1. Kokopelli

Tumbling gray clouds 
come clothed in a bundle
of rhythmic chords
as Kokopelli comes. 
Coming closer.

In his back pack 
tricks of his trade,
flesh of green leaf
seeds, willow 
sprouts.

Knocking around 
the hollow of his 
hunched back,
moss like string, 
rich new shoots, 
scruffy fluff, 

all those things
that  make a bird sing. 
He tramps over  fields 
of slush, leaving puddles 
in his tracks looking 
for possibilities hidden 
beneath frozen ground.

Kokopelli is early this year 
looking for a place to plant 
his patch of Spring.

2. End of World Hunger Day

The ‘festival’ (which didn’t happen)
Did not take place on Friday the 13th.
Poets did not read, slides weren't shown. 
The best 100 rock bands did not play. 
Concession stands weren't staffed 
And the people who didn't  yell and clap 
Did not leave hungry which was a good thing 
Because there were no police there
To prevent a riot.  Donations will continue 
To be received. Tickets will still be sold
On a first come not served basis.

Please post this notice as a public
Service announcement until the date
Already mentioned fritters itself away.

3.The Wave

What can I say, I somehow
feel dirty? You wouldn’t
understand.  We smile.
I kiss your cheek, everything 
has been divided most equitably. 
No regrets. We both tried hard 
but trying is not succeeding.
No one is to blame.

And so, for you the end is everything; 
a rainbow’s  bolt of madly curving 
colors bending down toward you 
with a mythical pot of sunshine
at its end.

For me, a vast expanse of dirty waves
covers everything except this imperfect piece 
of jagged sanity I teeter on.

Snagged -
our love  is a tumbling weed  carried 
by the tides descent, itself deconstructing  
into a universe  of muck. Wherever  I walk 
I sink, am sucked into the gaping mouth 
of my own muddied  failure.

All things melt their own way.
I wave hoping you wave back, 
not wanting this parting 
to be remembered painfully, 
thinking:

ours is a world of always beginning again, 
making out of nothing something come.

To A Critic

Words fall where they may...
lines meander in a drunken
sort of way your patterns 
of sound are clever I admit...
but when it comes to substance
you're not as swift.

The Hurricane

A freezing rain  your force 
upon me, a dark cruel wind 
blowing everywhere at once. 
My mind frightened, quivering,
not wanting to believe, searching 
for a safe place to hide as  body 
breaks into fragments
no longer part of me.

What did I do or say? 
Something rank hides
behind the beautiful mask 
of your face, your heaving, 
muscled chest, your breath
smelling of mountain meadows 
and stream.
Despite the sparkle 
in those deep, blue eyes, 
no sky fathered you, 
up from muck
and the putrid, 
seething abyss of hell
you came to climb.

Take what you came for
I will not give it freely,
the shivering you feel in me 
is not from  fear, I am forever changed 
by hate. Wherever I go, 
whomever I lay against, 
my fury in anger will search
you out in them.

4. After 1945

in an overpowering geography
carved from a century of wars
let us be done with absolutes
the black and white of things

from marble into ruble into skyscrapers
that will turn to ruble, nothing lasts

Rising and falling, there are no great wars,
no tiny wars only horrible ones, each a hateful fist 
in your face slamming into the teeth
of  preconceived ideas making all our pasts
impotent.

No pure race no pure thought no pure people
no pure art no pure poetry no good war
worth destroying  over.

The only war worth dying for is inside of you
and you will know it when it comes to that.