Thursday, April 24, 2008

Entropy

A body in
motion
tends to head
for the ocean
while a body at
rest
tends not
to get dressed

Such are the lessons
living

has taught
where science has
laws
a life
has its oughts

Thermo-
dynamics
by their very
mechanics
I’m sure
you can guess
leave me pale
and panicked

And building
requires
the physics
of wires
to hang up our bridges
and steeples and
spires -

All I
understand
is that surf
meets the sand
and all I can
hope
is my heart
meets my hand

Not far behind us
the ages
remind us
there’s always
another
who’ll quietly
find us –

And each time
I start
to whittle
and chart
I know little
by little
everything
falls apart.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Housecoat

Stirring soup
in an iron pot,
thinking back on a
summer’s worth of youth
lost in wheat fields
and a wide

muddy river.

Watching out the window
as a family of cardinals
bickers in a
wind stripped maple.

Time and distance,
black and straight like the
highways that swallowed her son,
the old man
in the garage,
sanding down the stock
of a worn .30-.30,
knowing his legs
will never carry him now
to the mule deer.

December.
Their fourth year without
a tree.
Honey brown wooden
spoon,
circling,
barley and potatoes
bob and sink
and swirl.

Three bowls on the table,
more out of habit
than hope.

Still,
maybe he will smell it
simmer.
Maybe
he will come.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Schadenfreude

Her smile thin
as river ice,
hair done up
with edelweiss,

In satin, linen,
Irish lace,
backlit
so that I could trace

every arch and
subtle twist -
wound her fingers
through my fist.

She spoke of Kant
and Kierkegaard
and cauterized
where I’d been scarred,

she washed me with
a switch of thistle;
dried me with
a torn epistle.

She spoke of Nietzsche
and Descartes,
soft hands pulled
my ribs apart.

Mellifluous,
her labyrinth grew,
effacing what
I thought I knew;

she spoke of völkisch
and gestalt,
dressed my open
wounds with salt.

As I lay there
dull and dim,
a pallid, wheezing,
withered limb,


she kissed me softly
on each eye -
my requiem
her lullaby.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Why the World is Round

Truth is chasing Beauty,
Beauty shops at Sak’s;
trying on veracities,
thumbing through the racks.

Art is chasing Anger,
Anger drinks alone;
calls up Art for insight
from the bar but no one’s home.

Justice looks for Power,
pounding at the door;
Power’s on the courthouse steps,
shaking down the poor.

Passion chases Reason,
Reason’s chasing me;
I’m after a kitten
something chased into this tree.