Everything Soluble

It’s the way leaves absorb sunlight.

A drop of sweat lands on your shirtsleeve.

Squeeze the sponge in the sink, water running, let go.

A twig snaps somewhere off the path, now transfixed.

Covered in blankets in bed, watching Netflix.

The football coming down, a long bomb, and the defender leaps for it.

Her fingers tapping scratching across your back.

Cigarette smoke exhale fades in the moonlight.

How a whole stadium becomes a drop of water.

How a man and his computer become soap suds.

How a backpacker turns to moss.

Ashes to ashes, the universe is still Banging away,

one glob stretching into infinity.

Laughter and cricket chirps ride in on the August night breeze.

Bad Trip

A friend calls at 3AM on a bad trip.
"Where do you want to go?" is the first thing he asks me.
Then, when I don't know: "I'll take you 'round the bend."
We are on the Amazon River. He has been piloting this stretch
for thirty-five years now, but he's thinking of quitting.
It's just not worth the risk anymore. He is lying in bed
with a cigarette, ash down to the fingers,
his phone propped against his ear by force of gravity.
I am on my couch with Augustine's Confessions 
stretched across my lap like a leopard in the sun.
Both of us agree that thirty-five years is a long time.

Pomegranate

Staring at a headstone, first you see only stone.
Then a single ant-- then another behind it--
and all of a sudden, or over a few quick seconds, you realize
that there have been ants there all along, dozens of them,
and your field of vision splits like a pomegranate
onto a hive of tiny buds, each packed with sweetness
you are too big to find on your own.

Saturday in January Sharp Minor

Watching the images

of 3-years-post-earthquake Haiti,

it’s obvious to me that Haiti

is definitely not America.

Later in the broadcast,

a newscaster tells me

that 3 million children die each year

from malnutrition.

And it’s obvious to me

that he’s not talking about America.

I’m trying to explain how to get my brain working.

Like a lawn mower pull cord you just gotta rip the words right outta you,

and fast.

Faster.

Prime it once more.

You sure there’s gas in there?

Didn’t the images of starving homeless families do anything for you?

Didn’t that put some fire in your rotor belly?

But you’re just a lawn mower.

Just a bartender.

Just a bourgeois suburbanite sipping his beer in his camp chair,

listening to music on his hundred-dollar headphones.

You’re just letting the sun go down

without having stepped outside once in the sunlight today.

And you can’t decide

if this is a good way to live

a day or not.

And how responsible you want to be

for the happiness of others.

Painting the Dartboard for Some Renaissance Fest

My boss is named Archie.
He is a short man,
mid fifties, perhaps,
always wears sunglasses.
I imagine him as a jester
with a vile of poison
in the pocket of his red,
Ed Hardy hoodie.

He tells me I have 16 hours
to finish the queen. I tell him
I think that’s doable.

She is a seven foot-tall head
with jewels in her Raw Sienna hair
and currently no pupils.
Tomorrow, I will make her blush.

I know that despite
how carefully I paint the folds
of her frilly collar,
what royalty I give to the pout of her
Titanium White/Cadmium Red Medium blend lips,
I cannot save her.

I wonder who sews the clothes
of people on death row.
Do they remind themselves
not to bother
over a dropped stitch?

Unfinished Poem

The couplets of Jonathan leak
and Herman burns wet wood.
The greats are sure their work is weak,
and, unafraid to bear
the failures with the good,
infuse their poems with despair.

Living Off Dead

"Of all the meditations,

meditation on death is supreme."

---Clavo Clavito

We drive into the Conrad Memorial Cemetery

(“The Best Last Place”)

and park in front of Mr. Conrad’s Mausoleum—

a stone building with pillars

the same size as the boarding house I currently rent a room in,

all for one guy’s rotting corpse.

Banjo on my back, we head

down the narrow, uneven

rock steps covered in ice

that lead to the Stillwater.

A gunshot

rings out below us.

We freeze.

Another shot.

Still, we ignore

the NO TRESPASSING sign

and hop over the barbed wire.

On the other bank of the river,

a man and his wife sit

above some geese.

The man waves.

I wave.

We walk down the river a ways

and sit on a log.

Just as I pull out my axe,

the man appears

holding a rifle.

“We’re hunting here.

Anything flies up this way,

you’re gonna make it turn around.”

I tell him sorry and put the banjo

back in its case.

A pause. “And, y’know,

technically

you’re on our property.”

Before we hop back over the fence,

you say you’d like to pee,

so I walk away and see the house—

a small place,

with a few dozen acres of woods and river

all to themselves.

I hear you singing,

“This land is your land

this land is my land.”

Driving out, we see

people walking around the cemetery,

holding hands,

walking their dogs.

They all smile and wave as we pass.

Surrounded by mountains

on a sunny January day

as you walk amongst the dead.

How nice, I think.

Before the exit gate,

a sign:

DULL AND STAINED

MONUMENTS

AND MARKERS?

WE CLEAN AND POLISH

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