Monday, May 28, 2012

Morning Rage


This is not a poem about romancing war
or a lament for dead soldiers.
I can’t speak for men and woman who die
for absolutely nothing
or fake sheiks and oil-slicked dreams
and secret mercenary hutches
and goofy governors swearing
allegiance to gods that kill.
This is not for smirking presidents
This is not about children in empty rooms
wives with no one to hold, credit card debt
Egyptian women who want to drive cars
Christ blow up dolls, the Indian trinket on your rearview mirror
or crying in your beer because you can’t afford
diapers for your parakeet or your mate.
This is not for poets who swoon possums in the night
and collect MacArthur Grants hooting, “Me myself said.”
This poem is not about legislators wearing Exxon tampons
tacked to retirement packages.
This poem is not trying to clean the windshield that is you.   
This is not a poem about driving cars you can’t afford
This is not about the cell phone
you can’t put down for fear of death or loneliness.
This is not about last year’s grief, or me or
lack of confusion, or kings, or queens
or cross–eyed donkeys that hold hands
with your life these days, or is it?

This is about Sgt. John Mele, 25, from Bunnell, Florida, killed in Iraq
14 September 2007, who left a wife and six year old daughter.




Monday, May 21, 2012

Moon Man



I love breakfast in bed
Watching the sky
With a smile

Goading those
Astronauts
To come back
And clean up

Watching Jupiter
Float by
With all of his
Serious satellites

Maybe dream
A bump with
Venus and beyond

I like to
Kick back
New to full
To last
Quarter-

Know I am
Bound to
Return
And that one
Cool thought

Slips my hands
Behind my head
And I lean back in
My moon chair

Being part
Of a Galaxy?
Why not?

I’m a rabbit fan
I like ducks
Owls and bright-
children looking up
Got to keep
That wonder

I like my
Penumbra
That makes me hazy
On lazy
Summer nights

And fat me
Appearing
In the East
And western skies

I like sticking
My thumb out
When a satellite
Flies by
Thinking it
Really has
Somewhere
To go

I adore silence
And the silences
between silences

When I grow up
I want to be rounder
And smoother
A never–ending yellow 
With a tinge
Of laughter at
The tall end of this
universal folly
And seriously
Most of all
I just want
To be here
Floating around
The love, the hoot
The whacked out
Insanity
Rolling by at
All hours