Pretend

Pretend the words don’t have enemies.
May they be beyond

as eyes are, as hills.
This thought consoles me today,

this lie. Let us say the words
into the whipping winds

of the place we live, and wait.
Pretend the words are not somebody

else’s leash. That you are not.

Stopping an Argument Going Nowhere

As a boy, I stood in drowned sneakers

and held up to the sun a crayfish

between my thumb and forefinger,

just plucked from the creek,

its pincers gyrating and pinching air,

trying to reach back far enough

to scissor skin and win release

from pain by pain. Win release

from pain by pain. Even in the dark places

under stones in creeks, whatever stones,

whatever other kingdoms, this immutable

is known. The dark imbricated plates

of her body were soft bronze. She knew me

enough. She’d treat any animal the same

and be blameless, not dwell as we do

after we use our natural defenses

to return to where we can breathe.

I’d call a friend over to see tiny dark eggs

she strummed under her body’s shields,

then drop her for the pleasure of seeing

that tiny splash, the dark zing backwards

into her watermind. She’d flex her entire body

and her big scoop tail would shoot water

through water as she flew to the safe

underplace. Each language, its dark, protective stones.

I am not a boy. I no longer lift

the roofs of stones from creatures.

Let dwell, let dwell.

Time is water and we must breathe under it.

Each in the darkness it calls home.

8 Poems (Air Poems)

      BEHIND CVS

I wake and my little cat gives me my spirit.
No cat, no spirit.

The sun is tender
with looking at the earth.

It is hard to look at earth

Truly to see
the people's hope

Oh, look at
The things that end in a dirty creek



        CHILD

The child touches lightning bugs
on the summer air

So many lovers
she will have

So many doorways

None nailed shut




           CURSE IN A CVS

The pot you gave me is no good

I will float on lightning

and return later




                 TWO BOYS

Two punks
walking over a bridge
stone bridge
snickering
throw stones
into a world below
anger
zings and zips
through the Underworld
their faces
wood in the snow
crack like a rifle
shot
into a world below
their living





               NIGHT

What the roses dream at night
let me dream

The spiderwebs all through me

let me dream

The stars sending light
without postage

Yes

An old woman the color of night
breaking up

In the river now

More of my excuses die



      EXPLANATION

the cat
sits in
winter's window
slant rain
turns snow
means more
means less
than naming
to me

I am a cat



     SEDUCTION

I hear
this neighbor's
coyote voice
a woman
is a blue bird
rousing coyote
into the open
where he releases
his voice
in spring
the blue berries
release her
birds know
poison from food
fly away
into fire
of more sky





      LOVERS

the rain
comes down
bending their necks
the lovers
who run now
into shelter
of a garden
inside the mall
rain on the glass ceiling
of the shopping mall
continues
they look up
where birds flee
we are
seeming
to be many pieces
of one person

My Copy of the U.S. Constitution

Something calls oblivion

Where milk glass is heading

It won’t return

like icicles every year

White cherubs for stems

You notice people buy it

not because they want it

but to preserve it

Fruit that aspires to be alabaster

What words give

What words take away

Not beauty but what it’s cut out of

So jaggedy

as you out of me

You note more circles every year

Less rectangles

It must be a national diet of shapes

Men lose their beards and women find them

Food can be a sexual proxy adventure

The bears in the backyard

Seem more like your dead parents

every year

You lock the door earlier

You start to swoon into the curtains

And watch the bears that way

Thank You For Talking to Me

I say to the rain.
I say to the ingredients of a person
which just erupted in a random conversation
they insisted I taste.

I say to the past,
then lock the door behind it.
I say to the crows
in the cemetery

that act like cashiers,
pretending to make conversation,
but not really.
I say to sleep's

white noise pretending
to be a person pretending
to be me.
Then I nap

and dream of the world
before conversations existed.
How like a glass paperweight
everything was!

Forest Meeting

The face in its carving

           turns to you.

Supernatural owl-turning,

       the moment of falling

            through a face

       to what it means to say

           without knowing.



