This Present Labor

maritime fog envelopes stuff 

full O slow train, O head lamps 

O workers decked out 

in reflective orange and hard hat 

safety trained, bobbing breath

O, Oceanus breathes wet

slips away to blue, to gulls, O bellow 

horns, drywallers crack jokes 

below, the concrete men

screwing around between task

and the wrapping up, resorting

to resolve, spending time

through yule and aching hands

the open present

O children, behold!

_______________

Friday writings 207: in between

A View

pools of light puddle, collect

on banks, on bars, the business district 

in grounded constellation, to gaze down 

for lode star, to see signs never fixed

always fixing, aquarius laying 

out words for us on soft knit 

we nest, backlit 

who sees us settle 

behind paned storm glass, a veil

threats to tear, or so we seam

__________________________

dVerse: Come sew with me

The Lost Tablet of Enkidu

softly running waters never 

question whose cold body 

is that, or why the tears

or reveal what game 

horror froze the deer

lake mirrors seldom 

reject reflection, untamed 

virgin eyes break 

surface tension

as washing 

not for slaughter, fleshlier

shredding pierced pelts to bend 

her hunting ear, she stands

dripped to the waist

nose to the sun

when the pouncing is done

the daily grind, reduced 

to old predation 

by spreadsheet

she blinks 

dry, holding an empty 

pink hand soaked 

in perfume to milk 

the mind, disrobed, then 

in quick epic feat 

we meet a god sweating 

over luxury brands

_____________

This started as an attempt to sonnet (something I never do), but I hated it. 

So, I gave it the old line break treatment, and made peace with it. 

______________

The Lost Tablet of Enkidu

softly running waters never question
whose cold body is that, or why the tears
or reveal what game horror froze the deer
lake mirrors seldom reject reflection
untamed virgin eyes break surface tension
as washing not for slaughter, fleshlier
shredding pierced pelts to bend her hunting ear 
she stands, dripped to the waist, nose to the sun

when the pouncing is done, the daily grind
reduced to old predation by spreadsheet
she blinks dry, holding an empty pink hand
soaked in perfume to milk the mind
disrobed, then in quick epic feat we meet
a god sweating over luxury brands

_________________________________

Friday Writings #206: Everybody Scream

Salad Days

the garden is a racket
of praise, worms whistling

through roots, tapping 

a jaunty compost tune

it’s delightful to hear

such industry at work

the soil echoing 

their anthology

of scrap, peddling

under the bedding

chanting grounds

shells, skins, shavings

these are salad days 

feasting on once

energetic flesh

serving to sing

and teach muscle 

and shovel, a song 

to make it 

abundantly clear

that no body 

goes unsung

_______________________

Open Link Night 397: Abundance 

Coleman Stove

a little pitter pat of getaway romance

in melting yellow sun, we rolled together

each in our olive drab flannel bags

close enough that the stray tentacles

of your strawberry gray hair

flirt with my eyelash and nose

we stretch and roll 

out under honest purple mountains

that majestically mirror lake 

and sky and butter stick packaging

our field guides open in morning’s

grass pasture, goldfinches too

are here for salted songs and delicate 

footfalls by the AM’s cooing light 

downy milk pours from white hilltop

sweet cream churned by antler 

soon, a blue flame will tickle

the underbelly of the old

green two-burner

Coleman stove

and as from a magic 

black top hat, I will pull 

peppered eggs

and buttered toast

_________________

Friday Writings #205: Food as Ritual

Why the Children are Yelling 67

they pitch foreign coins and .22 shells, they pile on each other until madness takes an arm and twists it back and the scoundrel howls uncle, they play they love to congregate against our wishes, splash and track November mud into classrooms, pouring their minds into losing their native language deciphering adult talk pleases them, they listen like architects with an ear for secret chambers and fire escapes and drills for active shooters, the kids duck and cover, cower under atomic numbers while the sensible grown ups goose step and holler repent storm capitols with idiot chants, yelling Geronimo they push the grand experiment off the cliff, spittle-lipped screaming at children what to do with their hands put them up, slap cuffs behind back, against wall and still, after all the years the evangels stay perched on their stoops, ravenously pointing down at the least of these, squawking their beastly six-sixty-six _________________________ Writer's Digest November Poem a Day

dVerse: Poetics: 1,2,3…Go!

