only so much / and ness

there is only so much time
to spend in this life
with friends and with wife

with liberty reserved for two
days a week, though we
deserve three or more

hours to play and maintain
or otherwise waste away
send blissfully down the drain

like so much vomit before us
shaken loose by stress
and spew't forth under duress

sent somewhere reserved
for detritus and urine's musk
never at home before dusk

the pursuit of busyness
in semi-aware stuffy air
the climate control

stifles what would fare
endlessly effervescent
our happy wit and ness.

when who shouts / not looking

when who shouts a name across a crowded grin
is lonely and silent much more than quiet
the sun cuts deep into skin
freckles emerging from each tickled pore in daylight

assay the moon with its smiling reflection
of solar rays back across the multitude of miles
immeasurable by earthbound dreamers un-
der the lives one step ahead of death's wiles

revolving like the head of a child's doll
those ancient memories of tomorrow's dreams
uncountably many stuffed in the closet all
dusty with nocturnal creatures that come out beings

and hugging stuffed bears to ward off the nothing
that's coming to get us when we are not looking.

a run before / their grasps

(a cut-up from 2001)

a run before the workday begins
major employers There is a neighborhood
homebuilder famous homes recently opened.
The par 72 Forest certainly scaling down
best value in the value does not mean a
near future. new model But increased
golf among the younger set,
lowest starting price level
With their close proximity to more affluent home buyers
mean any loss in amenities, family-oriented
snack bar and cafe, a three-tiered Forest Creek
size of your home seen in the two prefer
a single love the one-story established
What seemed like an unreachable
lifestyle is now firmly within their
grasps.

sputum and hocksum

sputum and hocksum
are geminate clusters
gutteral refutum
grammar metric musters

up the halls of throat
the tightening tourniquet
of an aspirated note
tonsils in silhouette

breaching etiquette
downright ground spitting
the lugie pirouette
splatting and splitting

i have been meaning to write you a letter

i have been meaning to write you a letter
put my heart on a page to deliver
to your very doorstop
awaiting your approval
i had hoped to write you a note
but i can't seem to fold up my ideas.

every day

the world moves on
beyond where you've been
fording a river of indifference
of lines dividing the countenance

we face the facts
of our inherent, self-affacing
existences, measure
distances between us.

a career change alters
a decade's point of view
I long to long for something
other than something to do.

day in the park

I spent the day in the park,
saved it permanently with these words
with their historical weight.

Among all the world's relationships,
the one with dog breeds faithful
companionship through seasons,

rough waters, frigid waters,
pathfinding and warm fur fuzzy
lost ways and frothy waves

today a multitude of these metaphors
sponsor my conscoius thought,
upend the usual cerebral pathways.

I longed to take the day
to reconnect, rest, re-create,
then learned of further duties

One look at my companion,
the white concavities framing his eyes,
then deepening cavities incise,

and we left for the woods.

Home, of a past life

Home, those hollow halls
within each memory's loss
and a faint echo
another passing shadow
across a mortared wall.

Moss grows laterally
along the bare retainer
clings to life
and the raindrops pirouette
in an old rusty drum.

The iron container
above which a meniscus
clings to life
drops discuss in concentric
waves our reflection.

Flat discus wavers
over the shallow resonance
and a faint echo
in the deep pool
of a past life.

sheba's ethiopia

Archaeologists search for graffiti
left by giants of philosophy
Plato and Socrates
in wave-swept nooks
on the shores of Greece.

Solomon broke Sheba's arm,
took her to bed like Porter
night and days,
and a light shone
from Ethiopia to Israel.

Incense route across the desert
ports along the Red Sea
parchment and roles
in Dead Sea scrolls
long buried beneath the sand.

The shore of Adalis where Sheba set off
for Jerusalem on an island
sand and haze,
in a maze so deep
the shallow water through coral reefs.

The muddy currents part the soil
revealing an ancient post
trading and mating,
where merchants bartered
for olives, dates, and oil.

In the Ethopian Book of Kings
Solomon's baby in her belly
slaves and masters,
named the tribe of Judah
she ruled her own kingdom.