Without knowing,

    only then can it be

                saying  a face.

  The moment of falling

        through the mask fitted at birth,

             into the welcome fire

               (you are burning)

             of what the owl will notice

                     in you.

Ocean

The word dying is dying

       it has no more resonance

          no appeals


      something pure life

       is battering pier legs to take its place

                 liquid turquoise streamers

           
          over sea rocks slimy
               our anticipation


           the person

                with no address

       
             the address

                    with no person


          they are falling in love

da club

some flowers were being mean
earlier today
I watched them writhe in the breeze
listened to their petals rage
such colors
even marigolds can look like tigers, ya know
on such a small stem
and thought
about their meanness
but didn't say anything

I didn't belong to their flowerbed

plus

I figure it was just autumn

and maybe the things they say in autumn

with death listening
just outside the door

don't really count

Moth

attention is nice
but maybe the quietest days
were the best
being slower
watching endless rain
through old windows
it empties my soul
hunting for my glasses
for an hour
gently cursing
these softest distractions
up and down the stairs
over and over
a moth in the night
invisible to myself
and everyone else

Twenty Bucks and a Stone Haiku

the cemetery
a bag blowing past
says THANK YOU

*

visiting Van Gogh
feeling all the people
we didn't

*

as many cracks
as days
a doll’s face

*
autumn morning
somewhere you change color
without me

*

chipped glasses
plates with hairline cracks
not a bad marriage

*

something in you the way
autumn trees
pretend to shiver

*

cool autumn morning
awakened by small feet
racing away

*

children share secrets
clear sap
from an unseen center

*

old porcelain dolls
in the nursing home
every crack speaks

*

autumn leaves
the colors a warning
a celebration

*

autumn leaves
fall on the railroad tracks…
is this a joke?

*
autumn market
different gourds
with the same problems

*

autumn morning
something running fast over
my head wakes me


*

hometown years later
even the creek’s
changed beds

*

groundhog hibernates
our clocks slow down
then reverse

*

the vacant house's
welcome mat
snowflake by snowflake

*

autumn morning
cold finds
a tooth’s crack

*
ANTIQUES store window
autumn leaves reflect
over old metal

*

winter morning
a tree that killed its children
waves at me

*
October schoolbus
autumn leaves board
in a hurry

*

asking what number
snowstorm this is
no one knows

*
autumn morning
the carp turn
slower circles

*

under canal leaves
disgust a century old
wedding ring smolders

*

waking in cold
to write of coldness
warms me

*

autumn crickets
a tempo
tells a story

*

autumn crickets:
imagine dying
without loneliness

*

funeral champagne
tiny bubbles stroke
forgotten places

*
reading obits
an unseen jet rumbles
towards no one’s home

*
in time

the pleasures of time
replace the pleasures
of place

*
my old school
my stomach rumbles
on its stone

*

the kid eating stones
on the playground
is a bird

*
the only thing
weirder than words
what they replace

*

a leaf falls
in the cemetery
a sort of Thank You

*

Van Gogh
freezes the cornfield
before winter

*

Van Gogh's cornfields
just before winter
forever

*

Van Gogh's paintings
lose color every year…
the snakeskins no one finds


*

missing each other
by mere eons
you and God

*

museum room
full of paintings the feeling
we just missed God

*
weather report
from behind icy fingers
on her nipples

*
snowstorm
all the infidelities
need rescheduling

*
Indian summer
an affair that promised to end
shops for skis

*

we visit you
in a cemetery
to talk about debt

*

dead winter
on my dad’s grave a twenty
under a rock

*

winter morning
you wake and your lover
is years away

*

winter morning
all the lovers on this bus
look like boxers

*

winter morning
lost coffees left on buses
tell us their names

*
winter to spring
a bus kiosk’s plexiglas
scratched like home

*
a real home
even the diamond
has scratches

*

autumn light
the clock turns backwards
when we do

*
autumn leaves
I can’t decide
on a collage

*
winter night ocean
still growing colors
in abalone

*
buried love
the night ocean
colors abalone

*

buried love
the night ocean
mothers pearl

*

visiting Van Gogh
feeling all the purple
we aren't

Tuesday

The rain was out in the street
making collages. 

