life longing

red and uncovered skin,

winter-stained

his face is the skin steppe of his life,

the ground upon which

the sun has stretched and set.

Hollowed out by wind

and work, he is the bulkhead

of a freight ship

with its heaving glide

through infinite arctic pools. 

second person

Religion is routine,

Bringing gods into your apartment.

Their shadow forms dance on the walls

While you sweep and mop,

While you clean urine off the toilet seat.

These gods follow you and chatter

Like children, they play tricks on you.

They are good, troublesome company

Knocking pens off the desk,

Fidgeting with costume jewelry left out.

They pull the cat’s tail,

They make the trash smell sour.

These gods understand

the helpless; the absurd and ridiculous.

They vaporize and inhabit us

Joyfully. They are

cryptic, and spindly-handsome

they eat mood, and lick dreams.

They are frightened at the movies

And weep at funerals, for

Only they know how final

Death is. Gods don’t have voices,

But make creature-sounds.

They are at home always,

Travelers constant, thieving, and

Generous with stories.

They fly, they manipulate physics.

Gods know the similarities between

Science and poems and necessity,

They don’t need to read, or think,

Because their bodies are their mind’s eye.

Gods ransack confidence, add disease,

Pockmark our abilities, so that we see

Our selves. They are tiresome,

they make us brood. We benefit slowly,

with bitterness in our mouths.

But eventually, rescinding our

slavery to pretense, we appreciate

gods. They are not solemn: their noise

is constant, their fingers reflecting ours,

playing skittish, brazen, haunting games.

boatman (Ori Gersht)

On still film,
the boatman is suspended;
banished and paddled
into the bareness of alone.

the deep richness of gray
painting him human
like the whole layering
of the world. And beneath-
the meaning, the endlessness
of meaning in his reflected body;
him, himself existing, doubled, the doubling
of this place and previous place
a hall of mirrors, infinite.

No room to paint in.

crushing charcoal against paper
the slide of acrylic in plastic colors
pastels wetted and widened
shaping and shaping,
scraping and cleaning,
the adding and subtracting
of art is like breathing,
like seeing,
knowing the value
of fog, the thick moisture
of memory and touch,
a translated text
heard in its first language.

fish bowl poetry II.

The scare-crow is strung up,
sullen in the bled field.
He is bruise-packed; soaked and seed-shedding
in the wet, tangerine night.

The rain runs down fence posts,
and collects in the road.  The dog
sleeps on the covered porch;
somewhere, the cat listens.

The grass around the driveway
has grayed and bends low,
The tractor like a tin drum.

A torn, disintegrating tarp
in the rafters of the barn
moves in the wind.

The children have left
little things:
buttons, a thimble, bread crust, rust pennies
in the scare-crow's pocket,
the keeper wordless
of the un-bound earth.

fish bowl poetry I.

Cupid prayed!
          -ugly and round like a trampled peach-
that love would come his way.
          After so many affairs started-or ended-by his arrows
Cupid had created a confrontational love-world, little islands
          of doubt and playfulness.
Cupid hoped, bursting from the window into his new life,
          that owning himself would be sweet and selfish.

s p l i n t e r i n g t h i n k i n g

why do I feel dead; or a hundred

people at once,

a hundred stories

and a hundred feelings.

did I already live?

A hundred years ago,

with white hairs like thoughts silvering

and thinning and burying themselves beneath

a heaving and sheltering earth.