stalwart Beech tree
still gathering sunlight
on last year’s leaf
dandelion
arrives to party first
eager flower
a bud breaks open
its tiny leaf waves hello
welcoming the spring
spring’s urgent leisure
flowers drop a fine pollen
to ride listless winds
The pass begins
Boulders lay strewn like the dice of God,
moss-covered, on a close-cropped blanket of green.
The Pass educated me,
I’d never known I could see snow and jungle in the same day.
I never knew how thin of air would sustain me.
I still don’t know how a fish out of water
has the death throe energy to spastically flop.
I was a tortoise: plod, stop, resume plodding, repeat.
If I’d been deprived of oxygen to the same degree as that fish,
I’d have just silently fallen off the switchback into the valley below.
Into boulder scree and the carcasses of sea-level dwelling gringos past.
They spiked my punch.
I had no lunch.
I got so drunk, so very drunk.
Drunker than I thunk
that a man could ever be,
and I don’t know if I can trust what my eyes did see:
I saw: two elephants riding pogo sticks,
the Taj Mahal made of Lego bricks,
Ned Flanders as a creepy voyeur,
A lady talking to an honest lawyer,
goats doing kung fu in the park,
a talking dog and a man who barked,
a traffic cop with a great big smile,
the line for kicks formed in single file,
two geese played a wicked ping-pong match,
I got hit by a bus–look not a scratch.
Seven years down the road
with dirty feet and no abode
I’d wander to and fro
along the narrow streets
of an ancient village
And when the monster came for me
I did not even claim to see
his vile disfigurement
in the dim winter light
in that ancient village
For years I tried to sail away
having failed to keep the beast at bay
but my ship always
circled back ’round
to that ancient village
Then they’d throw me in some grimy pit
with scarcely room to for me to sit
and I’d whisper curses
under my breath
about that ancient village.
Then the monster would call on me
and all the townspeople would flee
as I wreaked havoc
on the town square
of that ancient village
Are these sleepy little villages and hamlets really tucked into bed by eleven?
When my train rolls by and there is nothing on display to my bleary eye
except vacant roads, dark shadows, and the dim glow of night-lights.
Cars are still; people are absent; time is frozen but for the wind-blown hedges.
But do these villages go to sleep, or do they just turn off the lights
and do those things which should not be subjected to the light?
That cat thinks she’s quite a mouser
but, truth be told, she’s just a houser.
At stalking and lurking she’s a master.
But catching? Well… they get past her.
Litter skitters down the street,
stopping beseechingly at my feet.
No one likes the morning chill.
So this raucous street is now still.
Still but for the will to wake.
Shhh! Let it sleep for goodness sake.
I lack the words to dignify this feeling.
Imagine a coarse hemp rope knotted around one’s heart
It’s cinched tighter and tighter, tugged at both ends
The rope creaks under this burden, but it does not snap
It creaks like an old wooden sailing vessel, riding the swells
What an apple!
–spoiled and rotten
The weave of lies
is soon forgotten.
Cast and reel,
no hook is set.
Which lie is true?
He soon forgets.
He says,
Just let me be, and I won’t lie.
But ask me now and it’s fib or die.
The lying life is tenuous.
Backpeddling? Strenuous
Clouds tugged themselves over the city like a thick quilt
adding to the gritty gray inner-city nightmare.
I rode through this monochrome madness
without seeing a person on the sidewalks.
I felt their eyes peer down through ash-covered windows,
like a hand running over the tips of tiny hairs on my back
A high-pitched tone sounded in my ears
filling the void of chirpless birds and dumbstruck relicts
It can’t be long now.
