Samson 

dear me;

you may never read this but you should, as

I have been writing to you on an old bronze vase

my faded scratchings staring out of the myths, so. . .

It took our artist dad to cut your hair leaving

seven locks preserved until

‘Nam, what losses when

angry shears broomed away grasshopper shelters and

stolen summer sweet corn,

fields of heated straw fermenting delight, trampled

grass rich as a fart

cool moss, lichen coated boulders in the woods, then

autumn leaf piles so willing to accept your plunge, oh

what free hunger taken, then

lost to eastern heat,

musky fruits bitten in

50,000 feet up black sky,

bombs opening silently in long B-52 rows;

fish sauce and the years

until back is forward into

paisley, weed, and patchouli oil, wow . . .

lava rainbows surprising Golden Gate traffic,

girls spinning Rumi at the Filmore --

time absorbed by fingertips on nipples, skin --

all those Rapunzel comings and

misunderstandings in a VW bus;

people had auras then, what losses

before forward was back;

life’s patina such a dammed spot !           why

you mowed my Irish ‘fro again for a job; listen

I never liked patchouli oil

just the hunger, you

never want to lose that

regardless of what is done to our hair, sincerely yours.

 Sealight 

by the bay,

as I wait to drive my balded friend to her chemo

I hear the tide and hiss of traffic

flowing past that peculiar two-story;

one side painted bright yellow

reminding me of Mexico

where I heard a biker band symphony,

that yellow sun leaving the sea,

transmuting  eastern walls

on the beach in Tulum; the sun very bright then,

unlike the heavy sea layer brooding down here,

only that yellow-sided house to illuminate me

but then she puts on a golden wig

and smiles as though we are in the Yucatan

and I wash back and forth,

froth on an ocean of limitless depth.

The Rape Of Her Face

in that field she was tender on the rocks,

her fingers ending in polished jade

held near her breast

as she arched her back

in the shade hole of the umbrella,

their long lenses poking

until her smile was worn off her face,

what an excuse,

no one could stare that hard and long

without a machine.

My Son Dropped By When I Was Out

some people just aren’t organized,

leaving elements of themselves everywhere,

DNA at the crime,

old onion peels under the stove,

pencils broken on the sideboard,

virus clothes spreading outward

from the unvacuumed room,

those were the old clues

but now the toilet seat is up again,

I know you have visited here,

and I smile.

 This Is No Wonderland

well the lawnmower

drifted over

pocking holes

with a flashlight

speaking to me

of 30 millimeters

cutting thick brush

and men,

I rabbited

clear out of bed,

woken from

the nonsense of night --

the news chopper only after a sports event --

morphed,

blade sounds

stood my dreams on end,

Alice and I turned from

dining table wine,

dead baby bunnies

at our feet,

the mower running louder

and louder,

wanting to kill more

hidden things

as it floated into

the sky,

such a legacy

of the past

in my bushes,

how can I dare to sleep with such noise.

Burdened 

see this scum

close around

the seam

some people

don’t know how

to clean

their minds,

spiders

many arms

on the synapses

waiting

blocking

a clear counter

until dementia.

Swim To Me

You are in Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, points away from here

where I swim unsettled in the wrinkled sheets –

that, and those of my silent chatter,

thoughts flapping in the unbidden wind

which is warmed away when your pulse is near mine,

what a strange jones but unlike that prior woman

I would rather have you as near as those clothes piles

I don’t dare wash,

men get laundry all wrong,

as near as those ointments and salves in the bathroom,

I don’t understand them either but they reassure me,

those tubes and their smells are my oxygen tank,

I swim in the sheets, breathing,

I am held alive by a tube of thought between us,

so elastic that it stretches forever,

through those cities, past all other forms of life,

until I feel your fingers printing

the boarding pass back to our seas –

then I will say welcome, and be whole.