Snapshot out the Window during a Windstorm

a man walks by head down

gripping his case of Bud Light

as if the wind would carry it away

a girl dressed in a white dress rushes

the other way, alternating between

leaning back and reaching forward to

push down her lofting skirt with

every gust; she glances around to

make sure no one saw anything

the clouds watch it all as they

rush overhead, never pausing to

look any closer.

The Look

black mini-skirt

black fishnet hose

[ tight ]

black cashmere sweater

yellow keds

perfect look

A Day at Work

I sifted through piles of micrometeoroids

splayed across countless reports; they were all small

and ineffectual, so I shuffled through larger piles of

shattered rocket boosters, hammers and spent fuel

tanks, and found something of substance, things

that could do some real damage, worth thinking about

and so I had to think for a long time about these

objects circling our own earth waiting to shred

our satellites, ripping cuddly blankets off telescopes,

severing cables which connect them to us,

and us to them.

Image generated by European Space Agency

Listening to a Nobel Laureate Speak about Particle Physics

we watched him from our seats in the auditorium,

not even noticing the fluctuating gluons

moving in space like miniature lava lamps between

him and us [oblivious to their beauty, we read our newspapers

in our three dimensional Cartesian space, watching

our clocks tick]; one dimensional time is hard enough

to manage what with getting to work, picking up the kids.

in another dimension of a supersymmetric world,

we would be beautiful and thin to balance our chubby,

gluttonous selves, all we have to do is get there.

A Rock, Paper, Scissors poem

This poem comes from a prompt at poetry workshop to take three words and relate them in the same (or similar way) to rock, paper, scissors. My words (randomly selected from a pile) were lemon, thoughtfulness and light.

by nature, lemons create light in the darkest teas
the splash of single droplet leaves behind a royal crown
suspended in air as it forges its way from the still rippling
surface to the bottom of the tea cup.

let ubiquitous light overshadow thoughtfulness, a flash
in the pan, a lovely surprise

thoughtfulness clearly trumps lemons, that dour look
coupled with a snide remark
in response you surely walk away a little
less sweet.

Photo:  http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/

Cured of Corn Syrup and Junk Food

the damn dog had a treat sitting on the arm of my couch,

the banished dog, the dog that jumped on people’s laps

without asking, the dog that wasn’t even there but still

had a dog bone sitting on the arm of my couch.

I was incensed and demanded a treat also; the dog no doubt

had treats that cost a small fortune; I demanded good treats, too.

She came back with a small cardboard box filled with

lunch-size packets of Cheetos,  caramel corn, BBQ chips,

the bad stuff that someone brought anonymously to her party

and left behind surreptitiously, glad for it be gone from

their basement when someone else left it at their party.

this person I loved [did she love me] was offering me junk food instead of

a beautiful, organic, wholesome treat like she would buy for her dog.

I was crushed and I ate a whole package of caramel corn

Afterwards I felt sick, but cured of eating such things in the future.

Not sure if it’s tough love, but I know we will have to talk of this while

the dog sits on my lap and farts in my general direction.

Layers

as one layer falls to the earth

another child raises her arms through

the dust towards the sun, like a flower

pushes through a layer of composted

leaves from the last generation, once

green, once bright and encouraging,

now only to feed the new life, that

child, that girl who will then reach for

 the stars, only to bow graciously in

time yielding to another layer of seed

rising to the sun, again and again

and again.