The Rhythm is a Dying Storm

we have never hugged 

a mast like we do tonight 

we can plot the points all night 

correlate, correlate 

pause and punctuate 

your breath has become a unstringed harp 

what is it there for 

it is just an empty curve 

a fallen bow 

addressing a regression 

toward the mean, I tap out

a stanza about a stiff mouth 

that exhales its blue-eyed flies, you turn 

the television up 

volume is the mood, the pace 

of twenty five years 

rolls in a slow wake 

which of us 

will dare to invite a loom 

to visit our dream and spin 

for us

a sail 

____________________

Weekly Scribblings #30: Writing as a Metaphor for Living

Pandora, stranded

at a Mobil station

just outside of Phoenix

in a gold Cadillac Beyond, she

brushes her hair, blowing

the stray strands from her face

disobedience isn’t a door 

that needs to be 

kicked in, it’s a popped trunk

before she commits, she checks 

her make up in an oyster-flip mirror 

catching her best angle and pout, she snaps 

a selfie to add to her story 

barefoot in a pearl sheen sundress 

she throws the trunk open

and waits for a billion likes, she knows 

all evil needs is good people 

to stand by and watch 

no one watches 

no one is good

___________________

Writer's Digest 531: Write an inside poem

Primordial

we were soaking in the firmament

reminiscing about our favorite eon

granted I had too much to drink

and it didn’t mix with the mussels

I decayed before you, you shrugged 

I took a vomit in the pond, chum

for the turtles

the blue light of your eyes 

lit the grass, you ran your hands

through the blades, running 

your fingers through earth’s soft hair

your eyes shed only pity

my protests lacked vocal precision 

I just wailed and watched you float away

my toenails grew like devastation 

the air slept sour on my tongue 

for billions of years, I just sat 

night after ill night, sentimental

clouds worked the light, minnows 

darted silver singing witness, witness 

but you left me 

foaming at the mouth,

living the dream, stirring 

the emergence, you missed it 

the beginning of everything 

my breathless declaration 

drowned out by slushing of 

a fish with an opposable thumb 

dragging itself over the stones

_______________________

Weekly Scribblings #28: Seeing Things

The River

tilting for the dive, the noon sun

squints, rocks rise from the cliff 

    to meet my cannonball

the bulb spills open on the stony wall

water, teeth, swill and spit

    vertebrae fly, flail, drown

glass-eyed immobile

swimming in the blue

of the surgeon’s gown

__________________

dVerse Quadrille 107 - Blue Monday

Breaking Roots

the sewer clean-out 

backed up, the unholy flood

of waste, hair, soap, 

shit-logged sails, and snot gurgles

like a Hieronymous Bosch nightmare baptism 

it flushes ants down the ravine, I should dig

for the break, to see what knotted fist 

of juniper roots chokes the line 

but my only shovel 

is rusted and supple, 

my grandpa’s shovel 

on mornings like this, he would microwave 

already scalding coffee, slip into his overalls 

like he was reclaiming his one true skin 

wrench his hands 

into diesel scented gloves

with a whistle, he would declare the work 

to be done and start digging, today 

I’m just standing here, 

barely breaking ground 

I watch ants wonder what ant god 

abandoned them, my son still

asleep on the couch, the weed 

resin nestled in his cold pipe   

the morning’s coolness succumbs 

to the encroaching heat, I close my eyes  

visualizing the path

 

from the garage to the well house

and the shelf that held

an old Foldger’s coffee tin 

half empty of crystalline

root killer

_____________

Wednesday Poetry Prompts 530: "where you are"

Rooster Gone Preening

I was a poet as rooster in a Nissan Sentra  

hair all Billy Idolized and i-don’t-care, preening

 

in rearview mirror, wet-footed rooster 

posing as poet with a little Frank O’Hara 

under my belt, gone lovestruck strutting 

with hand-sharpened Ticonderoga #2

I would set her by a creek, on a landlocked gondola 

set lunch before her in a thatched oat 

straw cottage with black tea

 

Djarum clove smoke dripping from our lips 

lazy eyed, we would cloudburst

and swig an aperitif of misbehaving 

I rolled around with that slack-jawed 

Guenevere long enough 

poet enough to know that a rooster will 

gaze at his betrothed until the sugar burns off

_____________________________

Weekly Scribblings #27: Things Were Different Back Then

Damn, I Miss Merle Haggard

when young, piss ran through my veins

engines ran rough rutted roads

hot flags whipped adrenaline 

tight fists, fresh biceps, unsure of growing old 

but life dealt from a strange deck 

muscle tore down to quietly

build a highwayman alone 

hoss sits lotus on the silent side of me

__________________________

Writer's Digest - Endecha: Poetic Forms

Inflated: Another Ode to the West Wind

(apologies to P. Shelley)

inspiration, you render the body susceptible, 

lingering unseen, hovering over the intake valve, 

opening heavy, inhospitable doors to imagination’s brain 

nothing taps at the window like isolation, falling

in a single droplet, a teardrop of unsuspecting rain

breath, you render the body a bomb, ticking

in irregular beats and latent clots

like a tornado pouncing on the city, bumper traffic 

blocking flow, symptomatic of a stoppage, 

a moment’s pause to clutch a fistful of shirt

in times like this, one could pray 

for an asymptomatic jaguar, to roam 

the street, so one could imagine a windbreak,

a tomb, to block the hurt

but the hurt, hospitalized in the cells, 

spins like a devil, no barrier 

for a breathing silence, 

a ghost gone extrovert

inspiration mutates into expiration, 

a labored exhale roaring over a patch of 

recovered interior terrain

disparate, inspiration sneaks 

into the ICU, the irony of seeing no one, 

none, but one, stranded 

on an island of beeping desert

wind, this is the chest inspired, rising 

for the city, rising for the bed, rising 

for the jaguar, rising for the ghost, rising 

beyond bomb blast of chart status: deceased

this is the chest filled 

with Wordsworth’s wind, 

an inspiration to expiration, 

home again, to Ithaca, 

by Aeolus’ strong ventilator 

and westward breath:

Be through my lips

to unawaken'd earth

_____________________

Poem structure inspired by Idaho Professor Creates COVID-19 Model To Inform Social Distancing Policies

Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 529

write a pandemic poem