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

In Rain

sparrows in rain
I watch and watch
the word for you
as much as you

an arrow in your name
how strangely true
and when you fly
without a bow

you launch yourself
at nothing frivolous
I watch and watch
as much as you

Winterpring Haiku

a plum
and its fruit flies
on Facebook

*

snow patchiness
spring morning
a man sprays hair

*

Brahms wandering
the house looking for
a soft spot

*

housebound by snow
we hear the neighbor widow’s
vacuum sucking

*

the cat wanders
a house looking for
quiet pronunciation

*

watching a river
its icy mind
a sorry lover

*

singles dance–
the astronomy
of repurposed moons

*

that moment
in the city where no one
touches anything

*

poetry
it’s prose
with the silencer on

*

winter melon
death’s all about
the timing

*

winter graveyard–
you reread a book
for its silences

*

summer stars
anything this slow
is hard to follow

*

the house thaws
spring peepers rejoice
over a divorce

*

quiet rain
the window
nurses its drink

*

e.r. waiting room
dirt under my fingernails
someone dancing

*

missing someone
so far down the railroad tracks
they’re heat

*

how to build a nest
first twig
best twig

*

half seen
in the river glimpses
of bedclothes

*

cold morning
fingernail dirt
scraped with a dime

*

midnight 
bodies on city streets pulled by
invisible leashes

*

after his divorce
people joke he’s like the man
with the invisible dog

*

MISSING:
INVISIBLE DOG–a xerox
of the stiff leash and harness

*

not long
after being born
footsteps

*

eating an orange
someone has died
into bright flavor

*

you notice too late
your body
is a cave

*

a dog walks a man
without a leash
half in the ocean

*

man walked
on the moon
the long leash

*

over
human silhouettes
a shooting star

*

winter lake
the only sound
magnet fishers

*

your distance
a taste of honey
shooting star

*

seeing
the shooting star
human silhouettes

*

Valentine’s Day
sweeping summer’s flies
off a sill

*

death row inmates
write love letters
to fame zombies

*

spring minnows
drinking my reflection
find it refreshing

*

looking through
my autumn reflection
a crayfish

*

a crayfish
I feel I know
hard to explain

*

looking through
my reflection
spring minnows

*

my honey bear
plastic bottle years later
still sticky

*

summer nearfar
the horizon’s honey
poured over distance

*

catching crayfish
under creek rocks the graveyard
sticks up for itself

*

looking through
my autumn collection
of unnameable colors

*

meet my neighbors
a dead pigeon and a forty
left on the corner

*

roadside bottles
thrown from cars
become little Venuses

*

so-called human!
so-called human!
screams a crow

*

don’t have kids
even your plastic plant
died a horrible death

*

drunk after midnight
he wonders how to shoot
a potato between all its eyes

*

a drunken man
screaming at the river
“I SAW YOU!”

