El Paso

My kid made the likes of these mountains
for some fourth grade project,
crumpled packing paper,
cardboard strips from old boxes.

Nondescript, bland,
ancient dust,
rusty canyons of old skin,
a geriatric crust.

“My mom had a mole
just like that mountain”, Nana told us.
Like Aaron Neville
full of crags and crankles.

This is old land,
best forgotten
best left to the vultures of the wind.
Save the twilight hours
when the dreamers come
when the fae feed on the light.

 

Warmongers

Generals always play with lives.
Toys on a battle board,
anonymous Battalions with fanciful names.
They bandy their squadrons and flotillas
playing Battleship, DEFCON,
Silos and Dragons.
But it’s the generals that bleed us.
The stars on their collars
yapping boots on the ground.

One of them bought it today.
A decent man I’ve read.
And all of them are… decent men,
upstanding colonels,
moral pillars in their communities.

We have too many General, Admirals,
Full Bird Colonels.
Too many ready to move the plastic boats
and the tanks on the game board.

Every year we grow fuzzy with ideals.
Peace on Earth and blah blah blah.
See, be it!
Visualize peace and it will be.
Another race perhaps…
not this go round,
not man.

This is business.
this is guns,
this is money.

 

 

As a Kite Loves March

As liquid, I am slipping from your grasp,
my face a pat of flesh melting,
sorting the surface
till it congeals or bubbles to brown.
My voice will become ancient echo
that once caressed your brow with its breath,
that whispered love across your hips,
that eulogized your lips.

As grains I’ll slip away,
my planet eroding,
time worn,
an effigy,
its likeness distorted,
failing through the glass.

I love you as rock loves fire.
I love you as soil loves rain.
I love you as the sun caresses our bones,
as the wind and a kite loves March.

Night Ride Home

Night fell slovenly,
sloppy, a hot mess,
a sticky second skin.

AC units sweating,
a night of hums, clicks, and frogs.
Ribeeet-thruup! - When will it rain ?
Sidewalks glistening,
wet with violations,
callous felons watering,
on sidewalks black
and slick with summer mold.

I rode the intersections
in a hushed soft-red blur.
I rode the deadened lanes
a ghost bike
an LED snake puffing,
tires hissing in the night.

 

Sterile Field

This air is sterile of us,
disinfected, it’s soil neutered
of decay or spill of verdant birth.

Scrubbed until it bled,
before the sun could set set,
its bleak sallow tear
in skyskin streaked
desiccated, numb with acceptance.

This night is in arrest,
its lungs still,
its grasses greasy and black,
its fields a spinach smear.
No dew for the garish stars
as they stare,
silver lookie-loos
sipping
from the eyes of my pain.

 

Streamsong

These are sultry shades,
a verdant refuge from the sun,
deadly still mosaics of green
simmering in thickets,
in old roots lost to dream,
ferns and wild clover,
mangrove and river oak
draped in great tears of Spanish moss.

The waters chuckle
streamsong off the wood-fall and and rocks,
from deep teal green pools,
from the sudden burst of morning rain.

Deep springs surge,
great expulsions from the sapphire deep.
Cool crystal waters
as if borne from the earth’s inner sea.

As the river widens the canopies fall away.
a tongue with a voice now,
a sword’s swath to the mother’s salty womb.

Dreaming Trains

Dream trains,
their whistles calling my bones,
the old mills slamming ore.
Four story doors clang open
as fresh slag pours blood to the sky.

Jimmy Dykes calling the balls and strikes,
my transistor neath my pillow
Yankees 7, Indians 2…
yet another loss for the tribe.
…as the skies light orange
as the trains rudely couple,
as the rolls of steel leave the yard.

Dream trains -
two long wails in the distance,
you can almost hear the cars
stretching their wheels.
Did suitcases quiver?
Did other’s hearts quicken like mine?

I dream of trains,
of Jews to the ovens,
their jewelry, their teeth,
removed to fuel the Reich.

I dream of trains,
Ghost Dancers of the Sioux.
Lost freights of spirit
raising tears of blood from the land,
to the waiting sky.

I dream the engines,
the harnesses of power,
the coal consumed,
thrumming my blood
as I awaken renewed.

The Indians lost to the Yankees.
Herb Score had the recap.
The Lakota cried,
Red Cloud died,
the trains rolled on.
I dreamed…

 

#2 with a Bullet

Between our bookends
the solitary birth,
the solitary death,
we cleave, we grieve,
we connect
in packs, in pairs,
in bars and fragments
bits and flickers of emojis and light.

So many tales mount
beneath those suns and moons.
Hair raising tales,
Canterbury tales,
Archival snippets
accruing like sugar grains
at the bottom of your cut crystal glass.

Smiles, breasts, accents, goatees,
fists, sneers, encouragement and cheers
all swirling round the porcelain bowl.
Social niceties and plastic grins,
gathered round the hearth,
the water cooler,
the settings of the kettle and cups.

So many tales arise
between our crown’s bloody rise
and our long bone’s demise.
Some matter, most don’t.
I’ve nine or ten that mattered.
You were number 2 with a bullet.

Weathered Heart

The door was twice rinsed yellow,
a dead canary,
a drunken bottle blond
at the top of scissored stairs.
Warped pine planks,
just a gray shade brighter
than Mamma’s ashes,
lay the path you walked.

You strode those stairs
like Lana Turner wore a sweater;
sinful and innocent,
each heartbeat of your skirt
craving the rash tart tongue of a breeze.

I feigned to follow,
to admire your legs,
your gait on the landing,
for a flash of the forbidden nylon fruit.
I followed, smitten
as all of us were,
chock full to the gills
of your chosen smile.

It’s still there,
that shack on Maryland stilts.
A hovel on pilings,
the door colorless,
the stairs rotted,
your steps lost
to the junkies and homeless,
my carving of a heart
just visible when you slant the light,
a frail hollow of love
just beneath the railing cap.