Cosmetic Damage

all that paper skin circling the eyes 
gives in first, it claws its way 

from the corners as time marches
its trumpets over your dermis

get cool with the crumbling 
temple, or get obsessed

with tighteners and tossed treasure
to see yourself swimming
 
in the fountain at a city square
where women emerge uncracked

surgeons applaud their faces
with dotted lines, marvelous

one suspects it’s a fine line 
between bloom and reborn

no stem-cell serum 
can remove
your scars, which are 
the body’s memory

it’s not like you
can massage a filler
into the crevices and forget
 
the profound sorrow
in a rejuvenated wrinkle

______________________

Friday Writing #204: The most expensive garment

Still Life

mid signature, the ink

disappears, tearing

through the dotted line

surely the lawyers can 

piece together

what I meant, in print

it’s legible, shaken

but my legal name

and hers, I scream

it into the axe

and dried oak

over and over 

it’s not like winter

to wake up and walk

away, the meterologists

count down hours

until the blizzard

it will be a white out 

on the skids

when I pull over, let her out

drive off, rehashing

every time I measured twice

cut once, and fell short

_______________________________

Friday Writings #203: Things you hate

In Umbra

it’s the hours you have
to practice being dead
 
your ears fingering the air
for any feathered scratch

it is how you starve 
for a candle’s 
sweet, close company
a conversation 

with its light interrupted 
by coughing shadow

until the wisps
drift quietly away

the new darkness 
invites you to open 

your eyes to the 
deep earth above

_______________________________

Friday 202: What I love about the dark

Cake Walk

words are known 

to gravitate towards graves

and chalkboards, slate

canvases ripe with abecedarian

scratching, billowing dust 

floating over the lesson 

soaked in stone, students 

and warm shovels, and always 

the work is present, the spirit

part law, part trick

crosses itself

stepping over the mound 

the fresh little mud loaf where 

dirty hands perform for answers

and tiny feet shuffle, elementary 

festival cake walk theatrics, daring 

the lucky one, jumping on twenty-four 

to rip open the shredded 

shirt, rend his ketchuped guts 

and collapse

to the asphalt, shrieking

“t’was the Baptists, 

the Baptists have halved me…”

the iced pumpkin muffins

outperform the pastoral 

scolding, he nods 

off in the back seat, hooked 

to death and conjuring

Houdini’s free falling alphabet

Friday Writings #201: On Halloween

______________________________________________
 

Instagram

It’s in the sitting, the unstudied control 
of your bent frame for the light, the eye

batting hair unblown 
the aerobatic housefly’s 
derring-do, unswatted 

all the world zigging, it’s all 
in the sitting, the sitting

for the generational blessing
of a stern visage with flock
unattended, ten minutes

of unsmiling photons 
weaving silver waves, clashing 
on copper plates, a one hundred

and eighty year wait 

for just a shade
of your face

Friday Writings #200: To the power of 10

___________________________________________________

Unpenned

you could say we lost our child
or heaven gained an rogue, or parents’ bodies
doubled and shaking mimic the broken stalks
of a species native to hell, or say Christmas 

cards languish unpenned 
in shamanic silence, tucked 
in a box of locks 

you can say we gained a PIN code
pecking out grief’s numerology, attached 
to every account, every transfer reborn 
and wet like fine hair freshly emerged

but, whatever you say, say enchiladas 
are still enchiladas, and music
is still loud enough to stir the ash
and see the moon and say, “the moon!”

say statistics are coughs, and say we
are side-eye dancing, glancing 
into oblivion, you could say

when hands are held tightly
to keep ourselves up, it’s the guts 
that punch back, or you

could say that is a bold face
for a lotus in December 

_________

Friday Writings #199: gut-punch 

Allhallowtide

On the horizon, thin and without reason

October scribbles across the sky in empty limbs

        a pinch from a preseason tyrant—the month                 coughing like a blade retracting

behind a black curtain, disease haunts the stage

shadows long, so certain, so long, everybody 

        burning summer’s sickly sonnets

                in fires barely hot enough to choke smoke

the children contemplate half-emerging skeletons

on the beach, they do not know their parents

or which few of them will pull through

        as the tide pulls back, October reveals 

                bony white reflections in the salty water

there is no votive, no hymn 

for their wordless struggle

_____________________________

Friday Writings #198: October Writes

Tools

we’ve all been goat-shrubbed
bearded with salt, brothers in gray

eventually the night will be enough 
to delight our empty bowls
after all, what’s left

for four common subjects 
who will one by one step off
this green pedestal
from which we peered
into each other’s years

dad’s yard fading to beige
what did those tools do anyway

who will hide his keys
the snub-nosed .38, now
who was whose keeper

Friday Writing: Poets and Storytellers United

September Clocks In

ants go side-by-side, ark style 
across the sink, called in
 
by the autumnal deluge 

of their little ant genesis

a nomadic gulch 

twig-shadowed and dank 

carries the fluff

of the last goose

the hayrides of tobacco, mugs

and blankets trot across the bridge

the football boys are 

pushing fire and stolen

cabinet liquor, the ritual

of binge-watching a leaf 

nature and cinnamon rhyme 

like dawn and apparitions

the fundamental work of powerline 

squirrels is the last real industry 

until winter hijacks 

our mortal ears

(Friday Writings #196: Hello Fall!)

