cloud

Yes, you can lay on the floor

 and read your book

  feel the seam on the pillow

and look at the fairy lights

feel free to spin spells

with your besties

about the mysteries of your young life

with you as a secret hero

I'll be here to guard your drawbridge

to slay your dragons if they get too real

to cut the crust off your sandwiches

to put a fruit rollup in your questing backpack

Summer is not forever and you

will leave me sleepwalking

in this castle 

but there is always a stable for your horse

Book Haikus

 Try to guess these books

1. You can't have it all

  love and money fly away

some dreams can kill you

2. It's tough to be young

greasers always have to fight

  nothing gold can stay

3 some heroes are small

children's hearts make us more brave

  Boo Radley is cool

4. it rains when you kiss

 Thornfield is dark and lovely

love is not a fire

5. Let's fall in love ,girl

too bad I'm just a vampire

so complicated

Graulus

Where are they now

the unnamed gods?

their hymns unsung,

 i will pour milk out upon 

the stones of their altar

when i can find them

 We still can feel

the sun on our faces

the staff in our hands

 hear the beckoning song

of the sea

What need have we of books

and collections?

 What keeps us going

and loving and showing up?

I call it Faith,

everything else is advertising.

Trifle

 If you were a fruit, 

you wouldn't be a pear

though your curve

bespeaks a cool and soothing air

No, if you were something 

  a hand can touch with dangling reach

         the eye straining to see through leaves

you might be a firm and ripening peach

   At this my turn of phrase breaks down

because you're not a thing to be devoured

 nor dropped into baskets on the ground 

   horita, I'm forced to conjure flowers

Durango

   On the ground, we pass

over the short grass, sharp

with the heat as it makes clumps

 with tiny shadows that look like

huts on the prairie

  here and there, little drifts 

of shredded plastic

stuck on bushes and 

making colonies in the 

 brown barbed wire

This nameless field crouching

down at the feet of 

dirty brick gods with

faded signs hushed

full of graffiti and blind doorways

Honestly, it is more a home

than the gardens I have seen

this place where we grew up

and learned to trust each other

and keep our secrets close, my brother.

Rona One

in the ugly glare of fear

there is no friendly gesture

is no feeling that you exist

a small piece of plastic

tells you you're infected

and the friends you thought

you had are fleeing 

the bad news is that you 

have the rona

the good news is that 

you feel fine

"bring out your dead!"

i say, as i range walk

out the door

past the other teachers

is this what we're afraid of?

you know, there's far worse out

in the world, because

everybody's ass is up for grabs

as the great thinker of the ages 

has said

was it Epicures or Staff Sergeant Barnett?

either way, they were wise to the ways

of this spinning rock

full of clowns  

i feel fine

even though i just found out

that my health insurance 

is a street rip

after I cough up, pun intended

over ten percent of my salary

they might pick up

some of the tab

maybe

These fucking humps in 

this world are more deadly

than pneumonia

I keep my distance 

from all the good 

in my life to 

keep them working 

to keep them safe

to become a more 

convenient version 

of the disposable man

I feel fine.

Shana Tova

 The year starts with weariness

and an empty canteen, and

a sweaty brow.

One foot at a time, it goes,

the bellows of its lungs

in time with the angina

of its watery heart.

  A fly beshatted motivational 

poster exhorts

the viewer to keep getting up

after being knocked down,

but what it should say

is that being hopeless

is the human condition

from 30,000 feet up

and that you've got to 

keep going anyway.

  We will trudge onward

and steal laughter and joy

from our stingy master

pilfering kisses and good

company

and minor achievements

like writing little poems

route marching 

alongside this 

shuddering disaster of a new year.