In Moab, come back and visit on Sunday night!

A Glass of Wine in the Darkness

no one sees your tears glisten in the darkness

unless the moon is full and the past is present-

ly in the future, reach for a glass of wine 

nearby, stand tall, open the heavy

curtains and let the moon shine on

your dazzling face.

A Bad Margarita

 the tall man with spectacles at the bar

didn’t know how to make a margarita;

the lush sitting across from me took a

single sip and watched the ice melt into

too many ounces of margarita mix,

the cheap stuff made with corn syrup

from some farm back in Illinois subsidized

by the U.S. government to force her to

drink bad margaritas to replenish her

fluids after an evening of hot yoga.

Black dots on a page

a young man entombed in a wooden frame, 

Father tending his acre farm,

a woman and her dog watching a

man paint from a distance,

four brunettes wearing sweaters and jackets

in a chilly house, eating chocolate and pistachio

nuts, drinking tea, talking about the

girl finding the young man under the

eaves, the wife feeling as if she has

swallowed paint, a daughter

enjoying her pruning shears,

the clock ticks in the quiet room

three poets and a teacher rise

to attend the real world of children,

shopping and schedules to keep,

leaving behind small black dots

on white paper on the kitchen table.

The Young Man in the Wooden Frame

at the top of the stairs

behind a small door only large enough

for a child to disappear into the musty interior,

he waited patiently, for her, for someone,

leaning against the rafters amidst

piles of chewed-up newspaper bits,

and dessicated mouse turds.

she crawled towards a patch of sunlight

towards the back corner, past tattered school notebooks

filled with exquisite cursive penmanship,

stacks of old bills with stamped letterhead

towards a young man frozen in time,

now a mere collection of silver spheres

arranged across a yellowing canvas.

they sat there together in the shimmering dust

in the heat of summer under the eaves

as best friends do until her mother called

her back to cookies and play dates

and other such things.

Poem Anxiety

Monday is the day after tomorrow.

they will come here, wine in hand to relieve my anxiety

that I must offer something on paper, composed of

letters, words, perhaps even sentences with occasional

punctuation marks as they will offer theirs so

well formed and beautifully arranged on the page

with deft usage of image and words that I perhaps

cannot understand and sit speechlessly.

Let it be a large bottle of wine, to drink, then

to capture my free-floating anxiety.

Cookies

they were away

while I baked, knowing full well I was

tempting them with chocolate, sugar, butter, baked to the

most exquisite crispy brown on the outside, melted delirium on the inside,

the aroma filling the house waiting for them

I took down the glasses for cold milk

and hid the scale in the basement for

another day.

Small Revelations

in that room, I spoke

words only for your ears

that listen so intently, without judgment,

as solid as a stone in a rushing river,

beautifully worn over our time together,

by my words which flow over, around and through

over months, years, decades of listening,

you only pause to reach over to touch my hand

or caress my cheek.

Spring in Boulder: Spring in Japan

the mountains are shrouded in frosty

clouds bang against my window as I sleep

restlessly, only waking to see my neighbor

tumble across the road from his car, the man

from Namibia can’t pedal fast enough,

even the small plants of spring are battered

by plastic sheet ripped from the carefully

tilled soil, now shredding the small life

beneath them, such is the story of this season.

Schemers

they schemed while sitting at the picnic bench

over lunch, eating some cottage cheese delicately balanced

on the container cover, an apple, one small cookie

as a reward for eating healthy, somehow missing

that hate is an unhealthy state on such a sunny day.

out on the picnic table,

two women spitting poison between them

rapid-fire, claws being sharpened on their

acid tongues, all while the unfortunate target

sits blissfully unaware in a sunny location

that fits her personality, oblivious to the 

winds of bitterness blowing across the land.

Daisy in the Golden Room

a rabbit with golden ears

licks my blue jeans not knowing

what else to do in these days

and nights of old age.

glassy blue eyes that no longer see,

her small groans and gentle

sighs punctuate the night

waking me from a light sleep

like that of a new mother

not yet sure her new baby

will get through the night.

Sorting Laundry

initially

whites go with whites

darks with darks

carefully selected from an ever growing colorful pile of laundry

except the well worn jeans can go with

the whites after all they’re on top of

the pile which dwindles so

much more rapidly

if no sorting is

required.

Her Garden

he and the carpenter stood together in the back yard
discussing the future of her garden, the position of
the berry brambles that tended to lean over the stone
path leading to the backyard, whether the tin roof
should be replaced with cheap plastic that would let
the sun in until it turned yellow and stained.
she would never forgive them when the berries
no longer draped themselves over the stones
as offerings from the gods, when the tapping
of rain drops was against cracked plastic that
needed to be replaced every five years, the
shards decorating some distant landfill.
this is her garden of flowers scattered among
the stones, where black ravens bow their heads
to drink clear water amidst irises pushing up
from a long winter sleep.

