Call of the Woodsmen

Leaf-lush

primal joy,

a magnet

drawing woodsmen

step by wide-eyed step.

Forrest bound

and snug,

wound tight

but somehow natural

in tree-cloaked garb.

and still

in the magic

of the first light

the world

as we were meant to see it:

waking,

alive

without the glare

of a cruel sun,

autumnal

and ripe for the taking. 

Point Lobos

Like an exotic woman

Flashing plumage

For a mate she’ll never take

The coast is beauty, unforgiving.

Indifferent to the good children

Marveling at the starfish

In the bristling tidal pools,

Mocking its own beauty

Choked thick with seaweed.

Wave after wave cascade

A gorgeous wall of glassy blue

Thrashing like a fist

Heartless foam on sharp sand

Lurking undersea

The currents keep the seals away

Hills stuffed with scruff of trees

No traction sliprock hike to speak

As birds gawk from faraway stones.

Squint into the wind

At the fleeting phantom unseen otter

But can’t tell the dolphins

From the weeds. 

Summer Party

In the hot New England woods

We come to confess

Our need.

Ourselves alone,

Workday false face

No longer

In our steed.

Among

The humble friends

Who know

Our youthful

Means

Before these our

Glorious ends.

Fortressed, trapped, well-wrapped

Among the

Bug bites

And the trees,

We make

Drink

Laugher

Music

While we conjure, sing and feed.

Rip away

The worry layers

And lay bare

The stuff of youth.

Soul fire lights

These summer nights

For warriors

To recoup.

Blighted Lights

Pattern array

For public display

Imagine my dismay

When what once was Avant guard

Is predictable for pay

Making bank on decades past

Somehow they’ve made it last

But the real poets are restless

And now the die is cast. 

June Rain

A hint of something skittering

Some under surface simmering

A chance to meet

Escape the heat

But no.

Humidity thick

And trapped in clothes,

Fetid heat

That snags

And stings the nose.

Stepping heavy

With glistening sloth

Weighed by salty, sagging cloth

Through crowds

Drawn close and proud

Uncaring blind

In the anger and light

Day by day pacing away

Living for the chance

To go astray. 

Oratorio Bingo

The old man shuffles out

Hunched in his coat

Mumbling aloud about

Something he wrote

We crane our necks

To see around

Eyes on the stage

With its muffled sound

A Puccini mass in many parts

Too many movements

Crescendos and starts

The old man needs a break

From the pauses without applause

Reminding him of his wife’s wake

They are too much to take.

Too old for silence

Or for standing still

Hunched in his coat

The old man has his will. 

The D Monster

That nagging fickle fog

That plays forever on the brain,

Conjuring pain from small nothings,

Turning everything to shame,

Filling days with

Gunmouth splatter dreams,

Angry exhausted rumbling rants

And forever muffled screams.

Game of the smart mind

Most unkind

For every piece of life

Burning crazy to unwind.

A self-made horror

Going viral,

That spiral

Of wrong upon wrong

Scoring points

To make weak

Of the strong.

At the Financial Presentation

The analyst speaks

Well and sharply

As the secret poet

Scans the room

Looking for people

Also making

Their mental escape.

We pour the coffee

Into our cups

And dream

Of climbing mountains

Hunting goats

Haunting dojos

To fight samurais

Get through our days

Stealing prices of time

In various ways

We stumble,

Poems and scribbles

Tumbling from pockets,

Betray our heretical lives

In our world I’ve bedded

A million women,

Slaughtered 

A million Philistines

At the golden door.

I am king pirate

In a desolate

Future-medieval world,

A gift to women

And a revered artist

Stuck in my petrified cocoon

Growing rusted and insane.

Flushing, Queens

Dazzle-bright signs

In alien characters

Light the way

For fleets of buses

Burping diesel

On the teeming sidewalks

Storefronts

Paved over Quaker farmland

Odd monuments linger

For a sacred past

The streets break way

For brick buildings

And green lawns,

Rows of houses

That remember simpler times

Sidle past

The looping language

Of churches

Where once were family homes

We take it all in,

Souls sizzling like all-night barbecue.

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

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

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

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.