Poems

            after reading Japanese death poems I am against death, not dying, exactly, but death, the way we do it. We don’t do death, death does us. Death is not a temporary inconvenience, certainly not for the deceased. When it’s over, mourners want to get in the...

A ghost of dead Romans. A strange tree flowers and is cut down. Straight sidewalks, ancient dust. A bell rings and stops ringing. Drums resist being beaten but are beat anyway. The sticks rape the flesh of the drums. An old rabbi begins to grasp what is happening. The...

A man sinks beneath the water immersed in useless oxygen, and the fish flops on the beach, surrounded by wasted air. Death to the man is life to the fish and life to the man is death to the fish. Yet, each are elemental breathers, distilling oxygen from water,,...

the whole world the hole whirled toward reversals  a retreat a rally, a sally a recoiling finale  

I am looking for a word that speaks what cannot be spoken.    

I learn from past centuries. And why not? They knew a lot. I am not bigoted, not against the dead, not against quickless bodies, not against minds soaked with unfamiliar alphabets. The long gone teachers still teach; Ovid -  things are and are not what they seem,...

I was ten and new, out with town boys, my knowledgeable friends, singing exquisitely lewd songs, under the echoing Wolf Creek bridge, songs about girls and beer, things we knew little about but didn’t know we knew little and wanted to know more. We were comrades in...

When does so much and so many become too much and too many?  

The flowers of grief are bitter and sweet. They taste of storms, marigold pollen, fire, home, and distances. The bee flies far from the hive on its twofold task of nectar and pollination. The flower blooms its spring-long sigh then shrivels in summer’s heat. The honey...