Green Things Going
I practice emotional exhibitionism. I publish deeply personal things for strangers to read, sometimes with the quiet pleasures edited out, the turmoil left. Other times vice-versa.Our minds are not our...
View ArticleA Sharp Word in the Neck
Words have power which is why I love to play with them. I turn a pretty phrase and arrange words in pictures of speech.At times the pictures please many, other times, only me. Words pick at scabs...
View ArticleWhen the Words Come Home
On a gray morning in October, I am alone in the truck. I'm going to work for somebody else.I would rather be writing, hearing a harpist playTabhair Dom Do Lámh.Alone again in the delivery van sometimes...
View ArticleLament For CJ Campbell.
Last week, aravir asked me if I would like to contribute a political poem to a diary in memory of CJ Campbell, better known in these parts as ulookarmless. I knew when I agreed to do it that I would...
View ArticleBottles of Joy and Chopin
The bottle that is not shared has only one friend. Both die empty and alone.Dogs want full bellies and the love of the pack. This is why they understand us so well.I never understood cats. I have owned...
View ArticleMilk and Honey and the War On Christmas
Roasted, fried, baked in bread, Fatness, fullness, frosted, fed. Spread with butter on a roll, bitten, chewed, swallowed wholewith gravy.That is your recommended daily allowance of rhyming.Food is the...
View ArticleLooking Away, Looking Up
I do not know how we will pull ourselves back from an ignorant plunge into the abyss.Our poisoned politics push forward the poisoning of the planet. We get only one earth with no do-overs.Every human...
View ArticleLament for an Actor and Friend
Scott was late in finding his creative soul. He took a comic villain role and made the text sing. He entered eating a chicken leg. He tossed the spent bone over his shoulder. He understood the beat. He...
View ArticleMuddy Shoes
I wiped my shoes in the grass. The light was going. Day was flowing out and down below the blue-black drape.I left my shoes on the porch steps. The stiffness in my hands and legs reproaches me. I ask...
View ArticleI'm Wrong, I'm Right, Forgive Me
When you are wrong, a true friend and ally will tell you the truth. I am an expert at being wrong, a master of error. If I am wrong, tell me.We may disagree but still trust. Our hearts can get around...
View ArticleWhen the Maybe Comes at Night
In the twilight.There is a rustling in the standing corn. It might be a deer or a fat raccoon or maybe something else.There is a splash in the reeds at the far end of the mill pond. It might be a...
View ArticlePoetry Chapbook of DailyKos Comments, Vol. 2
When I post a poem on DKos, I always hope for lots of comments. I'd be lying if I said I didn't care about tips and recs, but I deeply appreciate the Kossacks who put forth the time and effort to tell...
View ArticleCorn Stubble
The garden was put to bed this morning. The tomato and squash vines, the cabbage roots and woody, overgrown kohlrabis were pulled and tossed on the compost pile.Weeding and bedding done I sat on a...
View ArticleIndigo Kalliope: Poems From the Left: The Loop of Asphalt
Kalliope Means "beautiful voice" from Greek καλλος (kallos) "beauty" and οψ (ops) "voice". In Greek mythology she was a goddess of epic poetry and eloquence, one of the nine Muses. Join us every...
View ArticleThree Turns of Seven in the Air
The wind pipes and hoots her cries of joy. The trees twist and quiver as she passes. She tears the hair of hilltops and ruffles the fur of a cattail marsh. The sailor man takes up her offer, a sup and...
View ArticleThree Turns of Seven in the Earth.
Scrubbing soil from potatoes and squash leaves mud in the sink. The sweet earth scent moves my memory to turning and tilling, the cool roots in dark mould, the deep, stout color, near black.I scoop...
View ArticleThree Turns of Seven in the Water
We carry the sea inside ourselves. We admire her from the safety of a blanket, perched high in the dunes, safe from riptides and undertows. Beyond the sandbars and shoals, where the green goes to blue,...
View ArticleThree Turns of Seven in the Fire
The birchbark tinders up, tearing into the kindling like a cat on a cod. Pine knots and split oak feed and fatten him. Confined in a ring of steel and sand, he cannot fend for himself.The sun is his...
View ArticleRolling in the Pan
I want to roll the words in the water and turn them like glittering flakes in the pan. They ought to sing and stomp, to bite and scratch and snap.Push in the spade and fling dirt in the air. A fool...
View ArticleThe Dog Who Sees Through Walls
My feet are floating a half-inch above the floor. My lips touch hers so softly. Her cheek, her hair, the side of her neck are like sunlight and new grass.The jingle of collar tags, a yap and the...
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