Writing Can Have Side-Effects and Be Habit Forming

Mornings I ride
A bike
To a place
Where I wait
For a poem to come

A piece a day
Whether good or not

Sometimes I hack my
Way through spiny plants
That tear at my skin

Sometimes I surprise
A hawk
Or spot a centipede
As it winds from one hiding place to
The next

More often I just keep
Moving through the wind
The sun
Or the rain

Sometimes the moon
Is blue as ice
Or red

If I just keep showing
Up one will come
Or not

My legs have gotten
Strong
Big as trees

Prison Writing Workshop

Eleven ravens roost

in a winter cottonwood

wind slices through

my jacket as the lock

snaps shut

fingers strain at the weight

of papers and books

and pens and notepads

and other dangerous characters

as a man lights his cigarette

on an electrical coil

wired to a steel post

a bare grey stump

bleaches in the sun

mute now

no breeze can stir the leaves

it used to offer as shade

and here in this

clear unforgiving

light

no one

can hide or run

but a man can refuse

square one of

a new year

a blank page waits

for the story

that will mark the passing

of steps in ponderous time

snow shimmers on the mountain

far beyond the confining wire

one by one the ravens

lift into the wind and are carried

on the words

thrown down like dice

in this the last and

only chance to

harvest a truth

from a turquoise sky
a pearl from a grain
of sand

What I Missed

The nattering "I'll-get-him"
and "she-is-so-nice"s
went silent for a moment
last week

I was driving
into and out of a
column of
rain that fell only
here
this wet road a
shadow surrounded by brilliance

Sun shone on
glistening sapphires
drops from that Sunday rain

Streets surrendered
vapor as tires
slurped along wet pavement

Struck by the anomaly
of it all
I rolled down the window

There, beside me all along
wafted the smell of water
and wet dog

How many storms have I missed
while spinning threads of chatter
out of wounds that refuse to close?

Stranger

I am a stranger to this life.

This imposter 

Wears all the wrong clothes 

To the banquet

Speaks a

Language I understand only

Dimly that says

Get to work.

Save your money.

Don’t talk to strangers.

The language I speak is one

Of animals,

Of stones full of

Stories told by

Turquoise, malachite,

And fools gold.

Mute chairs

Even musical instruments

Reveal their secrets as

I turn my gaze

From the flames

Of disappointment

To peripheral

Expectation. 

Imposter with a pass

I roam the dark streets

Looking for the door

That always waits.

I see what has

been in front of me forever

and pick up the hammer

I will need to

Shatter the jar

Holding all

Coins of my birthright.

This is the way.

I have been waiting

Growing old

And slow

Utterly and brilliantly

Embarrassed.

Home

Here

alone at last

Cut free from the light of day

Keeping company

With nothing

I learn what I have

Wanted all along.

Now that I know what to say

they are gone

even the stones and animals

are gone

and I speak to an empty darkness.

My voice travels out across silence

with no chance of touching

a human heart.

It makes no sound

Because nothing is deaf and mute. 

My answer now found

will be forever secret.

After Snow

 

Fog sits on the winter city

Its December fingers 

find ways through seams 

into warm creases

Of thought

As I leave for the clear light 

of the uninhabited canyon

How much I have forgotten I cannot say

It comes back to me clear again

In a defile steep and broken and clean and frigid

As green boulders part snow runoff

A black silhouette of phainopepla

Watches a translucent moon drop behind a ridge

The dainty print of deer holds water in freshly washed sand

I hope for

The respect of the sun.

But hear something to which

I am normally deaf

Blood red and hot

A grammar of living surges

A life apart, liquid

The foreign language of the heart

Tucson Mountain Chaos

Decomposing granite, rhyolite, cleaving gabbro

Red to gray to yellow to purple

The story told in stone lies mute

To the dumped executed

Body lying broken

In the glass at the end of 36^th street.

A sweat lodge in a white man’s yard

Waits for the volcanic grandfathers

Outside architectural innovation

Written up in Fine Homes –

Towering glass, big money

Five star wines in

The foothills of the

Gourmand’s taste.

Bald gangbangers

Test the mettle of a wannabe

Who breaks the jaw

Of a boy on his way to serve

As acolyte to a perverse

Priest.

Blood is a tagger’s

Spray paint masterpiece.

Saguaro ribs knock fruits

Held sacred fermented into wine.

A mountain lion lolls in the sun inside

A walled enclosure.

Eyes to the sky

Extend above the ridgeline

A phallus looking

For answers

Deep space

Dark energy.

A truckload of revelers rolls

Off the highway

Helicopters chop

The victims to intensive care

Before sending them back

To adobe homes with no light or water.

E Etoi sits atop Babo watching

The streams of coeds on their way

To the sea

Drinking pink

Dacquiris.

A farmer speeds over Picture Rocks Pass

On his way to the mall

In search

Of a wife.

Gates close with finality

After the baby blue Beamer joins

The fleet

At the entry to a house

With a sunken living room

Overlooking the pool

In front of the unsullied range

Rising to the high country

Of radio antennae

Above Tucson.

All of us partake of water

From the Earth,

Breathe air belched from showroom

Convertibles  and broken pick-up trucks

Of the landscapers

Who keep the yards of the propertied

Clean and tidy and safe.

A foot in on the throat of that

Which cannot speak

Grinds the heel

In a dream of emptiness.

This illusion is a wonderful

Elixir.

Pass the jug.

Saturdays

We lay pretzeled
together
contorted
comforted
by what we hope
to be given
by each other

Saturday mornings
are like this

Not so much hurry
to lift the mantel
of beck and call

Desire thrums
not exactly
white hot
lust

Not exactly

I will rise
and work in the garden
teased and lifted
by the knowledge
of your nakedness
beneath
flannel shirt
your mid life
cargo pants

Afloat

When hammers
Are your greatest comfort
And  hunger is the only answer
You get when questions
Sprout unbidden

Make a raft of words

And then cling to it

As the waves tug at your

Dangling legs

Your tired arms

Grab bits of flotsam

And weave them together

As seagulls cry overhead

Though they are never enough

Fasten them well

Love them into

Golden thread

That binds together the

Discord of your

Mad voyage

What Hallmark Cards Will Never Tell You About Love

They will never tell you that love is a hot copper pipe on which you bet your day off, a parking lot into which you wander with a torn bag of groceries looking for a car you can't find. A Hallmark wish will never tell you that love is seeing your face in the morning mirror, haggard and worn, because you have been awake since two parsing the voices left unanswered at your desk; they won't tell you that love is forgetting to buy shoelaces because a sick child was crying in the aisle of the hardware store. No, they surely will never tell you that love is the dashed hope that tonight might be the one you dreamed when the day was young, that it is the surprise of a frost moon sitting on the hip of a mountain while you worry about the cost of a fan belt, radiator hose, and valve cover gasket. Hell will freeze over before a Hallmark card, crafted to wring tears of romance from your wallet, will ever say that love is hearing your defeat repeated in the words of children in the back seat and then feeling shame because you know you have passed on your poison. They might mention that love is the horizon over which a mystery travels, sure of itself as a heart that finds the will to beat one more time. And they might point to flesh thrilling to tender touch. But they will never tell you about the annihilation, the tumbling, polishing, final surrender that is the price you pay for love.