuous
(that being part off the job description for what I do here)
I think of the men in the meeting beside me,
how sour-faced must be the soul
of these men who have such high,  moral discussions
every week,  discussions that so rarely
inform the hours between
meetings, their weekly scrambled eggs and ham
communion before a barely attentive
priest  every week,, buying themselves a place
among the heavenly choir,  making installment payments
on salvation an  hour every week the rest of their life - well there is
a real  world out there to deal with, they say, and Jesus won't mind
if we do what we need to do to make our place in it - had himself
crucified, in fact,  so we could have our good old
Constitution of the United States
so  that we could close a sweet deal on that
choice south side property and still join him in the end
with appropriately sincere "oops" voiced along
the way...

or maybe I'm just cynical, seen too much of the world
maybe, could be these fellas in their weekly meetings are
just typical Americans, sure they can have a cake
and eat it too, drive a luxury car and get good mileage, be good
but  without the price of discomfort that good  so often 
requires...

and perhaps the sour-faced woman suffers
from a facial deformity, is not really a sour person,
the  soul of  Mother Theresa, instead, the caring heart of an angel
who treads the path, not on this earth,
but inches above it,  purity
of purpose inside,  if only
we look closer, beyond her sour-pickle
face...

~~~

a lesson, maybe, I should
consider







                                                                                                                        





Joe Hall is the next poet from the anthology. He writes poetry, fiction, book reviews and essays and teaches poetics at SUNY Buffalo.












Dream of Hipsters

Rich puddles of sludge-brown tadpoles
Rising out of sludge their aerial shadows dividing
In two, landing in all the open spaces in facing
Columns on either side of the sludgy ditch frothing
With mushrooms, the trees gone, the clouds shot and boiling
With cords of splintering sunlight, and I am singing
And the geese, following the melody, they are singing
They are rising on their legs, lengthening their necks
Revealing their chests, their tattoos, wings unfolded
Thousands of split woodwinds, rust
Silver blossoms, spores, their white shits and light
The sound continues, the geese spring
Toward each other and joust - mud
On their feathers - looking to spear each other's throats
The throats of  each other doubling
This is a dance too, for lover
And the dead unsorted







                                                                                                                      




Reading this poem from six  years ago, trying to remember the movie and finally I do and wish I  could see it again. It was a very good  movie. Too bad westerns are box office  poison these days, there's been so many great ones. And I'd love to see a new one.










"Appaloosa"

went to the movies
today
11 am
early bird special
only $8 for the two of us

not  counting
the $15
at the concession stand

a good old western - "Appaloosa"

the clip-clop  of horse hooves
as the title
rolls

a horse
whinny

gunfire
and the bad guy
makes his base nature known

and good guys -
good friends,
lawmen,
partners
cleaning up the New Mexico
Territory
one dried-up little town
after another
making the territory safe
for the cheats
and cowards and double-
dealing civilizers
of the west

and a prissy little woman
who's something of a whore
inside
and a real whore
with a  heart of gold
and loyal to her  man

and treachery
and stand-fast fortitude
and moral choices
and the good in the bad
and the bad in the good
and a gun fight
hen evil is defeated
left lying bloody dead
on the dusty
street

and the friends must part
the one staying with the
prissy whore
while the other rides off
while the other rides off
into the sunset,
leaving the heart-o-gold
whore
with a little gold locket
and a kiss on the cheek

yes siree-bob
i  surely do
like
a good
cowboy
movie







                                                                                                      
From  my library, this is a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye.

A poet, songwriter and novelist, Nye was born in 1952 to a Palestinian father and an American mother. She says she considers herself a "wandering poet" but refers to San Antonio as her home. At the age of six, she was writing poems for magazine  articles and at fourteen spent time in Palestine with her grandmother, an experience which has informed her life and her writing since. A poet, novelist and editor, she publishes widely in journals and appears, it seems, in half the anthologies I have in my library and is one of my favorite poets.

This poem is not from an anthology, but from one of her books, 19 Varieties of Gazelle, Poems of the Middle East. The book was published by Harper Collins in 2002.







Different Ways to Pray

There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
Women dreamed wistfully of
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
their prayers,  weathered rib bones,
small calcium words uttered in sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables  could
fuse them to the sky.

There  were men who had been shepherds so long
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms -
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
We have so much pain there is no place to store it!
But the olives bobbed peacefully
in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.
At night the men ate heartily, flat bread
   and white cheese,
and were happy in spite of the pain
because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,
wrapping themselves in new white linen
to ride buses across miles of sand.
Whey they arrived at Mecca
they would circle the holy places,
on foot, many times,
they would bend to kiss the earth
and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers
the pilgrimage occurred daily,
lugging water from the spring
or balancing baskets of grapes.

these were the ones present at births,
humming quietly to perspiring mothers.
The ones stitching intricate needlework into
   children's dresses,
forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were ones who didn't care abut praying.
The young ones. The ones who had
   been to America.
They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.
   Time? The old ones prayed for the young ones.
They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,
for the twig,  for the round moon,
to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for  example,
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,
and was famous for his laugh.







                                                                                                                       





Once again, the big issues are left to me to resolve.













why am I always the one?

Bella loves the new, cooler
nights of fall,
wakes me up  several times a night,
just to go outside, not to do anything,
but to just lie there in the backyard, her long,
golden fur ruffling in the fresh breeze

me too...

that chilled wind on my bare back
like a rebirth
of hope,
pushing back summer
and all its dolorous oppression

