1
The virus is a creature,
for the virus is created—
by its host if by no god
The virus is talented.
The virus cheats life
by being half life
and all death:
2
like you maybe
in your viral urge
to devour all
that is creative, all
that is productive
in the world.
Half life
and all
death—
and an unworthy insult
to the honest skill of the
industrious virus.
mangled beauty of lichens
garlands on rot, cedar to the skies:
my host is soil, earth, shadow, sun
douglas firs rotund, towering
flash of light, crawling ferns
tapping woodpeckers
touch my shape
three hundred years growing
imagine droplets twenty feet down
prodded by fungi, bacteria
the heights of machu picchu
inglorious compared to lightning
growth from seed to forest
sentinel, dizzying Hominids
The cygnus flies over terrible seas of amber and peat,
out of which giant mutineers leap,
grasping the cauldrons of light.
Under, under the roots of rebellion
the ossified life is stilled.
The cygnus, the outlander
to the lower spheres,
scorns this ambit of pain.
The rebel, who scorns it too,
is rooted in it.
He deepens these roots
for to help the entombed to rise.
Some days, you nail it hard and true
to the waiting page…
almost taking off your own fingers
with the force of the mental hammer-swing.
On other occasions,
it’s like wresting an inner snake,
who’s fighting with all of its might
from inching out slowly
into the revealing outside light.
The best times, it’s as easy
as drinking down a cold glass of beer
on a warm, Summer afternoon.
Words don’t just flow…
but are swifts and swallows,
swooping and dipping at impossible angles.
tonight
the sun
cannot be worshipped
can take no grief
can hear no prayers
it really neither sets
nor rises
nor does it come
in different sizes
waking we
to meet its gaze
sometimes we
in drunken haze
err to think
for us it shines
blessing all
that we define
for our grace
mere kings
are crowned
it spies disgrace
where we abound
three hundred days
and nights we measure
omitting fights
for stolen treasure
when our souls
I promise to never leave you
and I know you’ll do the same,
I feel as though I need you,
my strange pleasure, my lovely pain.
I was a teen when you came into my life,
uninvited like a lunging pike.
Yet somehow you gave me something real,
something tangible,
something eternal in this life.
We were made for each other
like souls are made to live forever,
since the age of thirteen intertwined
as winter climbed into spring,
I was an empty canteen
waiting to be filled by the world
Ginger root lying on a brown paper sack
Can liberty and justice win our country back?
Praying for my life not to be
As useless as a plastic bag tangled a stream.
As a walk through the woods
Or as a ship on the sea
Visions fearful but beautiful
Speak comfort to me.
Grappling not to topple on a ship listing to starboard,
wondering if the storm will sink us where we’re harbored,
I see lightning rending the inky night in twain,
and there a vision flashes between the sheets of rain.
Frost, dawn, I walked alone with the devil
Through the morning, while you
Slept
I hear your school, as I walk
You come to me like the wind
As I see your proudest achievement
A place where you can lack all shame
This is the message she sends
Coffee, music, for hours
Then pray alone with Mary
‘But when a man
speeds toward his own ruin,
a god gives him help’
My ruin has been my achievement
And I see that as we talk now
A friend’s sadness I hear now on my way
But the rain is too much to stop
Place your tax break
near my lower bracket
and then brace
for balance
upon impact
as I send you swirling
toward the higher class
of holy angels
that walk amongst us
here on earth.
Place your precious lips
around the swollen ego
of my liver
and then start to suck
twenty years of wine
from the organ
one glass at a time;
red or white,
the story remains
ever the same.
Place your nuclear warhead
on the tip of my tongue
and then dance a jig
Penny for you thought
Nickel for your soul
The band is tuning the instruments
Bass drum banging, boom boom boom
Our saxophonist refuses to repent
For touching the violinist
When alone in the practice room
They are practicing patriotic melodies
Star Spangle Banner
America the Beautiful
God Save the Queen?
Such madness this must be a dream
Or to the aware
A nightmare
At half time the band marches forth
As one we rise to stand
To salute Old Glory for all it’s worth
The land of the free!