The Crooks in the Financial Sector

Sum$ of money flowing from my taxes
to the U.S. Dept of the Treasury
for the bailouts for the millionaires
now resting in one of their five homes
as they retire from their strenuous
undertakings defrauding the American
taxpayers, may they rot in hell.

Japan Catastrophy vs What's Trending Now

homes now heaps of broken timber

streets canals of mud and debris

broken hearts, screaming for those

that cannot be found, perhaps never found,

nuclear plants on the brink of meltdown.

we watch for a bit and get back

to our real concerns, what’s trending now

Alyssa Milano, Snooki or Clint.

Break from the crowd: Donate now:

http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html

Prompt (Ana): Green: The Man from Namibia II

When the Chinook winds blow
from the west he starts riding to nowhere
while I sleep fitfully against an acoustic backdrop
of groaning tree trunks, wildly jangling wind chimes,
the sirens of fire trucks woohwaah in their search
for the non-existent entrance to our neighborhood.
his green flag whips in the wind, his wheels
wobble as they spin; in all this din all he can do
is helplessly spin in the wind, like so many
tumbleweeds rolling this way and that
across the lonely highway.

The Insurance Man

he looks like the insurance man

you always wanted to feel safe with,

kind faced with grey hair, a traditional gold

wedding band gracing his large hands,

he leans his head back as he gazes

at the computer screen, a dead give-way

he is sporting bi-focals, as expected.

he stays late on a Friday night just

to accommodate your procrastination

over the last three years, recognizing

that if you don’t do it now, you

never will, regretting it deeply when

flood waters fill your basement,

your newly baked chocolate chip cookies

burning in the oven as you head for

high ground.

To E.M.

she looks so familiar

after twelve years in a way

never before recognized in

the roundness in her face, her soft

cheeks, thin brown hair,

that mysterious smile that

draws millions of visitors

a year yet I get her to myself

here in the late afternoon

where we talk as always

but this time I see her in

a different light.

Doing Science

the experiment did not go as planned

and I wondered if science betrayed me

or my mind just could not comprehend

its beauty so close I could feel the humming

inside my skull waiting to wake up

in the morning to meet it again.

Three Glasses

one glass shared with a girlfriend

at Laudisio, a Malbec squeezed in between

two middle aged men ogling her,

their wedding rings glinting

one glass shared over buckwheat noodles

with spicy sesame sauce after our eyes

stop crying over onions and other

undisclosed sorrows

one glass shared on a winters night

when one thinks hopefully of spring, of

daffodils, only to reluctantly

unlock the bike on a snowy night

to ride home in darkness.

Renovation: Casey Middle School

the cracked cement patio squares from the front of the school are gone,

replaced by eco-friendly, but unidentifiable, paving materials

a cold wind out of the west no longer blows loose papers across the library,

double-paned, e-star windows keep the library cool in summer, warm in winter

the front door closes behind itself securely and there are no extra keys circulating among

mischievous students who would break it at night to remove all the blackboard chalk

the Mexican kids still congregate on the north side by the soccer field

and the Caucasians to the south closer to the parking lot where mom drops them off

until the bell rings and black and white, Hispanic, asian all melt into

a continuous stream heading inside. 

Tangled Limbs

stuffed into two seats

in the back row where

there is no recline

nor place to put your feet

as the carts roll by

the endless stream of

passengers stumbling

over our feet on their way

to the loo

and so we entangle

arms over shoulders,

 legs over thighs,

feet under bags for two

endless hours, finally

standing on senseless feet,

with crooked necks, the

last ones to wave good-bye

to the cheery stewardess.

a child on a man's shoulders

they faced away from us towards the river,
each ripple shimmering in reflected light.
we knew their eyes were bright watching the
ducks dancing nearby, her arms reaching out
to touch them from high up on his shoulders
until he lifts her from his shoulders and then
holds her close by the water, her small arms
still reaching to the ducks, calling them,
the light shimmering on the water, the ducks
and the man and the girl all one in the night
as we watched from above.

Found Object:s: Condoms

still packaged

in blue, pink and red wrappers

left behind for whom, I wonder

as I put them into a small pile

next to the plastic democratic elephant

and the cheap silver painted earrings.

will they come back to get them, I wonder,

noting that in the hot afternoon sun on the sill

they would soon be baked and I’m not ready

to be a grandmother.

still packaged, I swept them into the

trash bin.  there’s more where those

came from, I’m sure.

A Hard Working Dog

at night he collapses with exhaustion

after a hard day’s work pulling his weight

in this household of bums, those two-legged

slackers who sigh as they go off to their easy jobs

leaving him to guard the house, bark at the mailman,

keep the couch warm, watch his little sister, all

that after carrying the little red plastic fire hydrant

stuffed with poopie bags, how embarrassing.

On the Table

nude

relaxed under a sheet

on a warm heating pad

his hands caressing me with skill,

nothing in return but a credit card

after the session

how simple,

how lovely.