~~~

so reborn, I pulled out a long-sleeve shirt
this morning, a semi-western kind of thing
with stripes and stiff collar

ironing long sleeves,
I hate that

and shirttails - after a  long summer
of Hawaiian shirts,
the whole business of tucking in a long shirttail,
a hell of a thing to have to  do
in the morning...

someone needs to invent
a wool-lined Hawaiian shirt, short
sleeves  and no long tail to be tucked

~~~

why am I always the one
who has to think
of this kind of stuff?







                                                                                                                    





Next from Gargoyle, this poem by R.A. Allen. From Memphis, Allen published frequently in a wide variety of journals.










62 Moons

If Jupiter is the P. T. Barnum of planets,
then Saturn is surely the John Dillinger

Not that I'd make this comparison in
a poem to be submitted for publication.
To, the editors of your snootier lit mags
view personification as  a cheap trope.
And this is an egregious example,likening
a heavenly body to an iconic jail beaker and
leader of a shoot-'em-up bank-robbery gang
whose pursuers often died of saturnism.

Saturn destroyed three moons that
got too close. Turned them into
bling. Yet 62 moons,
entranced, still gaze down in awe.

Meanwhile  I have it on good authority that
the Paris Review eat sits own children.







                                                                                                                      






Another from six years  ago.












back home

the dogs
acted
like they were glad
to see
me
and the cat
was like she didn't
give a damn
but then rubbed
against my leg
when the dogs
weren't looking

good trip

sold a couple
of books

made arrangements
for a signing
and reading
in a couple of weeks
where i might
sell some more

enough outcome
to justify
the hotel bill
to IRS
anyway...

took
some pictures -
just a few -
not much can be done
with a large flat
body of water
unless a fish jumps
or something
and you happen
to catch it

had to walk
way the hell
out of a jetty
to get it but
did get a nice
shot
of the marina
and downtown
from out in the
bay

damn near  fell
off
at one particularly
slippery point
proving once again
that i'm  just too damn old
to be climbing around
on rocks stuck out
in Corpus Christi Bay

saw some  old buildings
that didn't used to be old

talked to some old people
who haven't  held up
any better than the buildings

buildings
or
people -
funny how we  see the wrinkles
first
then after  a while
you're back
to seeing
what you saw
thirty years ago

the only thing
that saves us from  ultimate
final
depression
i think

the capacity
to look past the present
and see the past
as if things were still
they way they were

back
home in time
for lunch

checked the fridge

found some fried
tilapia
left over
from night before
last

smells
a little fishy
but
that's why god
invented
ketchup

it'll
fix
most anything







                                                                                                                        




The next several short poems are by Robert Bly, from his book This Tree Will Be Here for a  Thousand Years, published in 1979  by Harper and Row.

Though not generally a fan of this poet, I do like very much the pieces in this book











 Moving Books to a New Study

First snow yesterday, and now more falling.
Each blade has its own snow balanced on it.
One mousetrack in the snow ahead,
the tailmark wavering in
between the footprints. Dusk in half an hour.

Looking up I see my parents' grove.
Somehow neither the Norwegian culture
nor the American could keep them warm.
I walk around the barn the long way
carrying the heavy green book I love through the snow.


Frost Still in the Ground

I  walk out in the fields; the frost is still in the ground.
It's like someone just beginning to write, and nothing has
   been said!

The shadows that come from another life
gather in folds around his head.

So I am, all at once.What I have
to say I have not said.

The snow  water  glances up at the new moon.  It is
its own pond. In its lake the serpent is asleep.


Late Moon

The third week moon reaches its light over my father's
   farm,
half of it dark now, in the west that eats it away.
The earth has rocks in it that hum at early dawn.
As I turn to go in, I see my shadow reach for the latch.







                                                                                                                        




I buy a lottery ticked every week, even though I do not expect to win anything. But I know only one certain way to lose, and that's by not playing the game.











at bat

blue-black sky
as dawn
creeps  around
night's dark
corners

and
as usual,
I will start this emerging day
with a poem...

not a great poem
as this dull gem makes clear,
but I'll keep trying...

it's like baseball,
you'll never hit one over the fence
if you don't swing the bat







                                                                                                            




Next from the anthology, Gary Blankenburg, founding editor of the Maryland Poetry Review,  and author of eight books of poetry.











The Sky-Blue Barn

Ascension Sunday

The sky-blue barn
    sits high on a green hill

On a clear blue day
     it nearly vanishes into the air.

Being somewhat
     of a blue man, I  will

someday build
     a sky-blue house,

and inside I will have
     a sky-blue wife

children, dog, and cat.
     Then on some glorious day,

it, and I, and they will
     disappear up and into

the blue, blue heavens.
