---

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Drown Out
 

God tries to fill
a church with light
He never
succeeds

Or maybe
He uses darkness
to accent
His point

The windows
bleed sun
It drowns out
the pastor

shifts focus
from the sermon
to Himself

A hundred souls
sequestered in pews
None listen

Each wonders
what God is doing
on His day off

next   /   top   /   to Moongate

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Paper Ballots
 

We elect wrapping paper
(No spit all polish)
Cellophane
(easily seen 
through)

because we don't 
know what 
could be lurking 
in opaque

So we vote the wrapping paper 
of our conscience
(unless there's namesake 
in Dad's wrapping paper)

The only issue is charisma
(What else?)
A smile, not too toothy 
(we don't want bite)

We don't want policy 
just heartfelt bravado
(Oh beautiful 
for empty words)

Always fearing 
that any more substance 
(than a spangled balloon)
might tip the static quo

  

next   /   top   /   to Moongate
 
 

   I like your picture Dora Maar.
   I would know you from it anywhere.
   Your green-red-rose, pale-white skin 
   a flawless union 
   awash in morning yellow.

   "I don't look normal."

   Your forehead is unafraid 
   of your steelgreen hair.
   Obedient in front
   and disciplined behind your shoulder.
   It is the choppiness of the Mediterranean 
   against a long deep pier.

   "You are a handsome idiot."

   Handsomeness is an attribute of idiocy.

   "All I ever wanted was beauty."

   You may have mine.
   I would rather observe 
   the conversation of your eyes 
   that stare into each other.
   One salmon, one white 
   as if you have two souls.

   "Only an idiot could find me beautiful."

   I find you perfect as a picture.
   Traipsing red nails on rigid fingers
   direct me to your lyric clef ear 
   like an invitation.

   "If one finds me beautiful
   no other critic matters."

   When I first saw your picture I wanted 
   to kiss it's strict nose with two left nostrils
   and free you from your sleep of canvas.

   "I long for your dumbstruck, perfect lips
   pressed against the one blandness of my face."

   Obtuseness is all that's worth kissing.

The devil is flanked 
by sixty seven thousand
eight hundred two in-
surance salesmen 'cause only 
God can market certainty
 

 
Hundred years ago
mama oak stood alone
in the summer
of a big flat wasteland

A someone
cut her knees
roughed her into boards
there chunked a human birthplace

Right beside mama
acorn grew
until the sharp summer sun 
never pierced a window

yet he blocked not a stream 
of genial light
in the razor air
of a January morn

Long as she stands so will he
as the tree
watches over
the house

 
come to my room
i have some grapes

they are wine in adolescence
red and green
blood and innocence
in this tiny fingered orb

hold it to the light
see the veins and freckles?

i split it 
with my precise teeth
it says "kitsch"
but we know it lies

i place the other half
between the promise of your lips
you bite
i'll kiss the sweetness dripping 
from your chin

come to my room
i have some life

I always had that problem of looking out the window.  I was kicked out of Algebra II in the 10th grade for it.  A few decades later, my cube has a view of a pine that gets irritated at the lightest of breezes.  There are passionate sunsets in the winter. And a constant flux of cars overtop of 90% of the asphalt in the valley.  They pay me to look out this window now.  Never underestimate how far your weaknesses will take you.  Sometimes I look out other windows.  I call that poetry.