People indoors make collages,
and I don't want to think
first world problems
of time like Proust. Look at their
hands ripping the ages
out of books which stood
for no one has the permission
to steal my pages
when we were kids
and every library had
at least one gorgon.

Let us paste time down
over other time and see.
The mind likes to see things
just ripped out like that,
the strange contours

of a body discovering
how it is a body,

if never quite why.

The collage at night
replaces the dog-eared
lover, a book we were currently
reading, which seems to wonder now
if we would sacrifice it
in this way. For art or some other
abstraction. Just how much
should I trust you, the book
seems to be saying under
its borrowed breath, as we hold it
close, whisper promises
to protect and preserve
what will slowly die
and only be brought back
to partial life by willful destruction.

What we will not tell it:
it is only certain pieces of you
that I will want and those
for the way they will brush
new-torn strangeness.

Monday

You said yesterday was the first day
of autumn everything. It was not. Today is.
Am I a breeze in your mind
as you are in mine? This window glass
through which I watch you is ancient,
possibly as old as Lincoln's forehead,
making wavy gravy of the landscape.
I wanted to send you some old art
along with its resident silverfish. Autumn
prepares to mount its exhibitions. You know
that usually means sex. Art workers
are usually oversexed and on ghosts.
Ghosts cannot harm us. (I would that
they could.) Today, I asked autumn what
she thinks of you, and it was all under her breath,
like a Ouija board. Just push the planchette
so we can get this over, get into bed.

Sunday

Each person is a cup of ghosts.
Each person like a spoon in a warmth
you can stir and drink close to sleep.
A white square in the museum is useful.
A black square in the museum is useful.
You mostly stir the way birds do
around the museum. You listen to the grass
move through walls, without seeing.
You say the word Sunday to hear
the shape it takes. Someone blows glass
far away, thinking as of a child
who will be your first reflection?