     This is a poem

that wants to be
     a drawing in crayon.







                                                                                                                        
From October,  2008,  another writing-a-poem-in-a-coffeehouse poem. This was before my last retirement when I was working for a test assessment company. It was a "by contract" thing, so sometimes I worked and sometimes I didn't. It was about a year before another company bought out the  company I worked for and I did not like the new company's methods and processes at all. It being a month before my 65th birthday I decided I was too old to continue to work for people I didn't like. Thus, my third, and I fervently hope, last retirement.

This was a downtown coffeehouse, plenty of free parking (extremely rare downtown) and a few stairs down to the Riverwalk. 







times and places

usually
here by 9:30
in the morning,
i worked today so it's
6:30 in the evening
and i'm lining up the differences
between
normal and now

some of them
are in the nature
of how the world turns
as in how the sun
has shifted its position
relative to me -
the glare  through the window
on my screen in the morning
is no problem now
and the traffic on the street
outside the window, a one-way-going-home
street
for most people  working downtown
is bumper to bumper now
instead of the quiet little lane it is
in the morning

about
as many beer drinkers
as coffee drinkers in the afternoon,
office folk
and bankers
and hotel clerks
and accountants
and a city worker or two
having a beer
on their way home, like
my dad did, one beer a day
in a beer joint along the way,
a whole series of different ones
over the years -
The Brown Bottle.The Glass Hat,,
The Silver Slipper, Three Palms,
Bob & Mabel's, later, just Mabel's,
workmen stopping in,
mechanics, like Dad, a plumber,
a bus driver, a farmer,
the same group of men,
quiet men,
talking sports,
politics,
the sonsabitches
at work
getting old together one beer at a time,
migrating over 40 years
from one place to another, leaving
one place and picking up another for no reason
i could ever figure out,
it was like the hospitality leaked out of a place
after a while and they had to move on...

it's that kind of place here at 6:30 in the evening

way different at the end of day
than in the morning when a new day's struggle
begins
and the coffee drinkers and the aura
and the smell of coffee brewing
are as young as the morning is fresh

it seems
i fit in just fine -
both places, either time



here by 9:30







                                                                                                                          


This poem from my library is by  Robert  Hass. It is from his book Time and Materials, Poems 1997 - 2005. The book was published by Harper Collins in 2007.










Poem with a Cucumber In It

Sometimes from this hillside just after sunset
The rim of the sky takes on a tinge
Of the palest green, like the flesh of a cucumber
When you peel it carefully.

*

In Crete once, in the summer,
When it was still hot at midnight,
We sat in a taverna by the water
Watching the squid boats rocking in the moonlight,
Drinking retsina and eating salads
Of cool, chopped cucumber and yogurt and a little dill.

*

A hint of salt, something like starch, something
Like an  attar of  grasses or green leaves
On the tongue is the tongue
And the cucumber
Evolving toward each other.

*

Since cumbersome is a word,
Cumber must have been a word,
Lost to us know, and even then,
For a person feeling encumbered,
It must have felt orderly and right-minded
To stand at a sink and slice a cucumber

*

If you think I am going to make
A  sexual joke in this poem, you are mistaken.

*

In the old torment of the earth
When the fires were cooling and disposing themselves
Into granite  and limestone and serpentine and shale,
It is possible to imagine that, under yellowish chemical clouds,
the molten froth, having burned long enough,
Was already dreaming of release,
And that dream, dimly
But with increasingly distinctness, took the form
Of water and that it was then, still more dimly, that it imagined
The dark green skin and opal green flesh of cucumbers.







                                                                                                                






I fill my day with things to do because, from the first day, there were too few, and, now, in these later  days, even fewer. And certainly none to waste.











 things to do

I can't think of a better definition of
"too  old" than waking in  the morning
without the sweat and hustle
of a project ongoing, the anticipation
of a project in planning, and the satisfied glow
of a project done...

I come awake in the morning
with all that,
knowing I have a poem to write,
watching the calendar advance  as the due date
for my weekly blog post advances, and,
usually, looking ahead, working on the next book,
or these days, collecting pictures and poems
for the photo and poetry show I've  set for early November,
things to  do, each day divided, the poem writing hours,
the blog post hours and the afternoons set aside for what's next,
always what's next, must always have a "what's next"
to keep the pot boiling, to crack  the calcified covering
that can wrap a brain in a shell, a skull inside the skull, hardening
with each day, each hour that it  does not pulse
with the red blood of "next"

sometimes
I get  weary with "now" and  "then" and "next," but I fight
that desire for the little death of sleep, the two choices in life -
running or dead, a decision to be made every day...

