If you have to choose

Well, yes, you can find me on Facebook, and I'll be happy to note your favorite movies and relationship status; but if your time is limited, and you have to choose, visit me here. Here be poems.

Cardiac Arrest

When we were young, when we were less,
When you were poised and I a mess,
We were as we are now, apart,
Unequal portions of a heart
Broken for decoration, cute
As flowers trimmed above the root.
And one of us flourished. One did not.
But which was which, and which forgot,
I do not say. You do not know.
The flowers dried, the roots still grow.

Sonnet

Across the bay there must be people washing
And cleaning bathroom grout and drinking tea.
There must be pastors painstakingly crushing
Hormonal eloquence; but I can't see
Through all that fog and curvature. Despite
Long reading in patristic poetry,
I'd rather they were stomping on their fate
Than knitting bills and purling dirt. Like me.

Let them smash windows. Let them all eat cake
And fart like camels. Let them swive like heroes.
I've had as much of me as I can take,
The careful serrying of ones and zeros.
Let them dance jigs. Let them curvette and break
Upon their shores like Abelards. And Neros.

Do Paradise Last

This appeared in Orbis.

Departing them, He shut the door. Both Angels
and patriarchs whined something fierce. The prophets
yelled, "Doom!" and spilled their ashes on the floor.

The First of Us looked calmly out the window,
trusting he'd do a better job than God.
If He knew what came next, perhaps He'd share.

God Himself, all 3 of Him, essayed back
in His recliner, checking what They'd done.
"It's good," He said. "Did We make Sin O'Death?"

"Depends," said Raphael. "He wrote us down,
so He made you, but You made Him and knew
what He would write when He was just a sprat,

a nod, wink, wink. You knew it before Time."
"Still," said God, "We're in, He's out. We don't know
what We were thinking. Uncreate Him, shall We?"

"Can You do that?" asked Adam. "Can You make
a rock so big You can't remember why?"
God hates a riddle, makes up His own answers,

and, anyway, the scansion coming clear
to His blind eyes, the Author of them all
returned and shut them up and sent them out

to view creation as if they had breathed
their first iambic transpiration, world
before them where to choose, and they were His.

Meanwhile, on the Coast

"O heiliger St. Florian verschon mein Haus, zünd andre an"

Maybe it’s not exactly candlight.
Stars are lights, too, and burning yews, and yours,
Fire consumes. Light kills a little bit.
Darkness is cool. It grows, They say, and time
Chooses the side of nothing. Figures. Got
Nothing? Invest it. Darkness futures pay
Dividends, if some more of what you have
Is what you want. Or burn a little light.
See clearly what is going on for now.

Wood burns because it’s meant to, full of ash,
The forest made of fire-stuff. The streams
Are water-soluble, the hills are hard
To fathom. Which old Greek said fire starts
Your day, your every day, your morning toast?
When wind smells like the end of days, your house
Is green belt in potentia, the song
The sky is singing, Burn your baby, burn.

Wait Till Your Cow Comes Home

The winter cows are coming home
To roost. From fields of cinnabar
They file a-lowing. Near and far
They look the same and sound the same
And know their antecedents are

Preposterous. In barns tucked tight
They chaffer over wisps of hay:
O have you heard the news today?
LaToonya will be coming late
To tea, and why, no one would say.

They cannot hide and are not heard.
In dreams of petitpois they rouse
The King of Cows to build a house
Where he is warm and they are ward,
Where cats surround the shrinking mouse.

Nepotism? Anyone?

If any of you regular readers (you know who you are, all 3 of you) have close family members who are like Carly Simon's father, don't be embarrassed to point them in this direction. I'm like Arlo Guthrie -- "I'm not proud...or tired."