X-men

I'd be Raven, but with an iron stomach to
digest tall milkshakes after a dinner of gin and tonics
and greasy fajitas, forget the flying and high kicks.
indigestion is what keeps one up at night,
although I guess Raven doesn't have to sleep;
I have noticed the ravens dozing
off mid-day instead of cawing in the trees along
the rushing creek, the tree trunks are groaning
all the way to their roots.

let's talk technical

about radiator panels in space
and orbital debris, micrometeoroids,
asteroid cohesion and lidar technology.
let's talk technical, forget Jung and Freud,
Yeats and e.e. cummings, switch gears mid-stream
let the heart stop and the brain begin until
we slow and realize the brain, the heart,
the liver and spleen, the bowel and
intestines all move as one unified
body and mind and spirit
with the heart always
in front.

finding desire

desire
not the desire that everyone supposedly thinks about,
when man meets woman and supposedly fireworks launch,
but simply desire that stirs you to get up
and work at something ceaselessly because
somewhere it meets your soul mid-way and
you can't get enough,
often solitary, the mind, the body, the spirit
meld with this desire that makes life
worth living, gives meaning, but
finding it is another thing indeed
amongst the old papers blowing in the wind,
the cacophony of voices and rustle of ancient
strands of DNA echoing in caves,
find me desire and I will find
happiness.

balancing on a plank in space

we all balance on planks suspended in space
our emotions whirling around us, our edges blurred,
the winds of history blowing through us, from cold to hot,
blustery, the calm pierced by the single note of a flute
vibrating all space, then time, then space-time
it carried a heaviness with it, a solidity then curving
south it picks up speed, changes key, our boundaries reform
and we find each other again, smiling across a shrinking abyss,
our hands can almost touch, I can feel the warmth of your
fingertips.

Collision of Galaxies

he was so casual about it,
showing a simulation of our beloved Milky Way
being ripped apart in its collision with the Magellan galaxy
in a few billion years, when our jewel of an Earth will be long gone
eaten by our swollen and dying sun, everything destroyed and
gone to ashes.
where will the ghosts reside, the temperatures will get too extreme
for any ilk, the good or the bad, angel's wings will fry or frost
and devils will toast their marshmallows quickly.
casually he continues his slide show, ending with the
statement that he'll be long gone in any case,
as will I, but somehow it strikes me as inordinately
sad that this beautiful world
will exist no more.

they must be out of town

the little black dog and the cute guy with red hair

must be out of town, the kitchen has been wiped down,

the toys are in a box and a vacuum cleaner has crept 

across the floor gathering hair and fuzz and white specks

and loose nuts and bolts, who knows where they belong,

we hope his new bike will not fall apart when it hits a bump.

the rain has stopped, the flute has fallen silent, music

drifts in the window and a crow calls out his last cry

for the night, the clouds hang low in the sky and 

I face the darkness with some dread for when worms 

emerge from my arms and legs in a bad dream, there 

will be no one to hold me in their arms, but at least

the kitchen is clean.

busy as bees

in the dusk we saw them fluttering over lilac blossoms,

what looked like hummingbirds were moths, there was no

whirring, no calorie wasted stirring air unneccesarily

just as the bees settle lazily onto pollen heavy stamen,

their wings at rest while they gather the nectar

onto their bodies to carry home to their queen.

if only I were the Queen, I'd play cards at night while

hummingbird moths flittered around me, casting

candlelight shadows across full wine glasses.