Then stolen by British and Italian
along with the Book of Kings
London and Rome
took Addis Ababba
and the desert sun set on her empire.

stutter to speak

a stutter interrupted the sound
as my tongue slipped,
interfered with my rounded lips

the sonic register oscillating
like a transistor radio
sending a coded message

across space and time.

transcriptions countenance
in the college classroom --
liberal arts in the air abound

resound across the sunset evening
after a brief downpour,
outpouring of letters addressed

to noone in particular.

we had a cold snap

we had a cold snap
ice clung to bent limbs
and the city slumbered

in the midst of an afternoon nap
you rolled over in our bed
like a bear in winter

hiding yourself from the world
in some sudden hibernation
dozing off for a dozen hours

and the dogs played hookie
in the icy snow, chasing
cardinals and robins.

all told we lost a palm,
our hibiscus and eureops
and a few limber limbs

but we gained a day
of rest and relaxation
and internal temptation

and in our own mental way
award had a day's break
from life's eternal taxation.

i need a space

i need a space
a place to call
my very own.

this location
lies beyond mere
speculation

provides a place
for introspection
thought collection

to find a new
direction
find a new facing.

these days
I sleep soundly
without a peep

secure in knowing
that when i die
i'll have a box

six feet long
six feet deep --
my very own space.

spring in the field

(a manifesto)

For more and many years, our
mothers brought us forth on this continent
in this body, conceived in coitus,
and dedicated to the procreation
so that all men are created.

All our lives we are engaged in a war
against death, testing whether our bodies,
or any corpus, so conceived and so dessicated,
can so long endure to be re-cremated.

We are met on a great manifest of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that mind,
as a final resting place for those who here
gave their genes so that body might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should strive.

But, in a larger sense, we can not ruminate
—we can not consume—we can not swallow—this ground.
The grave men, living and dead, who are buried here,
have constructed it, in this hour, far above our poor power
to add or subtract, multiply, and divide.

The field will little note, nor long remember
that we lay here, but it can never forget
that they rest here. It is for us the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished destiny
which they who lived here have so humbly understated.

It is rather for us to be here medicated
while the great questions asked before us
— that from these honored dead we take
evolved promotion to that cause
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion —

that we here highly resolve that this head
shall not have died in vain — that this body,
under new management, shall have a new birth of freedom —
and that government of the poets, by the poets,
for the poets, shall not perish from the earth.

the kids in my hood

the kids in my hood
gotta play me their music
to school me old school
as they cruise by my home

a new tejano sound drowns out
the rain, scares even the grackles
into the sky, the crackling
of the snare, rim shot

and accordion rings, the man
singing a song of anguish
then the droning spanglish
of reggaeton drenches these

children of another mother
loving the evening air --
their bilinguilism their passport
to other worlds -- many know but one.

the kids in my hood
got every way to go but down,
got a lot of fences to climb,
got dreams to ascend to --

they ain't given their homes
in the hip part of town --
they' got to earn every penny
'cause they don't start with any

and I'm happy to live in their hood
happy until they make me hafta hear
their music at 3am while I'm in bed,
and not in the mood for the bass,

'cause i'm tryin' to earn every penny
i can for the same damn reason.

fourteen golden dancers

They gave us seats
where we couldn't
see the show

facing the steps
behind iron bars
like some art prison

you were trapped
in the narrow seat
squeezing your critique

as you shifted
in the intermissions
that came every 15 minutes

this damped out passion
and with no context
the curtain lifted

the show began the
dancers prancing about
the blank slate of stage

this is a city of amateur theatrics.

i looked you up

i looked you up
since it had been years
since we'd last spoken

though you'd been there
my entire life
it was time we met again

i looked up to you
all those years ago
the way you'd lie

out in the sunlight
or under the stars
rapt with joy and wonder

or stand at the window
watching the lightning
in an evening summer storm

hands clasping as thunder
cracked open the heavens
you've been there all along

in the shadow of my ego
that altar of self
out of sight and mind

i looked you up
but found the wrong address
i'd just missed you again.

