Hierophany

you
letting your hair grow
that urge to be unaccountable
cold weather a thing of the past
another thing that changed
that you didn’t change
an ice cube drops to the floor
it doesn’t shatter
it melts into infinite pieces
ok, maybe not infinite

I’m never amazed
          by old marketing tools
     but you can’t garden
          with machine gun hands.

“Hell—you want gardens?  Go to the park.”

My moon is not my honeymoon.
The real truth about me
is not the wine-induced truth
(98 points) but
instead something dusty in the magazine aisle
with my name as the title
only one issue put out
couldn't sell enough ads.

Stay the night with me, Moon.
Vonnegut breathed the air of Dresden and saw you.
You and the city looked the same.

A man wearing sunglasses
and a very orange cap
looked at it once but put it down.
Was he my father?
Questions, yes, questions.
There will be five minutes for questions.




Help, Freud.
Sometimes a banana is just a banana.
Even when it sells for a dollar
in this convenient store of me before sleep,
six times the price if you bought it online.

I keep thinking about that Venetian
boat ride I never went on, the one
where I’m drinking wine and mingling
with people from all over the world.
As I lie here and tune in Denver


Another night
Another night

And memoirs don’t inspire.

          like a pocketful of

                                  wildflowers &

                      you’re sitting

    in the wetting

              waiting      meadow

I fell asleep this
afternoon watching
the Senate on C-SPAN2.
When I woke up
Dick Durbin
was talking about
trains & Illinois

and about how lately
the trains have
been passing on through
without even stopping
for water.

It was a bloody night
bombs blew all throughout Baghdad
and here at home
something got at our resident rabbit
strewing its fur all across the yard
and leaving it to die, partially eaten, under the deck.
We’ve all got wars we’re fighting
not all of them take billions of dollars
or thousands of men.
It’s true Mr. President
The end can be as simple
as a sack from the local grocery,
as the trash can emptied on Wednesdays.

I’m here to tell you
Radio is still alive in America
And the bluest angels
Just flew over
For the national anthem
Tearing open the sky
Touching off car alarms &
Laying waste our factories of credit

There is a fifty-two watt bulb
in Indiana.
It has nothing to do
with Eastern standard time.
In Louisville for New Year’s
the ball dropped one hour ahead of time.
Honestly, I never even knew
there was a mountain time
until Colorado joined baseball.
An act of aging is nicotine
so don’t talk about what’s opposite
the International Dateline.
Just fire it in there,
let ‘em hit it.