Thursday, March 23, 2017

Terrorisms

If you could sit awhile and imagine
What it is they’re trying to accomplish,
Hear them out, listen with an open mind
And heart, if you would simply entertain
The idea that they might want something
Or might have something they want
To give to the world, something beautiful
Only they can offer, if you could just
Accept that they too have children,
And families who want to remember
When life was good, quiet, modest, livable,
When you didn’t have to look over your shoulder,
Didn’t have to take the long way,
Didn’t have to walk like a killer-in-waiting,
If you could do that together, then, yes,
Maybe no one will decide to bomb
London, Damascus, Boston or Lebanon.
Those suffering death and destruction
From Tomahawks and IEDs, Reapers
And Operation Suicide Bomber, those who
Suffer the words that serve their passions
Should sit together, eat, drink, tell each
How his Lord looks after the poor, how
He preaches brotherhood and sisterhood
Wherever he lands with a voice straight
From earth. Fire up the grill, crack one,
Remember scripture threatens damnation
For merciless judges who claim to see
With the eyes of God. Sit together, or die
In the dusty street, bleeding, screaming,
Crying not to know the whys, the hows
Of ending up in such a precarious place,
Trembling, stuck in the bloodshot center
Of the bullseye, flights flying the flags
Of doing it the same way differently.
You'd have to sit awhile and imagine it
As it is and not as you thought it was,
Good versus evil versus evil versus good
Where winning means everyone loses.
You'd have to sit with an open mind
And an open heart, ready to eat, to talk
Past winning and losing; us is them
Should be the prayer before that meal.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Handyman

One finger here,
One there,
My tongue in your ear—

That
Should do it.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Dear Reader # 9

Please be advised
That this will be a poem
And that it will appear

To do nothing
Like your own mind
It will not make sense

Like your own mind
Connecting spaces
To things large and small

Hard shallow black loud
Like your own mind
Simultaneously in

And out up and down
At the starting block
Like your own mind

At the finish-line
Draped in a checkered flag
Please be advised # 9

This is how a poem is
Like your own mind
Drenched in champagne.

Cake Winner, or How Father Learns His Boys

father steps outdoors
stands in the yard
looks up

arms wide
palms to heaven
as the crumbs drop

in his eyes
as if on a road
in a Massachusetts’

blizzard building 
until he can’t see
the batter

his eyeballs pack
which he brings back
blindly

to show us
what cake looks like
before it becomes

from the morsels
falling off tabletops
above

one for me
one for my brother
to see 

with his eyes
how easy it is
to win a bite

Thursday, March 9, 2017

HATRIOT

Not much of a patriot
I suffer lots of hatriot
When citizen buddies
Come home bloodied
From nights in trenches
Crowded as benches
The first day of spring
When all the birds sing
About love’s positioning,
Pro-life conditioning.
Leave me sooner outside
A stray that can’t abide
Begging for treats or tricks.
I'll fetch, then shit the sticks.

Imagine Imagine Imagine

Imagine being lovingly at ease
On a planet among people these
Making mercy for the right price
As if Einstein’s heart had loaded dice

Rolling snake eyes all night, payment
For previous multiverse infractions
When it was wise to avoid actions
That might the caboodle upend—

Imagine it all, impossibly redoable!
Behind the screen a shadow moves
As I sit upright on my shadowy views;
Intentions, unmentionable, askew.

Imagine being that comfortable—
Threadbare planet, blued by the blues.