Van Gogh's Long Drive Home Haiku

cops in darkness
drive and smile
at other cops

*

if a tree falls
in the forest…
fireflies

*

sunflowers…
all the faces
born to travel

*

night cops in cars
wait for darkness
to well up

*

complaining about
carbon footprints he swats
a bee with newspaper

*

slow down your walk
until it’s lovemaking
air your partner

*

watching waves
on the beach
in a cup

*

morning fog
the old zinc bucket
behind everything

*

spring rain
the graffiti of dead boys
looks new again

*

the funeral
only the dead man
knows everyone

*

night beach
ancient female
thunder

*

all night
dark waves crash saying
she  she  she

*

leaving the gym
still dark
inside my body

*

even your eyelids
taste her
crashing morning waves

*

3 a.m. gym
a few satyrs
frown at each other

*

August street
children and flies
bug a dead cat

*

Christmas snow
cats glower
at carolers

*

naked cop
without his gun
feels naked

*

making the best
of a bad century
Mae West

*

everyone sees
the rain fall but no one
sees it rise

*

no longer calling
the last crickets
listen

*

all the past days–
are they tight sardines
or gone clouds

*

sardine tin–
death makes
strange bedfellows

*

old man
staring at a tin of sardines
remembers an orgy

*

long drive home
headlights narrow
his feeling

*

an apple
so perfect
my hunger fades

*

dark river
chuckles on stone steps
all night long

*

old men piss
slow at racetrack urinals
dreaming of speed

*

night horsetrack
the odds of everything
hide in a fog

*

young soldiers dead…
on a battlefield crows jingle
their good luck charms

*

rehab clinic
at dawn the erections
dream of home

*

too tired to explain
he gets another tattoo
instead

*

in the bar
he lets his tattoos
do all the work

*

bar’s alpha
even his arm cast
collects phone numbers

*

breeze in night’s screen door:
he watches dark willows
change clothes like women

*

after the crash
his shoes stayed on the back porch
all winter

*

small wings
in the candle wax
summer night

*

summer night
the kitchen’s cricket
getting closer

*

kitchen-trapped cricket
pretends not to care
he’s dateless

*

some dates
just end badly   a cricket
in a kitchen

*

be gentle
with our kitchen’s cricket
the dateless wonder

*

summer crickets
under the stars
dateless wonders

*

night fishing
a cigarette glows
twice

*

the best part
of being a cricket
you’re never lost

*

horny crickets
all night tell
absolutely anyone

*

Sunday dawn
crickets who struck out
finally shut up

*

he sprays his mom’s
favorite perfume on her ashes
before guests

*

my dead mother
atomizing
in my memory

*

summer hookup
she makes love to his tattoos
not him

*

watching sparrows
not knowing
what i am

*

a tugboat
far below this hill
slowly pulls my mind

*

freezing night
a far dog barks
at lowness

*

a loon’s cry…
dead friends
listen through me

*

deep ocean
dreamless sharks
made of time

*

no one left
she talks
to the house

*

morning fog
freshens the graveyard
behind town

*

deer in the yard
a ninety-year-old
raps on the glass

*

a psych textbook
titled YOUR PROJECTIONS
ABOUT THE MOON

*

she comes home
from the library
younger with grass stains

*

a man jumps
from a bridge some birds
briefly join him

*

we talk
behind its back
the childless apple

*

dawn branches
a bunch of birds call bullshit
on night

*

night auction
more chairs
than his funeral

*

flea market
checking each link
in a stranger’s necklace

*

balloons trapped
in a hospital room
barely breathing

*

husband to husband–
all the picture frames
she gives away

*

rain on the roof
a story fainter
every year

*

polite smiles
people give milk glass
as they pass

*

deep under
the alphabet
the animals

*

the only one
children love in a graveyard
the snowman

*

we pass the cemetery
and think
no porch light

*

August cicadas
our ice cream
shedding its skin

*

after feeding pigeons
she feeds the coworkers
on Ambien

*
separate beds
separate checkbooks
same young lover

*

swimming in
the dead neighbor’s pool
her moonlight’s nicer

*

breaking up
still, they smile that their bed
has a limp

*

autumn sunlight
even the leaves know
they’re toast

*

in your sleep
you talk to years
without their skin

*

not a total loss:
Gettysburg
National Park

*

your death too
is the leaves
changing color

*

hating the world so
while he’s held in warm arms,
her lover the chihuahua

*

such angelic carving
a big bed goes traveling
divorce by divorce

*

ginkgo leaves
things won’t say
how old they are

*

after a week
of constant snow
expect mice

*

some words can squeeze
through holes much smaller
than themselves

*

the things
mice must think about holes
squeezing through!

*

two floors down
a murder
sounds like a dance

*

boy’s first time
and she’s pregnant…
deer taste moonlight

*

a touch
on the shoulder a leaf
in the graveyard

*

it’s raining outside
leaking inside
we’re making love

*

sniffing his shirt
left here years ago
a Golden Fleece is born

*

a swampy new love
she doesn’t check her mailbox
for days

*

animal eyes
in the zoo thinking man
this is a long visit

*

a breakup:
don’t click, call or visit
beloved emptiness

*

her mother’s hand
on the old man’s hand
that painted a rice grain

*

on his grave
we leave a geranium
armpit stank he loved

*

quiet house
cicadas louder
than the t.v. news

*

waking up
worried about bussing
my dream’s plates

*

abandoned orchard
deer thank no one
for cool moonlight

*

the sunflowers
nothing here
is old

*

Arles tour bus
sunflowers on the side
lost faces in windows

*
a small girl
is in love with sunflowers
half her age

*

brushing it off
an aroused firefly
lighting her breast

*

Arles
blue sky
begins to hiss

*

night sky
stars heat up
the sky boils

*

jar of fireflies
on a windowsill Vincent paints
Starry Night

*

U.S. puzzle toy
some wooden states
keep falling out

*

waking to no name
the cream rises
over the milk

*

fireflies
in a paper cup
still warm

*

after a late walk
your foliage
next to mine

*

frog’s splash
then endless commentary
of toads

*

how young they seem–
dust motes turning
in sunbeams

*

streetlight in fog
a bat passes by
dreaming hello

Arrivals / Departure / Ocean

I'm really enjoying reading the current issue of Modern Haiku, edited by paul m. I'm very happy to have poetry in this issue.