Excite Your Palate with Meat Mania

when the flavor of the highways

and beelines gets too much

and the salt of wandering lines

crusts over your tongue

beg a little pepper off the sun

a sufficient bubble 
will break forth great rains

and sin will ice your veins
leaving you hungry
for a palate of two 

by two and glittering
giblets by the scoop

a common heat spells out the cuts
of pigeon grit and sidewalk guts

and when you stand on dry ground
face the heavens and throw up

your resounding grace 
for a scraped gray plate
and bowl bursting with
everflowing returns

of a meat soaked meat 
and eyes scraping
barren fields
for daily wheat

 (Give Us This Day Our Daily Spam Feb. 9, 2025)

Y0UU HAAVE BEEEN PAlID 1OOO.OO DlREECT T0 Y0UUR ACC0UUNTT

your bread so abundant you must

dangle it like a price tag to the kingdom

but I’m not buying it, my hands

rest palm down, for so long

receiving was always a whisper 

of last night’s moon

I’m past that, promote whatever 

funding hums, it’s your paper 

balance your gift

in the wind, we know 

your payout is a glare

so forgive me if

my silence is thick, stacked

with side eye, ain’t nobody

ever gave me nothing, keep it

that way, your transaction

idles, nothing comes

from nothing and nothing

will come of it nohow

that is how

my bread rolls

down my street

unpaved on account

of nobody

(Give Us This Day Our Daily Spam Feb. 8, 2025)

__________________________________________________________

Thinking of resurrecting my Give Us This Day Our Daily Spam project where I use my email's spam inbox as a writing prompt, using words from the email in the poem and the subject line as the title. We'll see how it goes.

Reformation

sand cascades from the cathedral
a shard of green glass taxes 
the thumb, flesh has no parallel

so close to the ocean, possibly save
the seaweed pods that pop so crunchy 

charred fences return 
to float off, these are hard days  
for soft structures

the circle surrounding the steeple
fills slavishly with foam
one must laugh theologically
watching wafting water

pull the work and treasure 
out beyond outstretched arm 

this collapse, this laborious loss
is in harmony with buoyant souls

re-forming to skim 
over the weight 
again, and again the

————————-

for Poets and Storytellers United: joy in chaos

The Nose

silent about face, it alone 
can cause humming hair

to stand, back when hair

fought scale and fin

when summer drenched

sweat, the body beat

the rain to the punch

reptilian, hissing

straight to the brain

as if it were the surviving crone

snoring cantos of our names

without use of spine or nervous 

system, this means maggots 

bathed in putrid meat

the predators draw near

this probe can grab smoke

or decay, remove it, sure

leave discernment to the crow 

in verse of feathered caw

unhallucinatable, it knows 

the olfactory assumptions 

once a caravan, once a sum

savior while eyes struggled 

for awareness in deep caves

there, tadpole, the sea 

and scent of salty cream

so thick you taste it

--------------------------------

dVerse: The optician's words (I think I used them all, or at least variations of :)

A Good Return

among the forward, our fervor holds
serpent human and orchid 
go set against each other

so wonderful then, a companion 

to lounge beneath strange trees 

roots like tongues tangled 

where words falter, what is blood 

when we have branches

a fig, a frond, inside jokes

knowing nods for gentle ribs

when fire blooms into the sky 

magma crust and vine

we will chuckle in verse

cling to petals, unmoved

daring each other to go first

_______________________

Writer's Digest Wednesday Prompt: Friends

No Nothing

a thunderhead loomed
like a warship sheltered 
in a storm-lashed port

with it, firepower to burn

it all down—the sparrows

 

swooped around the pink elms

snails so calm, I slept 

to research god’s intentions

the hint of rupture 

moved on, as we all 

suspected

____________

in response to d'Verse: take a hint

Incessantly

in the arterial light hullabaloo 
the veins are awake at night
scrolling like ants out past dark

 

the old gargoyle dampness

of intentions gives way 

to mud and smudges

the mirror into hours 

and how the brain

shrieks for pause, maybe

a heart still or silent ear 

please, mercy me 

marrow the mind

 

shut my eyes like lances 

poked through bone 

a stark reminder

for the need of bone

and deeper dream

barely present, I should 

pause the flare

of howling glass

touch cotton and learn 

the names of rivers over time

______________

Poets and Storytellers United: Friday Writing brain rot