growing up in fear

a black man told a black boy
that the police kill black kids
all the time
just like him

you know that, right?
no, the child said
the man told him
they do
the police kill black boys
the child looked scared
no, he shook his head
yes, they kill black boys like you
who don't listen their to their parents
and the police come
and kill them

and the white girl passed by quietly
not sure the child was old enough
for this truth

SIX

she did not pause
nor stand still.

she remained in constant motion
to make sure precise memories would not fall onto her.

Five

wonderment 

about what it would be like
to hear and feel your own

...///\\\...---___---...///\\\...
shapelessness

Four

what would you call

a hiker 

who did not go all the way thru.

cul de sac / dead end hiker?

Three

i am forward folding on my desk chair
bending at the hips to look
down at my toes
one is clothed
in a two-toned brown sock
and one is naked, nude
down to the bone.

Two

the way the sky looks at certain moments
during earlyish afternoons in late winter
makes me wish I could push through the glass
of my bedroom's window
and fly, floating. I would hover peacefully above the
already dingy accumulations of precipitation.

One

the water rose,
so did the caskets.
one by one
corpses inside coffins
floated up, through the flooded Earth

to slowly surface above ground.

thru hiker #3

"i'm not really into camping"
she revealed.
I watched her fill her canteen
at the spring
just feet from where i urinated moments ago
then why would you attempt to hike 2,000 miles?
i wondered to myself
i hope you like piss water
more than you like camping.
when you're done hydrating
do us all a favor
and
please go home.

thru hiker #2

"Top of the morning to you!"
"I'm sorry. Vhat?"
Some greetings don't translate
even on the Appalachian trail.

my posture is never good enough
always catching my back in pain
trying to support my head
too hunched over

you look up at me with sad eyes
hoping for forgiveness
you're never good enough
and i'm angry because of it

For Tom it started at 30.

A baby, a business, bread

always to pull from the oven.

Rick asks logistics

filler or intel

how important are the machines,

do you know the formulas?

Recipes you mean?

Yes all the pastry gets pulled

the night before.

Keep the spirals fingertip clean,

crimp the edges with a fork.

Is hell an overcoat and tiny dog, 

a downtown bistro with no meatless salads.

Or are you a lounge singer on a cruise ship

who passes all the primo fishing spots

and never gets to dock - -

Soothe me

Hand on your barrel chest
my words circle around you
not knowing quite where to land
in acrid air.

my cracked heels
your pistol wit
and sand scruff.

quick to the trigger
let's meet at a fixed point.

moisturize, moisturize, moisturize.
tell me the good one.

the stock gun and lotion metaphor.
you find in every love poem.

mmmmmmmmm.

Haiku

Sweetnlow packets

She piled high on display

but I’m left empty.

A poem out of season

When is a poem ready to be picked
from its brambling vines?

If you slice it open and it's seedless.

If you see it
lazing in the shadow of itself
squandering its heat from lunch time sun

If it sits in the palm of your hand
and shrinks second by second

A poem that has clearly gone bad
Yes--now it's ready to be eaten.

BOBBY PINS

Do they drive you crazy crazy

the trails of women

amidst the good dog’s hair

anger, like in an Updike paperback

lethal  with vacation sand

is there anything to be done

like forgiveness, like sweeping

to merge the mess

or make an asterisk

something that won’t 

look worse

in daylight.

MAKING BREAD

I’m not good yet. Every time they have to tell me the steps again.

Sometimes I form snakes, or spliffs. Sometimes the cuts aren’t deep enough.

I don’t want to know, but I want to be good. I want a natural way.

You tell me with your eyes closed that you like to watch me

concentrate.  Fold clothes, lashes low. So I move slow –

fold and place and lift back up.

Balance trays, one arm, burnt buzzing.

Pat my hair. Laugh loud so the splash

will carry past the customers

right through the flour 

plumes.

WANTING TO WRITE A LIST

wanting to write a list remembering once driving with Alanna North into the mountains at night high on Stewart’s National Coffee Day coffee gushing as we turned old curves as we’ve known each other and love before and I was loving her for knowing me for being my old calm friend and frogs came down with the water as I told her how I’d been thinking how you probably don’t need me and we agreed that that might be ok maybe good my list my list  your laugh both when it is light and polite and when it is helpless and goofy like a kid the smiling lines at the corner of your eyes I look at your face to see the old man and he is young

ATTENTION RESOLUTION

The paragraphs take on cliff shapes, engulfed by a carpal tunnel time bomb tick tock hello alexa new mystery gadget next to neglected plants – aren’t we are all so innocent of our sins – the types of jewels that fill our potholes. Electric unlikely. And answers to questions. Algorithm lullabies. What is the temperature? Who is Nica Horvitz? Where should she go tonight? Who made you?

RYAN

My voice is a low boil his a cuckoo clock on opiates

gentle thing he shows me the glossy girls he’s known

and we scheme a life. Sacred are the funny ones,

the sunshine after its been put to bed.

DREAM BAR

It’s nice it’s dark

the music is selected

by the memory and hunger

of fidgety hands

the ice is smooth middle of the road

outside there is a junction, medium busy

and when you’ve stayed too late

the air is freshest

there is no social code exactly

but you will be ok

not Cheers, not Cha Cha

not about coffee (I’d like to drink my coffee at home)

not about dinner (I’d like to have eaten already)

but lots of excuses to stay

including coffee, including dinner

there are booths there are windows

there are people you know people you don’t

a song comes on that aerates

the diagonal cave

between your sternum and heart

you look around for the culprit

and the culprit is the sum

another universe

at last