Autumn Dread

Autumn the mask of death
I hate those riotous colors

defaces the green leaf
struggles to peek through

shows its disfigured face
knows it will soon be gone

celebrates that dark rainbow
yellow orange red brown

wraps its arcs around
pretends to be summer

an unexpected rainstorm
at the picnic of our lives

blows fiercely into
the icy fingers of winter

grips the season’s throat
doesn’t let go until

every bit of green and sun
warmth choked out

Summer a limp body
our arms can’t hold

Demeter weeps
glares into the distance

Hades steals her daughter again

Published in Spank The Carp

Primary Colors



If you got it right, 
your children are primary colors, 
blue, red, yellow, mine.

You don’t color
the sun blue,
the ocean red,
blood yellow.
That goads, nettles Nature,
angers that Mother. 

They leave and come home, leave and come home.
Blue joys. 
Red hurts.
Yellow needs.
Blue hurts.
Red needs. 
Yellow joys.
Blue needs.
Red joys.
Yellow hurts. 


You set up the canvas before you.
You paint the sun yellow,
the ocean blue,
blood red. 
As you age,
primary.

Published in Imbibe Urbana

Laureate

I suspect no one knows
I am the poet laureate
of my street. 
I declare myself him,
but—who knows!, 
might there be a budding
Frost or Williams or Kooser
on my same block?
( I would never think of one block over.)
Should I call a competition?
Go door to door?
Perhaps put a scroll of poems
in each mailbox, declaring...
Ah, I fear,
an aesthetic instinct,
the time is probably not ripe.
When it is, I will strike. 
I have no fear
just as I have no rhymes,
free verse my thoroughfare.
Beware!

Published in 500 Miles Magazine

Natural Selection

Walking home from school,
one bright, sunny, Spring day,
I saw a worm and bird struggle.
That robin had every right to that worm,
to pull and tug
that wet, pink, elongated body
for her children.
But I didn’t have to like it.
My lunchbox flew,
away flew the robin
without the worm.
I was much younger then.

Published in The Literary Nest

That's What War Does

“I’m so thankful for the atom bombs.”

Who would not take a celestial rag
And wipe away every drop of blood
No matter how patriotic
And wring it out in some far away ocean
That doesn’t exist?

There once was a farm boy
Who loved the sea more than crops.
No girl in tow,
Pearl Harbor enlisted him in the Navy.

They put him on a supply boat,
Delivering materials for beach landings.
At first, nothing much happened.
Just sea storms in a light craft.

Then, in the Philippines,
A Japanese air attack.
“Lost some good men.”
Wished he had prayed with one who died. 

Assigned, finally, to attack Honshu, 
The main island. 
Truman nodded.
The bombs dropped.

Little Boy incinerated 80,000 human beings in Hiroshima in a minute.
Fat Boy incinerated 39,000 human beings in Nagasaki in a minute.
Not counting fauna. 

Understandably,
(You and I were not ordered to attack Japan,
Not asked to sacrifice our own lives).
Years later, he said in the local paper: 
“I’m so thankful for the atom bombs.”

That’s what war does.

Published in Bindweed Magazine

Genealogy

At a California beach,
the sea grabbed Grandma,
almost ended me.
Near the fierce undertow,
deathly afraid of water
(our Mother told us later),
she slipped off her shoes,
stood a few feet in the water.
Crowded beach,
hundreds of bathers,
shading their eyes from the blinding sun.
The riptide pulled,
grinned evilly under the water,
dragged her down and out,
like the wraith she was.
An Olympic swimmer
saw the disappearance,
plunged, grabbed a foot.
A moment longer
she would have slipped away,
a tale told to no one
I would ever know.

Published in Silver Birch Press

Lost Cat

One minute the cat is an irritation
under your feet, on your lap, kneading your chest,
pawing your face as the sun comes up.
The next, he is lost.
Our hearts crash.

Every emotion cries out.
Dead? But how?
Wild animal? a hawk? a car?
He is beautiful. Did someone pick him up?
We do not know. We simply do not know.
We wring our hearts like we wring our hands.

