Thursday, December 27, 2012

Deerwoods


Silent inviting
a place of bounty
fleeting, springing
with creatures alighting

puzzles of trees
branches and streams
woods of Indian walking dreams

pace in the cold
upwind and still;
waiting for prey
ignoring the chill

there to take
with a hunter’s violence,
a thirst to slake
with hours of silence

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Meteors


The brilliant ghost
of space poets

sparks of the poets’ gods
demanding tribute
to the great blue night

pleas for greatness
whispered in flash paper,
grapeshot launched
against nonbelievers of art

a screed of proofs
of the glory of the universe
treasure trove of trusted light

flint to fire a billion tender minds
—to send them careening
to the glory and madness of poetry

timed celestial beams
spelling our great secret lives
against the stars’ tapestry
in mysterious Mayan math

all of space and time
and its infinite secrets
forked out in white-hot code
for a poet to decipher accidentally
in a thousand years

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Happy Envy

I raise a toast to success
and clink Champaign
with a hate-frozen gaze

blue eyes green inside,
burning a shameful burn
that I pray won’t bleed through my smile

I must eclipse you,
beat you
into my shadow,
feed you
the leftover bits of fame

or hitch myself
to an earthbound comet,
streaking angry stardust lightening
across the blue-black sky
before burning away

Sunday, December 2, 2012

New York Blues Poem #89


the city twinkles
massive and silent
with glowing steel mountains

unblink the poet’s seeing eyeball
filtering life through
the gorgeous abomination
of greasy paving stones
and rat scurvy Hudson piers
while the hushed swooshing of traffic
becomes a banshee siren song

isolated footsteps
echo
on the Brooklyn promenade
as
each lonely dweller
gets radiant voodoo magic
from the electric New York night.