starting with a whimper/haiku

Gas Station Coffee:

Scalding with utility,

you gag then you go.

The Hour Is Lost

Where does the hour we lose

In the air

Go.

Does it settle onto the bags

Beneath our eyes, and droop them down,

Even further? 

Keep a close eye on my watch.

Well, by watch I mean 

The clock readout 

From my cell phone.

Check with me, every few minutes, we are the picture of vigilance.

All looks OK. 

Seconds still climb and tick, time stays its course.

And yet the instant the disproportionate wheels bounce

Then skid along the earth,

Watch the clock jump. 

An hour in an instant. 

So my best guess is, the tarmac.

The hour slid out from the vents

Above all our slumping heads with a whoosh just as we touched down.

Patterns repeat

Cowboy, thank you
for the reminder.

And thank you, as well
for letting me break in
to the snuggle.

To grow gracefully more
articulate, more friendly,
more fascinating, to grow
stones that grow shoots
and backyards of figs,
grow on, cowboy, grow
the way you been growing.

I love these people, my friends
and relatives,
whether they store my boxes
or pile their boxes around me.
We have a lot to unpack.
We have a lot to give.
We have a lot to look at and say,
well, that was then, and thanks.
If a bug's on the floor, me personally,
I'm going to let it live unless
I know for sure it's the one
that won't leave. And also I agree
that wire chair with a foundation undone
can go, home to the street for the
next love, the one who knows
how to weld.

A pattern repeats.
And if it doesn't repeat?
Design. I'd say, will.

acid reflex

Ritual

Ritual

She held out her hand in a gesture of conciliation

Forced to admit the inevitable

Squire runs through the meadow with a message

Delivered to the grandmother with sharp teeth

She in the red cloak is approaching

Filled with the idealism of youth

Ready for any predator

Worth his salt at deception

Conquests are indicated by opportunities lost

Like a French maiden wrapped in the flag

Lust like a chamber of horrors

Fanning the flame of someone else’s desire

Shattered upon the sidewalk

Unable to move, unable to feel remorse

Cannibals everywhere tearing apart

What was left of the childhood dream

I awaken and suddenly remember

Where I am and how I want to be

I cannot feel

I am numb.

Michael Krasowitz

Yesterday I was in a cemetery, 

about to cross (illegally) into 

another  cemetery over a low 

fence.  A car pulled up.  

Busted!  I thought.  But a 

woman, not a guard, got out 

and the car drove away.  Her 

English was better than my 

Spanish.  She showed me 

the headstone of her husband 

who had died of stomach 

cancer in February.  The 

doctor said he was fine, she 

said.  But four months later.  I 

expressed condolences and 

told her that my good friend's 

father had come through 

bladder cancer this year. 

Then I expressed my 

condolences again 

and hopped over the fence

New Year's Toast

A glass of water on the ground;

last night I moved a shoe imagining

my own true love would trip on it

organized many glasses of water, for myself

and him for I am weaker-gutted than I was - 

I spent the night awake, at the window

or cutting my toenails, like any day but later

so grateful for the marking of the time and

looking for new words in 2016 to mean grateful

for I've been told that one is done. A glass of water, 

shoes, the bathroom in the middle of the night, a window,

toast, orange juice, my own vulnerable feet and other feet I love,

things to trip on, beholden or pleased or indebted? Obliged, thankful,

a toast of water, late morning.