The maddening part, not knowing.
That feeling roots itself inside,
sits there like a fat, grey toad,
licking its lips beneath an awful smile.
It will not go away until he is found.
Or, it will not go away…

The search begins for as long as it takes.
We comb the neighborhood
like we comb his fur,
every yard, every cranny and nook,
calling, calling, pleading…

He is found!
Clinging high in a tree,
in our own backyard,
scared by a loose dog
too terrified even to meow.

The toad vanishes,
replaced by a weak-kneed joy.
Come sit with me.

Published in Silver Birch Press

Carnival

No one told me you could get paid for fun.
No one told me 11 year-old-boys could get exploited.
No one told me the 19 silver dollars the old lady boss paid me
was a rip off for the three twelve hour shifts I worked.
I just knew it was all right to not care about those things
to bark from sunup till dark,
exult in the glory of the neighborhood carnival.
A shy boy, an alter ego
flew out of my mouth
as I transformed to a carnie,
this diminutive kid loudly accosting
passersby to play, take a shot,
hurl a baseball at the Kewpie dolls,
knock down their ugly faces like the boogie men
who didn’t exist in my room any more.
The old woman who hired me paid the silver dollars,
kept in a rainbow striped sock.
It slept in my drawer for years
until I had a son and deposited them in his name.
Maybe one day he will live
my carnival magic.

Published in Silver Birch Press

The One Thing

The one thing
my Mother-in-Law said:
“The one thing you really got
Son-in-Law,
the one thing you REALLY got
is you don’t complain about what we cook.
You don’t care what
we put in front of you.”
I took that one thing,
the thing I got
and whipped it into
a fifty year marriage.

Published in Rat's Ass Review

Ceres

My only daughter left, spirited away
by what it matters not.

Ceres my soul mate now.

I command
neither Spring nor Winter,
crops sprouting, 
crops dying.
I can only weep
like that goddess
and understand why
lethal ice and screaming snow      
were the least she could do
to birth revenge.

I will wait,
Daughter,
a visit blossoming, 
dying on the vine,
cycles without end.

Published in Verse Wrights

Old Horse Barn

Twenty-six daily mucked stalls
for a bevy of broken down thoroughbreds
still hoping for the dreams their thin legs rest on.

A water trough, a feed box,
old hoses that crack in winter,
harbinger of flies in summer,
clouds of DDT.

A teen ripped from my city
neighborhood, home, friends, school
by my gambling father.

Isolated now, listening to Hambone,
an older black farmhand,
stroking one of his thirty-nine cats,
stroking my pain.  

He urged me not to run away.

Published in Verse Wrights

A Selfish Wish

I attended the funeral of a friend yesterday.
“Too young, too young-- He was just fifty-one.”
buzzed voices like provoked bees,
a stick thrust into the respectful line,
the hive of sorry; the large crowd.

“At what age will I go?”

Hopefully, only a few will attend mine, 
many years from now.  

A plain room with steel chairs,
a foggy light, a few drooping flowers,
a guest book with a few scrawled names,
a lone fly buzzing the dim.
 
Because I had lived so long,
most friends had passed,
hardly anyone there.

A woman conducted.
I could see the sad masks
of my aging children.

A strange pleasure rose in me.
I felt grateful to be so alone.

Published in Verse Wrights

NO ONE LOOKS AT OLD MEN

I sit in my coffee shop,
day after day,
moving the spoon to catch the white streak
the overhead light swirls in my cup.
Sit and watch
no watching.

Maybe I could change that?
Light up the gray faces
on the counter stools.

Next Monday I will wear shoes that don't match,
maybe a tennie and a boot.
Tuesday, a pink polka dot tie, 
with my Purple Heart pinned on, outside my coat.
A large, orange comb in my left over hair, Wednesday.
Thursday, the rainbow bandanna
my only daughter gifted me long ago. 
On the first day of the weekend,
my teeth in a glass on the table.
But that would not be nice to the young waitress
who wears the watermelon uniform. 
She doesn't look at me
when she always smiles,
but she is very careful with my cup,
filling even when it is almost full.

Then, Saturday, my old, rusted service revolver.
Just set it in on the table
in full view.
Would the cook notice
as he does when I sit too long?

I don't come here on Sundays
because it's closed.

Originally published in Sledgehammer Magazine