Before the finneddinosaurs of the frozen deep were interrupted by the warships of man they cast their love balladsinto the vast abyss, waiting,with hearts as wild and big as schoolbuses, for their own answer.
life
The Day I Was Born
I imagined you wielding a steel blade with my initials worn deep into the spineopening my mind as a lotus petal floats in emptiness, radiating particlesof crazy wisdom in every direction but one.
Spreading Ashes in the Ausable
more coveted than winefrom milk, the masteralchemists of China coulddo no better than these cloudschurning into rivers, the way cottongrass renews itself or how a son returns in time to let go.
my favorite cage
is made of porcelain white bars, surroundedby ringlets of fire, red hot and orangeas daisies consumed bythe summer sun. Those cornerless bars, alive and fierce as fractals, daring me to eclipse my freedom.
Unsolicited Advice to the Class of 2020
Grip life the way a father holds his son’srib bone after a car bomb in a Baghdad market. Treat it with speechlessrespect. Awake each morning in its belly, licking the mucous from the rubberyintestine of your own ignorance. Chase life. As children run after dragonflies.Unlock the jar and hold it like a prisoner of evolution. […]
Chimps
Somedays I wake up and look into the mirror and ask myself if I am really human. I know that I speak. I know that I symbolize and wear the skin that has the blood of mammals pulsating through its veins. I know that I am not a fish or reptile. I do not have the stamina […]
Radiation from the Big Bang
Dear grandpa,I never met whopulled the trigger. They say that youhad enemies andit was the Depression, but who really knows?Your ashes were scatteredsomewhere in the valley and the records back thenwere never kept the way theyshould have been. Anyways, there is far too much chatterabout all of that now, in the background, as the evidence […]
His Shaman Eyes
felt heavy as slabs of sandstone,like the pyramids. But only after he offered prayers tothe unearthed, cleansed bythe drumming, a cold thunder on the dry mouth of an Illinois Prarie.
Bio-graph
The mind is rustlingclothes, sound shadowsand deadening echoes. The feel of her proximityand the wall when a blindman is walking too close. Like black panthers, all of usfind our way by vibrations, when the night gets too dark. And in the morning, the mind isa patch of parsley green moss onthe white flesh of birch trees. […]
After Breathing
I notice.Everything. How the inkon my paperhas more thanone color of blackand feels delicate as silk. The hard plastic wheels of a stroller scraping the gravel. Like crackling embers,the stillness of a solitary pineneedle sighing in the breeze.An eternal thing, like bloodflowing for its own sake. That spring taskof bringing life again. Or the neighbor’s Calico […]