~~~

things to do, things to do...

I woke at five this morning, not because the bed was too hard,
not  because I am not weary
and the soft breath of more sleep not enticing

I woke at five this morning because there are things  to do...

to-begin, walking my dog through our quiet morning neighborhood,
searching for the  poem that sometimes hides high in the trees
hanging over the street, sometimes even higher, hiding quiet
on the dark side of the moon,waiting for a searcher
like me with things to  do







                                                                                                                         




Next, Sarah Browning. Nearing the end of the post, my random selection from the anthology  was turning up no women, I found Browning.  She is an associate fellow  of the Institute for Policy Studies and director of Split the Rock Poetry Festival.











Kissing Boys

My tits feel nothing
when Joe Templeton
lifts my peasant blouse
to touch

I do this out of respect
he says
which hardly
helps

Joe's lips
are warm -
damp oatmeal

I  push back
but nothing works
Finally Adele Gray

dorm head to smart girls
opens the basement door
and saves me

Really, Sarah
Adele shakes her head -
The grown-ups
don't want me


to do what
the other girls do








                                                                                  



As a  passive, non-militant atheist who prefers not to go  around pounding people around the ears about it, I  do sometimes, as in October six years ago,  feel the need to state my position clearly (with respect to differing views, of course).











believe it or not

so
they found this way
ancient
bowl in Israel
where the find all the
way ancient
stuff
and an inscription
that circles the bowl
mentions
"Jesus the Magician"

and
i'm reading this
and all of a sudden
think
Zounds!
there's the nub of it

there's  lots  of magicians
around
then and now
and if you're gonna
believe
in the  magic of one
how can you not believe
in the magic
of all the rest i mean
what's our criteria here

if Jesus the Magician
has the right mojo
what about
The Great Oz
or The Great Waldo
or Moola the Magnificent...

myself
i like Waldo
especially his black  tux
and yellow spats
but that's showmanship
do i have to believe in his
magic as
well...

seems to me
you have to believe in the possibility of them all
and that includes
Tinkerbell
Snow White
and Little Red
from the hood
or you gotta believe
none of them

for myself -
i choose
none

it just gets too damn
complicated
otherwise








Last from my library this week are two poems by Jacinto Jesus Cadona, taken from his book Pan Dulce, published by Chili Verde Press in 1998. At the time the book was published, Cardona taught English at Palo Alto College and at the Trinity University Upward Bound Program, both in San Antonio. I think at one time since publication of the book, he taught high school English to one of my nieces. In addition to publishing his poem in various journals, the poet has read his work on NPR and PBS.

I get a warm homey feeling when reading Cardona's poems since he grew up in and his poems are mostly about a part of South Texas where I spent many years of my own life.

I couldn't find a picture of him on the web, so, instead, I have an image of his book.




