June 6, 2009

Notorious

Last night on the couch
as bergman and Grant
fell irresponsibly into love,

I thought about how
cold you and I are to
one another and how

this black and white romance
will stay stale and lackluster
until you are called

to espionage, and I,
your ranking official,
am thrown into harm’s way.

I think it is then
you will turn your soft
profile to me.

It is then, that I
will hold your head like
a globe and press

you into me. Oh, where
are those meddlesome Germans
when you need them.

June 5, 2009

The Norton Anthology of English Renaissance
Drama sits wrapped like beef jerky
on a borrowed wooden shelf in my bedroom.

I am sure that somewhere within
that vacuum-sealed variorum
there are scenes and acts which would,
if I let them, expand my mind like popcorn,

but for now I am happy that their
thick British vowels, which I’ve always had
a hard time discerning, are cheerfully
packaged in sharp cornered cellophane.

Who knows what would happen if we let
them out too trustingly, Marlowe,
Jonson, and Webster pushing
sweet William beneath the bus.

June 4, 2009

Lord make me simple
so that both poverty and
wealth will suit me

Lord make me shrewd
so that the devil or devils within
cannot trick me

Lord make me kind
so that there is nothing, time or coin,
that I will not gladly surrender

Lord make me just
so that my judgment is sharp and true
that the arrows are not my own

Lord make me brave
so that I am unafraid to fight
those monsters within and without

Lord make me small
so that I see how big you are
Lord make me wrong
so that I see how right.

June 3, 2009

How impotent my actions
How futile my deeds
I am
a land-locked raft
a thread-less screw
a bear and a lion
all stars and no teeth.
I am a log-less fire,
a lake unbanked.
I am the unbitten apple
a plague upon dead trees
a horse, unbridled, but still,
Caedmon, awake before he dreamt.

June 2, 2009

When she died
they cut her open
and found her kidney
was a bean bag.
They found her tongue
was sliced in two.
They found her toenails painted
and her stomach full of fingernails.

I’ll tell you her toenails
were cherry vodka red.

Somehow, I think, this
will have resolved things for you.

June 1, 2009

I want my hand
to hold, not my future,
but an accurate map
of the many rivers
I will forge,.

I want each line
to be a tributary, a branch,
so that when I look upon my palm,
I am not reading as much
as I am divining.

There are three great rivers:
one falls off the edge of the world;
one s deep like a canyon;
one is long and opens into
the great ocean of my arm.

May 31, 2009

With these hands,
I hold mountains,
rocky crags,
and their un-summited climbs.

With these hands,
I hold oceans,
deep trenches,
and their soundless abysses.

With these hands,
I hold space,
its airy tentacles,
and their bushels of jittery stars.

With these hands
I try to hold three words,
but they spill out from my fingers;
they scatter at my feet;
they roll, frictionless,
across the glass table of conversation.