Uncooked

 The soft puffs of cotton float

and flit outside my work-window 

where the walls of trees the 

size of skyscraper loom

large like varicose veins of 

wood, splintering to 

the idea of a blue expanse 

above, just out of sight

I know she is there, my mother 

in her robin's egg church dress, but

 I can't see the edge

 of the hem, just the veins 

of her legs, her tanned brown 

trunk and the hair on her 

knees

the puff of her perfume 

floats like cottonwood 

on the spring breeze 

dancing at the tops 

of the newly green trees 

Here we are again

 Here we are again 

Waiting for something special to happen 

Something out of the ordinary

A dance among the leaves

A plastic bag on the sidewalk 

A magical moment that no one, 

Not even you, will remember, as 

Fleeting as Jazz, the fingers on the

Frets, the black keys tickle under 

The chin, a little kiss from 

Grandma, a cold-lipped smooch

From a woman who will soon be

Underground, the magic of life 

is not lost on the living, it’s 

Lost on the dead, perceptionless 

What, if not

 What, if not, the tender 

tendrils of the night-blooming

jasmine to take away 

the hideous gaptoothed 

face of a winter witch; 

the siren song of 

hate the runs so cold

beneath the iceberg of

liberty and freedom --  

We are owed nothing 

and must rest on the 

shoulders of the dead 

who would no longer 

fight of us, even if we 

were alive, a pact with 

a past so far forgotten 

that even the speed 

of death has capitulated. 

The Limits To Your Love

 There's a limit to your love 

a coldness in the fitted sheet 

between us 

an eye-roll instead of a

sparkle 

no twinkle left for Daddy 

we watch our hands get washed

of the soil and dirt and clay 

of love, the place for it 

to grow, and what's left - 

what's left is the steel-

brushed sheen of metal 

the valves of a heart so hardened

that it has forgotten that it's not

supposed to have hinges 

that, instead, it should dance

and flow like the wisps of a

ballerina's dress, like the 

luminous tentacles of 

a jellyfish, electric light 

in a dark ocean abyss 

- each mechanical 

pump and pull another automatic 

sunrise, another two-dimensional sunset 

tightened by wires and gears and motors. 

I search for the switch on the side of 

a wax candle, trying to remember how to make light. 

Litte Woodrose - 1

 One 

I can still remember 

the first time I walked 

in the forest in Oregon

It defines green, more

green than Ireland or

than money, more green

than the ocean is blue.

I still remember the first 

hike on the path that 

we had never been on before,

we didn't know the curves

My son could barely walk 

and now, the forest is much 

smaller, calmer, tamer

No unknown stairs or 

crooked corners to lose

children or lose ourselves

just a small loop, like a high school track 

surrounded by houses and cars

and women sitting in the window

mocking me with their legs.  

To Forgetting

 My profound promise to myself

is I will never spend more time on a 

poem than it takes to remember it 

I have a bad memory, you see, 

and even in my 30s, I don't 

remember writing anything 

so I, and most likely 

only me, will find this 

little note and I 

will have no recollection

of writing it, what 

a joy it will be to 

find again, to remember 

the syrupy thin saliva 

in my young mouth 

and the thin viscosity

of my blood, full 

of sugar cereal 

and the hope that someday 

someone, who isn't me, 

will read this 

2024

 What, if not the dull vibrations of some offshore oil rigs or the occasional nooners with a married neighbor in the family changing room at the local YMCA, if not the undercooked boiled eggs at the all-nite diner near the airport, not the snot bubble on the nostril of an eight year old on the city bus and definitely not the chewing gum under the seats of the Griffith Observatory Planetarium; maybe even not the eyelash of a dead grandmother accidentally pressed between the pages of a paperback, stuck in boxes beneath a beach house in Santa Barbara, is left? 

 Left are the ever-present pidgins like the adopted and orphaned cousins of doves Left are the pallets of toilet paper in surplus from a dimly diminished demand 

 Left are the rights of those who didn’t have the lawyers or the insurance or the language enough to say the kind of care they need or even the epitaph they deserve 

 Left are the ones who didn’t live long enough to write their stories or who didn’t write well enough to have them read or who didn’t teach the children to read so that once they died so did all evidence of their lives 

 Left are the nameless shoes, the plastic bottles, the double-A batteries, the mountains of jacuzzi tubs and Toyota Corollas and flatscreen televisions 

 Left are these words, as a temporary tattoo on the mind and heart of yours, who will put the record of my life on every time they read it or think of it and let the taste under-boiled eggs or the YMCA or my name touch their tongues for a moment, just once, once again.

Glued Shut 

In the garage, when cut, 
My father would superglue his 
Wounds shut instead of getting 
Stitches and the wound would 
Wantingly work out the glue for years, 

Now, I wish he got those stitches 
Because, though I spend little time
In the garage, stitches heal cleaner;
They wouldn’t stick to my wounds 
Like the superglue shutting my heart

Oh that’s all 

Innumerable imaginary decadence like a party that is in the 34th floor of some nameless New York office with widely windowed berth 

The discomfort of knowing that you will never be invited to such a party, and that the reason it remains nameless is because it’s not your place to be 

A combination of cleverness and introspection balanced between 

the left side of the page and the right side 

of the page a fulcrum on the spine 

To lay with the crossed and furrowed brow — to lose years a city in France, or a small stream with a trickling waterfall just outside of Kyoto; 

I prefer these imaginary vistas to the bustling, hot and champagned corners of the 34th floor party

Though I may only prefer them, because I’ve never been allowed, even in my imagination up the elevator 

It’s time to find peace with my solitude to —find peace with the idea that may be the Japanese waterfall in my mind 

is enough