Tongue-Tied

the fry cook takes a day off
to entice his tongue-tied child
with a ride through a booming downtown.
The silent son imbibes sights and sounds,
but like a leafless mesquite afraid of a late frost,
he refuses to speak.
A waitress at the Five Cent Seat tries to bribe
the tongue-tied child with LifeSavers,
but nothing provokes his stubborn vocal cords.
The fry cook's compadre jokes that it must be
the hum of indio blood.
Maybe the tickle of a buzzing chicharra
on the child's lips will do the trick.
The fry cook shakes his head
and drives away like a raindrop in a drought.


La Coste, Texas

Deep in La Coste, Texas
two poets looking for lost love
close the bar with two Lone Stars
and cross the street
over to the lyrical ooze
of a Tex-Mex squeeze box,
witnessing la raza cosmica
wiping dust devil dust
swaying hard labor hips
to classic conjunto hits,
polkas, boleros, y huapangos
on the VFW concrete floor
while the proverbial young girl
in the romantic red dress
marvels at the cumbia poetics
of the local crazy
who seldom speaks
but keeps on dancing
like waves of summer heat.







                                                                                                                    





A memory, 1964, one of the most pleasurable memories of my life.













freeze-dried eggs

freeze-dried eggs
in boiling water melted
from snow over  a mountaintop campfire in December

scrambled egg  breakfast
with bread from a k-ration can, toasted
on a stick  over the fire

~~~

I have seen many wonderful things in my life

polio vaccine, color television  on a screen
large as the side of a house, wine in a box,, Corvette Stingray,
apes learning sign language...

so  many wonderful
and amazing things in one lifetime -
even men  walking on the moon,
human creatures like you or me, except,
of course, not like you or me at  all,
even that,  even  men bouncing in high dancing leaps
on the stark gray surface of the moon...

even that not as  amazing and wonderful to me
as scrambled eggs and toast make from a k-ration can
and powder poured into water boiled
over  a campfire on a  mountaintop in December

just as the desert far below  turns golden
in new  light from the rising
sun








                                                                                                              


Last this week from Gargoyle Magazine is this piece by Alyse Knorr.

Knorr has published one book of her own and frequently appears in variety of journals. She received her  MFA from George Mason University and teaches English at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. She is co-founder and co-editor of Grazing Grain Press.










Alice in the First Act

Jenny one leg bent up
our of your white dress

the stage floor like a ocean
surface and the lights

diamond-shaped manta rays
winging around you to feed

Your face hidden now
by a crumpled umbrella -

ballet pose or lotus of opening -
To lay my head into

your hands     into your hands
Jenny your eyes are not showing

But to move the letters
of your lips into a yes

I could wrap around me
and float with you over

the smooth-stoned red sea -







                                                                                                                       





Another from six years ago.













but then...

finding myself
turning into something
of a cave creature
i decide
today
is the day i will go out
explore
look for some photo
opportunities
stretch my legs
with a little walk in the brush
visit a farm
moo to a cow
cluck to a chicken
and pitch some hey
why not
pretend it's midnight
and how at the moon
or
maybe just
open my mind to the
sunshine
smile at the wind
and smell some grass

but
then
it's awful nice
here
air conditioner blowing
cool
cool music
lots of room
friendly young ladies
to  refill
my coffee mug
and a good poem's bound  to show up
if i just sit here long enough

but
then
we passed
some really nice
picture spots last weekend
when it was way  to dark  to stop
and a clean bathroom was still 15 miles away

i  should go back there and take those pictures today

but
then...






                                                                                                                              







Here it is, my last new poem for the week.











another dim morning

seems every day, clouds are banked
dark and low in the south,
yesterday, from here in the heights,
the center of the city, low in its valley
between clear hills, is shrouded, the tall buildings
all bisected by clouds, the buildings' upper floors, the
restaurant atop the Tower of the Americas,
lost in gray fluff, passing quickly to the north,
gulf clouds heading for dryer, higher country, to fold themselves
at some point over the Rockies and all the peaks between...

I am reminded of  fog on the river at midnight,
standing on bridges in the defused dim of wet streetlights
like diamonds floating through the passages of night,
while below the bridge, another passage, the  sound of water flowing,
the river itself unseen, another dark  uncertainty...

~~~

back in the day,
back when dark uncertainty
was the way my loose life was mostly lived









As usual, everything belongs to who made it. You're welcome to use my stuff, just, if you do, give appropriate credit to "Here and Now" and to me