Draw and Pull

Ten hours out of Oklahoma,
and what can exist here,
with red Kansas highway spent beneath?

A livelihood amidst vacant storefronts,
and long-rusted steel machines?
Perhaps. Even Goodland has its way.

Morality under the dusty bedspreads,
behind the faded, floral prints of these motels?
There is a chance.

Movement past these crumbled streets,
a chance for East or West?
No, there can be none.

Night holds us--a motel room--
feet pound cement, a child screams,
a motorcycle snarls, revs and fades.
An urge for motion
and morning comes.

West again, the border and Colorado.
A deep-seated fear relieved,
the land still unchanged.

Denver comes muted first
in concrete gray and charcoal blue.
Then monuments--a gold-spired university,
a stadium, but ever less than
the edging horizon.

A city of newness, of remedies, and of wealth.
A ridged basin, a lake enclosed,
the odor of pine, sumac and we stop
fifteen hours out of Oklahoma.

The 232nd Fourth

I watch my city stop, fold up,
and sit wide-eyed across a bridge.
And the sky turns for us--
turns outward in three-four time
and fades.

The smoke remains draped
as a flag in still air,
listlessly moving west.

Now, a newfound blankness
as my city disassembles
and we flee.

Athens

July in the Old Place, La Plaka,
but awake now. A mid-day rush.
Foreign buyers brush against shops with
blown glass and aging, gilded icons
and backgammon boards of olive wood.

The acropolis breathes its presence.

The neoclassical as smooth marble, gray brick
is weighed by gelato stalls
and yet as fixed a mark.

A hospital bed

A hospital bed, starched and
bleached white
and an astronaut's visor
tinted with gold
thinly bear hot breath,
sweat and impermanence
against the infinite.

Hold and release

A shutter clicks, hold--
rubber and aluminum wane.
Hot headlight then brake light filaments
drip like mercury, molded
by weightless sled tracks.

Night and man's choice of illumination,
a bank's horizontal slats
trap yellow tongues within and
flickering neon storefronts
glint of tetra scales--and release.

I searched

I searched for you, but you were naked
below your clothes.

And under your skin were bones and they held
organs among them.

I could not find you there.

I searched for Him in grass and stone,
in paint and story, in novel and film.
I found Him there.

And there, with Him,
I found you.

To the rough misunderstanding

To the rough misunderstanding
and those who believe it,
that romantic love
should hold out
constant for a lifetime:

A psychology textbook
estimates six to thirty months
until one must rely
on compassion or empathy.

Thus requiring a man of seventy
about thirty-seven
women worth of romance.
(With even a fourteen year
allowance for youth)

Not that the sum
is unreasonable in itself
but the finding and acquiring
of such numbers is impractical.

What a person really means
is to spend a few years
in mystery and passion
and the rest in bright reenactment.

No Harvest

In dark three-buttoned suits,

sober men of import
romanticize the farmer
as an image of Napoleon
standing over fresh dirt,
hand held deep in flannel plaid.

These officing men
avoid the unbearable:
the farmer pawns used cars
and chips the white paint
off his own porch columns.

With dramatic flaunt,
the farmer sows cooked rice
on dry and unplowed ground
to fulfill the duties
of his semi-rural position.

Yet inside his unaffected children
dine with no reserve
on income from the sale
of a red side-dented Ford.
This he knows is necessity
to sustain his agriculture.

Inattentive

While a student,
days consider themselves
in classroom terms.

Not the dotted-line orbits
of planets on elliptical wheels.
(A sermon of the now bald
and wire-glassed)

Instead the whiteboard traces
of faint black and blue and red
that were once planned
but grow permanent and disorderly.

Blood Steward

My liquid red life
Taken by wounds and surgeons
Streams from His syringe.

An organic tomb

So unceremoniously
I tore through
the green cabbage
shell--
too deep
and into the
catacomb
of a curled
brown spider
encased
in its final
dusty web;
legs doubled back
upon
themselves.

Egg

An egg lies
exhausted and broken open
like a geode.

Its crystal is ruby,
the color of a dying sun
or of life's yolk
remainder.

The bottom curve,
blossoming with hair fractures
spreads out flat and taut:
a climber on sheer
rock.

Fiction

Fiction authors are my proof
of a reality, definite and tangible.
I can question man's existence
until that dubious animation
can itself breathe life into page.
Upon this I base my certainty
that creation evidences creator.

Subsistence

I am the son of gluttony
And the child of subsistence
A cross-bred evolution
That is future's foolishness

The throbbing of my back
And red stripes across my arms
Amass a surplus never reached
A safety from the slums

The black under my fingernails
Is my proof of revenue
An excess for a poorer man
That I alone consume

Firetruck's Sonnet

How does the fiery engine sleep at night?
No person can restrain its spinning wheels
Or even try to dim its whirling light
How will it rest with dogs still on its heels?
And when the siren bell once more shall ring
And hasty firemen slide on silver poles
It has to be alert and functioning
In times of stress and speed it knows its roles
It must refuse the urge to race on streets
And put on hold the terror of the day
Then place its coiled hose between red sheets
In this position the engine must stay
Until the sliding door and sun comes up
It sleeps on guard with coffee in its cup