Glamour

The palm trees aren’t dancing 
To the mariachi music 
Drifting over the fence 
On this breezy afternoon. 

The sky is only blue 
Because blue light diffuses 
More easily than red. 
It’s all a big illusion. 

City Ordnance

The cannonballs raise birds like clouds 
Of smoke and small debris 
From rooftops, or like water if 
Our gardens were the sea. 

The Bridge

The water breaks the bridge 
The setting sun extends 
Into orange neon planks 
Whose frayed unfinished end 

Appears to be, implausibly,
The pier on which I stand — 
Above the waves and fifty feet 
From disappearing land. 

Vacation

The swimming suits and towels draped 
On folding chairs to dry
Remind me of those melting watches
Dali hung out to die. 

Cold Mountain Poem

This is not Cold Mountain, 
But I’m cold, and alone, 
With no one but crickets 
For company, and the clouds. 
I don’t know anything about
The Dao — or anything else, 
For that matter. But then, 
How would I know that?

Flotsam

Like a reverse explosion in slow-motion,
The sun is sinking in a ruddy ocean 
Of Spanish tiles, where tardy birds lie floating 
On terra-cotta waves like tiny boats. 

The Floorboards

Beginning with the one I’m standing on, 
I start to pry the planks up one by one, 
With nothing but the hope that when I’m done 
Whatever might be down there isn’t gone. 
The house I am destroying is my own. 
I have to tear it up to see what’s wrong. 
I buried something here when I was young
Which had the power to render less alone 
Whomever held it, but it’s been so long 
I doubt that if I found it I would know. 
And so I drag this slowly shrinking crowbar 
From room to room, and listen to the song 
Of screeching nails relenting, and the creak 
Of dusty floorboards disinclined to speak. 

Horror Vacui

Restrained by nothing stronger 
Than a frame of thin, white wood, 
The square of black oblivion 
Upon the wall withstood 

The viewers’ searching gazes,
Which fell upon its hide 
Like arrows by Achilles’ shield 
Turned harmlessly aside. 

Repulsed, nonplussed, dismissive, lost
Like children in a maze, 
Or dots proclaiming “You Are Here”
Upon an empty page, 

One by one they wandered off 
To other galleries
And paintings that repaid their stares 
With human sympathies.

Riddle

A pretty rose that doesn’t smell. 
A pocket watch that doesn’t tell 
The time. Important news misspelled. 

No Strings

Abandoned by another day. They’re all 
The same. They show up unannounced, expect
To be received, some breakfast, coffee, sex, 
A cigarette, a shower, small talk, “Let’s 
Do something soon,” then leave and never call.

Kees

They found his car with the keys inside 
In a parking lot nearby, 
And everybody knows the bridge 
Is where they go to die: 

The actors and the actresses 
With real tears on their faces;
The artists with their canvases; 
The ones without a place. 

A book by Dostoevsky at 
His bedside was as good 
As any note, which couldn’t say 
The things the novel could. 

A poet’s poet, they call him now, 
The very few who care, 
Whose fragile names are further down 
The windy railing there.

Da Vinci Code

In trees, the branching arteries; 
In seeds, the beating heart; 
In rocks, the bones; in rivers, hair; 
The artist in the art. 

In Jesus Christ, geometry 
Both sacred and mundane; 
In women’s faces, mysteries 
Both holy and profane. 

In birds and beasts, the prototypes 
For fabulous machines; 
And pulleys, pumps, and filters hid 
In every human being.

Solitary

The rain detained me all day long
In a sparsely furnished cell, 
Implying I’d done something wrong, 
Though what I couldn’t tell. 

It muttered through a musty grate.
It said there was a leak 
In the organization. The situation 
Sounded pretty bleak. 

I knew I was entitled to 
A phone call, but to who?
And if I got a hold of someone,
What good would it do?

The sun looked in at half past noon 
And shook his head and left. 
The wind came in and rifled things, 
Impersonal and deft. 

A man who looked familiar took 
My statement with a stare
And sighed, and said that nonsense wouldn’t 
Get me anywhere. 

