poem - Lawrence Welk Concert

 

Lawrence Welk Concert

 

I am feeling all the love on Earth and under Heaven

as I tenderly wrap your present in beautiful paper

chosen especially for you

 

Like a velociraptor you lacerate the multicolored foil wrapping

and instantly you glower a sad deranged disappointment

like an hipster at a Lawrence Welk concert

 

I hear you think, What kind of joke is this?

Until my forehead thumps with shock and shame

Hell is a bad present misconstrued, deep feeling mistaken-

 

Connie, you are a narcissistic vessel of pure spite

an angry drumbeat torn through an unfeeling life

angled at me like a beast for my docile love – outraged

 

your bitter laughter rings long and loud

 

 

poem - Human Birds

Human Birds

She goes down to the meadow

her millionth-year human wings

high grown earthdreck lifeform  

left startling

 

Profound skies flown

above where shepherds roamed

castoff selves unmoan megaflora  

flower wild utopias to embrace

 

Now her first wing floats air curves

breathes molecular architectures

reveals eons of wing growth

on far jump horizon wind flows

 

  

poem - snow persists

 

snow persists

snow persists to wind slowly, white sight rolled in gray

          the advent of snow has spoken in my bones  

a cold wind stream laughs haughtily, casts her icy grit

          drily, harshly pelts my face with winter teeth

somewhere the glacial wind riots through the mountains

          and echoes on my hollow patch of frozenness

a severe weather advice, mobile snow central squint-eyed

whispers in the slashes of silent fallen snow

but now a howl threads the holography of uncounted flakes

          a sudden squall overwhelms motion and hiss

as snow persists I resist but I know which of us will win

poem - poultry

 

poultry

o

my girlfriend Pond Lily

& I live a nuts and roots poverty

camped inside eighth century ruin poetry

buildings inevitably crumbling outside as badgers pompeii

moles - voles potpourri

weasels hedgehogs - pot belly

possums raccoon and papery

beavers hamsters chipmunk are peppery

ramblers of inconsequential anarchies and property

 

hawks, eagles, owls, ospreys, and falcons positively

swoop from above pound down foolishly

in Babylon’s dark winter snow days powdery

we begin to plant and tend poultry

a salient eden irruptive surrounds us in puffery

foxes’, coyotes’, and big bad wolves’ poachery  

spring summer fall roll into parcheesi

signals of un-engineered polarity

 

Europewide traditions of windmill plagiary

float on dense laments of reasoned plasticity

swashbuckler priestesses of polyphony

greed a vernacular astonishment of circuitry

 

she’s a woman of incredible parquetry

a wash bucket on a sacred podium of pitter pattery

the mysterious document sent post-free

 

she owns orchards of date trees and a pousse café

she yens for mysterious ritual pitch-pipery

stern in adjoining lands that pot pie

face to face with the goddess of polypody

ideas and dreams in every possibility

poem - Miller Light Stage - August, 2011

 

Miller Light Stage – August, 2011

I guess these remnants of Iron Butterfly

          a band judged too downer for Woodstock

have lost amplitude as they jam at the State Fair

          Their ostriched sounds bleak with thunder

as I qualify hot sun expectancy with a craft beer

          (fiery-tongues of three roasted artisanal hops)

No sunshine acid hints navigate hoops of real fire

          (but I am verging on passive heat hallucination)

as they expound minority numbers like ‘Butterfly Bleu’

          (Wait, what is this? nearby geezers ask)

I wait for the venerable warhorse thinking damn I’m old

          but then: Freaking magic, ma-an! The fire-dance intro

I and the whole phoenix ritual tribe rise free as one

          subconscious in unity rhythmic boogaloo memory

entering the garden together, firewalkers on the big beat

          as the sun descends the holy blue Iowa sky

poem - 9 Millionth Dream

 

9 Millionth Dream

a man wanders off into the woods at night   /   looks for the Sunoco station  to buy a bag of salt peanuts  /  La Mer is in his ear-buds  /  mysterious night dark and beautiful  /  he meets the magical talking deer  /  walk toward dawn til you see a field of embers says the deer /  all night to wander in mist  /  he sees a large outspreading tree / sleeps on a lower bough / dream of a house full of hidden alligators / alights to sojourn on / embers below a crest  /  Edith says we will bypass this   /  a yellow sign peeks from the hillside  / the Sunoco 

he puts a dollar in, punches the A5 button,  the peanut bag drops, what he’s come for / outside he fills the ice blue car with premium  / day breaks all around / dew has fallen, mist is lifting  / he and Edith motor down Route 10  / at home the Martians still have not landed on the roof of the condo  / the Rain Gods tour is starting / Edith is his exe’s mother he married after family therapy / the band didn’t rehearse  / only the shadow band did / the singer, drummer, lead guitarist play over and under the shadow band / the three other original members are music industry victims / mere shells

art gallery showings out-earn the band / Edith sculps, he paints  / they fund afterschool programs / Edith’s granddaughter was a Rain Gods groupie he tried to straighten out  / somehow someday he married her mother and funded the family’s independence and renaissance / Mae went to art school / Amira, her mom is unemployed w/religion  / Edith is a legal secretary / he and Edith found one another when Amira split from matrimony acrimony-less

on the 10^th day of the tour Edith decides to go home  / it’s tiring-boring / he fires the derelict original band  / the shadow band with an approximate singer carry on as the Rain Dogs / the tour is a success, no drama  / he hires hungry songwriters write 30 new songs / the band binge-records the next three releases / he goes home / his business manager, lawyer and accountant have kept everything according to spec  / he wanders off into the woods at night

Ed, the lead singer begs to rejoin / he is hired as a tour sub-contractor to sing only Rain Gods songs for a Far East tour / Big in Japan and Australia / Edith has left the bus / his mind wanders

poem - Follow the Herd

 

Follow the Herd (Lifestyles of Mitch and Amos)

 

passports drugs crime    wildflower meadow springtime

contraband and guns                idyllic horseback vacation

just business                             this picnic never-ending

quaint yokel nightmare       unfurled Crayola wilderness

not a big deal at all        happy about the whole thing

 

trafficking stash house             devout altruistic hedonists

legal dead end                                    all the beautiful people

building an empire of self         deserving of good things

when they go at them               love and happiness all around

for surveillance footage       when everything goes right

 

somedays make a difference    nothing seems to matter

emptied harbors churn       clear skies, unclouded

bad news rapidly arriving                   smiling people abound

fabricate a remunerative lie        meriting wondrous rewards