This is a classic magazine with a storied history. I collect back issues as I find them on various bookselling sites.

The history of the editors:

Kay Titus Mormino, Founding Editor, 1969-1977
Robert Spiess, Editor, 1978-2002
Lee Gurga, Editor, 2002-2006
Charles Trumbull, Editor, 2006-2013
Paul Miller, Editor, 2013-present

As you can see, the magazine is enjoying its Golden Jubilee this year. Congratulations, Modern Haiku!

Thanks to editor paul m, whose work you should really seek out if you love poetry.  He has a gendai streak I grok.

I also received in the mail a wonderful labor of love zine from Maine, Letterfounder. Editor Jessy Kendall is keeping the Age of Zines alive. No end date in sight. I was quite honored when he wrote me out of the blue to ask for a poem he saw online, which is included in this issue. It's neat to be in an issue with Malok and Terry Gilliam. And it's still rad (in 2019, seven years after the Mayan  Apocalypse) to receive a letter written in ink on paper asking one to send some more poems, and on paper please? I will write some more and send some more. On paper. It feels like an act of defiance, in an age when the growing consensus is that print itself is an anachronism. No! Print's heart, like a certain Canadian talk show staple, will go on. Ooh...staple. I made a zine pun without even intending. I'm imagining a shrine of staples as a conceptual art object.  Thanks Jessy, see you again soon through the eye of paper. You inspire me.


I've just begun mourning a love, so talking about happy things feels like looking through a window at a festive gathering I can't really join. We just lost our one cat after seventeen years of sharing every day with him, except for short travels elsewhere. When we adopted him and found out he had feline leukemia, we were told to expect a short lifespan, that he might die in the first few years or improbably make it to ten. But he remained vibrant and never really had any serious health issues. He just suffered the decline of old age, as all of us do. Chronic kidney disease is a tough one to beat. We've spent many days of the past year adjusting to his disability and trying to cater to him. He knew he was loved and I'm happy to know he never experienced cruelty in this life, that he felt safe and secure, that he felt special, and that he still enjoyed some of his favorite things within days of the end. His going was peaceful and he was surrounded by his loved ones. I will have to write a proper story about his interesting life. It would be better if he could have told it. But we make do with what we have here.

I've begun to realize shaping absence is something that never ends. I don't think I've suffered a single serious loss in which the process of shaping that absence is not ongoing and constantly changing. Ghosts don't stay in the same clothes and they don't even wear the same face forever. Keep watching your goners. You are a part of their afterlives.

Dark Veined

Dark little pond
sky rains into you
the night is
sneaking into you
manmade pond
between the interstates
you twinkle
with parking lot lights
of dusted motels
one side
of the highway talks
after a stroke
each room
with a faulty light
twinkles
each television
and each gust
between the sliding glass
the body’s
interstate stares
into you