a single grammar string

in order to answer
how was the first
word ever muttered

and to imagine who
will get in the last
word ever uttered

we must start small,
at that most basic
underlying form --

subatomic particles
and participles
with prepositions

denoting a meaning
extra dimensionally
unintentionally

substring theory
merging phonology
and orthography

in one grand unified
iconoclast and deified
catalog of dogma

where syntax works all
morning after tips
cashing out like a cow

tricks from semantics
decompose volumes what
this poem is all about

in cross-linguistic
presuppositions
assuming too much

suggesting more then branes
along the membranes
that filter emotion

fermions go on for eons
everlasting thoughts
that oscillate with the ocean

and words dangle
from our mother tongues
waiting for an angle

then flitter then fly
away like the subject
of ornithography

and disappear, a woolen
sweater left far too long
in a wooden dresser

this notion has become
too frayed at the ends
to mend, i'm afraid.

if you're looking

violence is rarely subtle,
the chicken bone at the bottom
of vegetarian soup

that added mis-ingredient

the towel soaked in blood
with a set of teeth
stranded from the mandible

cross some gradient

in some prize fight
cocks and boxers
akido and akidas

beaten senseless

in a polyester sheen
don king and adidas
the golden belt

of a clenched fist

the tense shift
of yesterday's news
jettisoned like

an empty can.

The Dean of Echo Park

voices carry, repeated
over traffic and sirens
intersected by Sunset Blvd

the pond lined with Lotuses
the streets with motives
sidewalk votives to patron

saints remind patriarchs
of their mortality
their morbid idolatry

in the shadow of the statue
of José Martí, Cubans hold
festivals honoring the man

in the shadow of Hollywood
studios, silent comedies
stooges and chaplin

on the eve of Halloween
when addiction dried
a river to ashes on dust

at the back of a bar
where actors, guitarists,
bassists, all vipers

premature stars of the screen
and of the street meet,
pupils dilated and bleat

living for the fleeting
moment just before sunset
as a monarch flutters by

migrating south with a migrane
higher than a kite, stumbling,
his whole life ahead over heels,

bumbling that life like a bee--
stung, strung-out, pronounced
D.O.A. like so many films

straight to video, appealing
to the basest of motives,
that need for youth to cheat death.

In the early morning

In the early morning
when men scrape dew
from crusty eyes

and flowers hang heavy
from last night's brew
tapped from oaken casks

the broken tasks
of what we're asked
to do but fail

in a hazy daze
and crawl into a cave
an escape from a maze of days

and nights that run on
until dawn, sentences
fifteen to life

unless amidst all the strife
we can pick up the fife
and summon a wife

to shield us from the blast
yielding to no outside mask
but, of course, bring new tasks.

War Pups

The world's doors have squeaked open
while we slept in our offices
as the evening crept across the sky

mergers and takeovers in the shadow
of emerging markets uniting like musketeers
one for all and all for one profit

as the owners at the top with their cigars
fancy cars, drink at expensive bars,
bleed the world with their consumption

we're waiting their tables, waiting our
turns, turning ourselves into the same
vain, lustful, greedy s.o.b.s,

then, aimless and frustrated
immobilized on the couch
like some sad sob story on the t.v.

we can no longer sneak in the dark
no longer walk in the park --
Only run and tumble and bark.

This is a prison

This is a prison
overrun
with inmates

from all backgrounds
from small towns
with big dreams

where children
are playing
"Marco... Polo"

and running through fields
trimmed
by farmers' goats

and come in when called
to dinner by
their mothers

from all backgorunds
from large cities
with small-time crime

where children
play hoops in the street
one on one

and men sit on stoops
framed by
delivery trucks

and run away when told
to freeze by
police officers

pacing the dusty
courtyard
in search of some

escape from the same
empty prison
we've always known.

There is this feeling

There is this feeling
a sense of disgust
in the chilly evening

when people walk by
in quatrains and couplets
complaining about

too many people sitting
in the restaurant
occupying their space

when men, women,
parents and children
sit on the curb homeless

dour faces frowning
as hour by hour
their hunger grows.

In these moments
among the overindulgents
I lose my appetite.