At Ease

The days easier.

The disease has rolled
Off like the leaves and nuts
Slide off parked cars
When the rain sways.

Washed away in a flood of

Grace.

One Rainy Night

Soft taps
On the tattered roof
Boom into full
Drum corps rolls
As the
Out-of-season
Monsoon
Opens up
A beleaguered heart
To her humans,
Ever-welcoming shoulders.

Her sighs,
The cold flurries;
Her tears,
The piercing rain.

Saying goodbye,
Her woes
Leave us
New songs.

My Daughter's Daisy

A yellow daisy
Greets my revival
Onto a drab
Saturday morning.
Assaulted
By vivid light
Bouncing off eight
Grooved petals
And a fluffy darker core.

It would be
Just any flower
Queued for
The thoughtless
Wither
If not for
The fact, a fact
That formed worlds
And shed blood
Divine,

That it was plucked
In the throes
Of light
And love
By my smiling child.

Warden

every moment chained

and

coiled to its siblings

wherein I breathe

in

the Spirit's hovering

is all of grace

for

I am alive

and drunk

and all is well

for God is both

up

and here

in the quagmire

with me

Alive on Metaphysics

I would rather
Be the greased-up rocker
Floating like a rag
On the streets of the metro
Grinning for nothing
But maintaining
A mind to dwell on
Metaphysics

Than any respectable fellow
About to pop
From affluence but
Missing something
The one thing
That looks living in the eye
And enlists the bloke
In the affairs of the King
Making living
Into something
None other than
Living

Box

The rigid play
Of lines
On a box
No deviancies
But a consistency
An integrity
That I burn for
A daily clamor
That keeps my eyes
Opening upon
Every lifting of
The curtain
On the light parade
Which is reason
Not enough
But the only one

To be boxed in
By schemes
That slay
The old hunkered
Down habits
By ones that make for
Immortality

Living Water

Ah, yes, the view is crystal
From down here where the bugs
Ramble.

Up the canyon the clouds
Swirl and the blue
Expanse course
Through my throat--parched
--like thawed ice.

Parody

Life is a pardody of life

When mouths are poison arrow frogs

When the job pays but the candle burns

When your woman plays the frog too, croaky

When lately silence is the best jazz in weeks

But life indeed must be laughed at for

What is funnier than me thinking of

Me as

Somebody

My Kitty

Have you ever walked the streets
And stopped for a while to wade
In a well-timed gush of cool wind
When suddenly, at your feet, a kitty
Rubbing her face against your ankles
Catches you wide-eyed and warmed?

How fearless, you think to yourself.
How small but with a heart big enough
To trust this towering alien.
How against all instinct of flight
She came not for just anyone--but you.

She really is a pretty one, you muse,
Stooping to stroke her face, her back,
Her belly, and her sides. You decide
To cup her gently in your robust hands
And bring her home, knowing
As cats often do, that she might
One day stand aloof, away
From the heart and hands
That penned these words.

Creating You

This poem is for nothing more than
Words let loose like ants in ordered panic
After the boot has heaved their heavenly earth
From off its Babel form.

No necessary theme.
Bereft of crafty schemes.
Just words.

I can think of dripping honey
And a three-day slumber.
Ah, beautiful words.
Anything to fuel creation.

It's all about creation.
Procreate and produce.
Not just any trifle fart, but the real.
The you. Create the you.
In your words speak worlds
Into being.

Like dripping honey and a three-day slumber.

Bukowski

As I watch Bukowski be himself,
Seeing how genius fluorished
In a pot of flaming earth, scorched
By the man who would normally be called father
But in this case gnawing pestilence;
How in his escape from the whipping and
From the marring of human clay, disfigurement,
Into a world where despair was lifeblood
And the glimmer of gold in the bottle was
Communion with the gods;
Amidst the parade of flesh, too late in coming
Yet too soon to fade, from where many moons
Shone, both in the whisky sky and rooms
Dank and ailing--I recognize
Creation, art, intellect, and the bruised child
Held like a delicate bud in Hands
That meant for words from wounds--upward,
Glorious and etched in forever--to fly.
And I am better off for it.

The Pumpin' Stinger

The lords of the world demand blood
To the exclusion of gardens green
And the occasional bee sting.

But do paint me a picture of this magnetic lush
To hang on my wall and keep me inside
The halls of sanity for a less bumpy ride.

Horse Smell

I wish you
A plane crash
Just when you're feeling
All white and one

A nasty plunge
Into
A blackened
Steel-thorned forest
Alone

I wish you
Stripped
Of your vestments of pomp

Yeah

See those imps
Coming they come
To claw
Their way through
To pretty hypocritical you

Scream soaking wet
Run to escape
The laughter of a million peeks
Bar the doors
Burn out the lights
Still inside
Pungent whore smell reeks

All Over the Place

Heavy and dark
I sleep and try
This toilsome cloak
From my soul to pry

Yet when slumber cracks
Escape denied
Still I lack
N'integrated mind

A branch loose
From the Vine I am
So must I again
Be entwined

Coffeelation

I've discovered the truth
That for coffee to kick,
It must be downed,
Hot and quick,
In one fell swoop.

I Am Pleased

I am cross-legged behind a computer.
Looking to my left, I spot asleep
My wife, crouched like a cave over
David, a sharpened arrow fashioned
In the swirling mass of glory that
Is the mind of God.

The bright pools that are Sophia's eyes,
Her wavy hair blacker than any black
I've seen on hair and the way
She is her name, these please me.

I breathe in the air of a gift opened.
That waft of love that is the upward
Curve in the lips of Him who makes men
Through the love of them--and I am pleased.