Stranger's Weight in Fireflies Haiku

 
dark street
someone’s weight in fireflies
suddenly takes off

*

before dawn
a stranger’s footprints
cold ocean fills

*

beach before dawn
in dark fragments
finding myself

*

before dawn
where waves break
my thoughts break

*

Descartes, a crow
seeing the world
seeing its beak

*

walk miles of sand
to get from ocean
dark wave energy

*

spring window
an aphid
draws in my breath

*

walking miles
next to waves breaking
everything I know

*

snowy vineyard
a fox and a crow
pretend they’re strangers

*

cherry blossoms
two crows chase
absolutely nothing

*

my little black cat
rubs her fangs on me
her strange pet

*

pencil on my desk
next to a few shark teeth
its ancient fang sharp

*

morning reaches
the far side of the river
before us

*

spring goddesses
the lady with 37 cats
disgusts and awes

*

streetlights twinkle
out in the dark river
a piece of you swims

*

a goose neck
in morning glories
we’re not ourselves

*

moving an aphid
from bathwater to plant
a born-again drunk

*

mother says
teeth marks 
on sea things

*

it’s not just
an aphid on my finger
it’s a “rescue-aphid”

*

sparrows take
milky splash baths
in potholes we curse

*

the mouse hole…
nature leaks in
a nuclear plant

*

a mouse hole…
nature checks out
our nuclear deal

*

dragonfly hovers
in a cooling tower’s
nuclear breath

*

sealed nuclear
power plant in the river
dragonflies visit

*

moonlight
like Brahms
for dragonflies

*

a thunderstorm
sweeps the flags
off all graves

*

hissing rain sheets
old woman who died years ago
again sweeps our street

*

long ago
in the wind
witches sang

*

the kiss
first draft
witchcraft

*

the bobcat
climbs and climbs
spring ideas

*

picking wildflowers
a field once our house
our dog guards below

*

raking leaves
my dead neighbor’s dead dog’s ball
rolls out

*

my old street
only familiar faces
the clouds

*

buried child
a plastic kickball
hides in the basement

*

he keeps keys
to houses and beds
long gone

*

moon shines
coldly on a ladder
apple pickers forgot

*

a stone thrown
into the dark river
makes good time

*

late night rain walk
the past’s umbrella
opens its arms

*

heavy rain
falling asleep
between sympathy cards

*

in a pinch
headlights in rain
for moonlight

*

humans
the future’s
unreadable format

*

that sunflowers climb
that sometimes people fall
naked from the sky

*

a field stone
for doorstoop
blunt speech of home

*

a crow’s cry
just beyond a windowsill’s
glass button jar

*

her clothes donated
her glass jar
of buttons stays

*

shaving
the old cedar box
for new scent

*

Stone Age ends
stones struggle
to find work

*

surf pebbles
toss-talk
in their sleep

*

dark country roads
trees much taller
than their houses

*

forest walk
the clock’s blood pressure
much lower

*

slow tortoise…
envying rust
on its elbows

*

hay-tumble verdict–
again please but something less
than Evermore Street

*

night earthquake
dress shop mannequins feel
their first orgasm

*

ancient crack
in a teacup
holding it together

*

men merely dead
or truly dead
her smile tells you

*

usually
skip prefaces
but this morning fog…

*

drowned school jock
dark river had all winter
pops up on prom night

*

deep down
on the river bottom
all the free things

*

funeral home
the caskets cracked open
faint cries of porn

*

dark deli
lobsters in a tank
fight over bubbles

*

coffin shopping
he chooses a finish
that goes with his car
















Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger for Pexels

Poems in Wales Haiku Journal

I'm really happy to have poems included again in the Wales Haiku Journal, edited by poet Paul Chambers, whose coolly-designed personal website (can images be Eno-esque?) I have visited on more than one occasion to jump-start a writing session.

 Check him out.

Here is a direct link to his books. 

Poetry Forthcoming in Shamrock Haiku Journal

I'm grateful to have had work accepted for an upcoming issue of SHJ, an international journal of haiku, senryu and haibun.

Many thanks to editor Anatoly Kudryavitsky.

I'm a fan of this magazine.

Otata, Issue #39

Poet John Martone has edited Otata for thirty-nine issues now.


I really love this magazine and was spending much pleasurable time lately reading in the back issues, finding great work by poets I already knew and many new to me.


It’s a haiku journal, but lately issues have included other forms of micropoetry and even longer poems.


It’s clear the editor pays serious attention to gestalt in placement of work.


The best part is that you can read all the online issues of the mag for free.