*
flooding river
all the bicycles underwater
pedal like Philip Glass

*

Valentine’s Day
smile of someone
chewing bread without teeth

*

winter blues
my pineal gland plays
its Greatest Hits

*

state cop
writing the full moon
another ticket

*

second date–
seeing his scorpion’s
black light fluorescence

*

first date–
he says he doesn’t want
to smell like his house

*

third date–
while you drive
he looks for Bigfoot

*

fourth date–
zoo argument
about monkeys’ rights

*

late apology–
rain paints
a desert

*

his wrist slips
into the wrong watch
in motel darkness

*
winter office flirts–
tinned sardines
lose their heads

*

prayer candle–
telling the dead
where to go

*

first spring day
a puppy runs through slush
of his birth alley

*

candlelight vigil–
we are one
with the dead

*

mother cat
sees even her stillborns
wriggling in moonlight

*

drawing on the dead
moth’s wing someone says
it’s like a sin

*

all is ocean
dawn’s gold dust motes on air
ebb and flow

*
day after Halloween
a president’s face
in the trash

*

going home
wearing another’s underwear
thank you motel darkness

*
autumn moon
feeling the divorce
she wears red

*

a blind man smiles
at the moon with you
out of courtesy

*

refugees at sea
hold up words
they don’t know

*

January first
burning incense
while the cat’s out

*

something trapped
behind her eyes
an old filmstrip

*

funeral’s end
crows take a few last turns
after the sun

*

watching streets
turn ice growing someone
else’s beard

*
in my palms
my fair share
of moonlight

*

father’s war letters
to a home he only knew
from photographs

*

foggy night
reading mother’s letters
to herself

*

sewing a button
looking at fog
the colors in old letters

*

out walking
in spring fog
cars rearrange me

*

empty fog streets
traffic lights changing
nothing so much

*

traffic lights change
over empty streets there shouldn’t be
a word for nothing

*

spring fog viewing
there should be
no word for nothing

*

August dawn walk
the river can’t stop
touching my shoes

*

spring grows its hair
rarer and rarer
to hear a phone ring

*

in a condemned house
a broom
beautiful with age

*

Shaker double stairs–
brothers and sisters winding
down the DNA

*

competing at night
with the forest’s
strange secretions

*

winter moon
secretes moonlight
which secretes me

*
watching winter cars
tropical fish
in a store window

*
eyes closed in bed
on the phone with you
shopping together

*

one hospital stay
the peonies live and die
without our help

*

nurse grimaces–
another vegan
in a coma

*

visiting a man
in a vegetative state–
we become radios

*

you argue when I say
the peonies at the edge
are nobody’s

*

morning moon
when time’s up
on a story

*

the widow
carries birdseed out back
to rave reviews

*

highway traffic
the ripples
in my morning

*

snatched weave
burning with moonlight
on an icy street

*

driving past
cemeteries only winking
at the dead

*
all the movies
endings missed
New Year’s Day

*

cinnabar all day
her words
mercury at night

*

everywhere
I’ll never be
the rain

*

asleep in vinyl
under the bed
summer grass

*

barfly likes young men
spring trees
yet to grow bark

*
after his death
finding pot
behind family photos

*

digging dark tunnels
through darker tunnels
think we’re in love

*

shiver of a loon
cry on the lake
minding no store

*

September 11th
a blind man plunges his hand
in thick mud

*

seeds between fathers
colors between mothers
sons between deaths

*

no one
being born today
the foghorn

*

words are atoms
atoms only echoes
echoes are laws

*

late summer–
heard my words circle around
in a canyon

*

spring cemetery
we don’t visit our family
right away

*

mother’s mother’s
old scissors the dreamfare
to another country

*

small earthquake–
people wake to make love
and some babies

*

small earthquake
as we sleep
new countries

*

moon glistens
in the spider’s down
he begs her not to shave

*

he pets her
“like a downy spider”
she loves him more

*

woke for a drink
and saw the weird people
who thrive in moonlight

*

hot July day–
a coroner kneels to remove
gum from a corpse’s mouth

*

sweltering day–
the coroner plucks gum
from a corpse’s mouth

*

Buddha’s birthday–
counselors give gold star stickers
to death row inmates

*
middle of nowhere
halfway home
someone’s laughter

*

DON’T TELL ME
red spray paint on a wall
middle of nowhere

*

not interested
in the parts of science
not about sleep

*

on church pew
on court pew
the same cloud shadow

*

rainy graveyard
forgetting the names
all over again

*

old tombstone
remembering the moss
not the name

*

an orgy–
the only name spoken
God’s

*

deer are moonlight
while we sleep
and are worse things

*

don’t wake him
he’s young the old fart
dog running in his sleep

*

snowstorm
thanking God she makes it home
to the bar

*

dusty 8-track
in the basement–
a brother’s last good year

*

talking years later
about an ex
while cows eat thistles

*

summer divorce–
both their names
thrown like frisbees

*

after your death
dream where new teeth
rise in spring

*

maybe they’re daughters
braiding her white hair
who knows

*

spring day–
some things about to blossom
are fists

*

she finds herself
unable to paint
without the tub’s drip

*

you follow
a red maple leaf
down the creek to you

*

abalone
far from the diver
the sheen

*

December 24th–
the stars cattle in
warm stalls

*

whistling over snow–
he sees his leg trap
holds just a leg

*

out of the metro
Ezra Pound less Ezra Pound
a few seconds

*

weatherman’s arm swoops
before a green screen–
a bee’s wiggle dance

*

deathwatch
tiny white pumpkin
intact at New Year’s

*

icicles dripping–
a blind date
with a new dentist

*

a branch fallen
in the snow
homegrown crucifix

*

seeking anything
to scratch its back
autumn wind

*

at the trail head
cautious deer
in moonlight

*

in moonlight
we are moonlight
strange footprints

*

an entire village
of the dead somewhere
our radiator warmed

*

waking and sleeping
my body in sync
with the radiator’s moods

photos: Pexels