Four Poems

 

Singing the Blurs

All this energy out of focus
falls to pieces that we swear by;
seeing is relieving.
Each ledge of land each of us owns
is like no other. We squat
on our honest crags hoarding a point of view.
"You dirty son of a bitch,
get your hands off my pine tree.
And that gem of a beast, I found.
If I lie, take my car."

But it may be natural
when rain threatens for human beings
to construct jigsaw puzzles --
the puddles could become scenic.
So many insights and perspectives
dropping from the sky draw
the electricity out of the planetary particle
and the static, the likenesses are
all we have to our names:
"I vow to always love you." However,

before we pretend that the sun rises
or breaks through clouds,
a witness must experience the reading
of clarity (do you follow me) to remind
and perhaps infect a friendship with like like like
and so this breath: during this busy day of walls of suns

 

 

 

 

The Monkey Tree

 

The monkey tree has no roots but at its end, it is planted. If you will, call it Will. Its limbs swing as though they were Tarzans and create a wind that dusts its trunk and twists jungle stories and song. The earth of the Earth makes room for the bulls that sleep in the monkey tree’s shadow, and empty spaces carry the birds that the monkey tree dreams about in its leaves. Its bark is toothy. And though its heart is pulp, its vision is knotty. A sap runs through it, and various species of primates suddenly appear on the tips of tendrils as though they were inventions (each worth a million dollars).

The family is now ripe to wake to its luxurious history, but has sown its route into a poet’s feat.

 

Immaculate Conceptions: Song

 

The sun tosses halos and wreaths
at the heads of poets and athletes
and then exposes itself and half
of the Earth. Daphne stands one

of many Dots crafting wooden rings
to stay alive. Shading herself
from the carnival creature, she holds
her breath all day, and each evening

her radiation bears the peace that permits
victims criminal acts. With a thin bark,
Dionysis in brilliant wise guy regalia
ignites the moon. His bite is a progeny

of wolves, and his whim splits women
within a light beam’s reach. Conscious
of everything that arrives and leaves,
she empathizes with the routes of the limbs

in time. A planet’s nests of nerve endings hatch:
The Poplar sisters, the jammed women jarred
again and again by men, and the cosmopolitan
eves dammed by orchard walls.

 

 

Playing with Matches

 

1

The sun’s rays are gathered the night
before and used as magic wands
in plumbing’s dark corner of outer space.

 

2

Or lumberjacks splinter the eternal
flame into slivers of future and box
them in a drawer for the palms of hands.

 

3

The lamp posts and logs for cabins are one
when the utopian town requires glue.

 

4

The tough toothpicks shim
the corners of mouths to strike
up proposals of marriage to girls.

 

5

The cool head on a stick figure 1
has the potential for brilliance.

 

6

A sulfur spark illuminates
with incense the kitchen’s altar.

 

7

Sulphur balls serve as hors d’oeuvres
to the meal of tobacco.

 

8

The friction of the weather and our
not even naked bodies ignites
so many variations on an idea.

 

9

Satan dances along a struck stick,
a fuse.

 

10

Firefighters are sleeping miles
away as dull kids in a bedroom
practice poor parenting.

 

11

The spent miniature torch is flicked
to the gutter where the drunk,
continuing his romance, has
his liver eaten out.