So I stretched out on the little bed, 
And I listened to the clock
And fell asleep; and when I woke, 
I found the door unlocked. 

Requited

Lying on its side,
An empty watering can
Tinkles in the rain. 

Olympia

Her gaze will never fall. 
Her lips will never fail
To be that pink and full. 
No hand will ever foul
Her flesh. No prudish fool
Will ever make her feel
Ashamed. She’ll never furl 
The sheets, or seek to foil 
Your view. So as you file
Before her, be sure to look your fill. 

Quantum Theory

The targets in the pavement 
Appear after the drops, 
So that each tiny bomb of water 
Always strikes the spot 

That it intended to; 
And since they now did not 
Fall somewhere else, it’s hard tell 
If they ever had the option. 

Some Trees

In summer, they have a thousand mouths, 
Which make a muffled din 
When the leafy jaws go up and down 
As they masticate the wind. 

In autumn, all their teeth fall out; 
In winter, they gum the snow; 
In spring, they shout with newborn sprouts 
And suck the sunlight’s glow.

Roadside Graveyard

I was stuck in rush hour traffic, 
Staring idly out the window 
At the moss-covered headstones
Huddled together 
Behind a rusty chain-link fence, 
When one of the children 
Wondered aloud
Where everyone was going.  

Hail Mary

I pull the pin and pitch
The crystal hand grenade
Of liquid past my lips,
And close my eyes and wait

For the little bomb to hit
The bottom in belated
Explosions of warm bliss,
And blow me back to date.

Shapeshifter

Prehistoric prototype 
Of cloudy crystal balls. 
Silver apple, overripe 
And aching for the fall. 

Keyhole in the door of night. 
Glass in which the sun
Combs it’s locks of golden light, 
Belinda-like, till dawn. 

Will-o’-the-wisp, enticing poor
Lost travelers to try 
To warm their waning hopes at your 
Pale fire, to watch them die. 

Nightlight for a frightened child. 
Wheel of aging cheese. 
Cheshire cat’s narcotic smile, 
Beaming pointlessly. 

Riddle

Instead of aromatic scents,
Sweet strains are in my flower blent. 
A single thorn adorns my stem. 

Ripping Yarn

Whoever he was, he’s dead now — 
Beyond our justice anyhow 
You slice it. All the same, we’d like to know 
His name, if only so 
We can can eviscerate him in
The dark alleys of public opinion. 

The letter everybody says 
He didn’t write was in red ink because 
The blood he had collected in an empty 
Bottle of ginger beer congealed too quickly. 
They think it was a newspaper man, 
Propping up the flagging circulation. 

Round Trip

The supernumerary star 
Departing from Orion 
Flies like a parting arrow-shot 
Backwards at the Lion
Rearing on its two hind feet 
Upward in the east, 
While for the dim horizon’s hills 
The Hunter quickly flees. 

Doorbell

The tree in the front yard 
Keeps peering in the windows
And waving its hands,
As if it is someone 
I know, who knows that I am home 
Despite my not answering
The tinkling wind chimes. 

The Ruined Garden

Decolorized, a garden grows 
Less friendly than before. 
Without its lovely red, the rose
Is just a weed with thorns. 

Deprived of green, the grasses cease 
To lap like gentle waves, 

But flutter feebly in the breeze, 
The moldy thatch of graves. 

The fountain that this morning flashed 
And sparkled in the heat, 

Now falls in filthy tatters like 
A fraying winding sheet. 

Even the great white cotton clouds,
So harmless in the light, 
Like ghostly galleons terrorize
The star bombarded night. 

Less kind, but no less beautiful;
Less colorful, but still 
As magical or more without 
The superficial frills. 

Moon Tree

A plaque here says the seed 
That gave birth to this tree 
Once orbited the moon.
 
I readily concede 
The tree looked plain to me 
Until I knew that too. 

Shadow Box

Sometimes I imagine 
All of the letters crowding 
The ruled shelves of a paper
Cabinet slowly bowing 

Beneath them as I weigh them 
And place them carefully 
From left to right in something 
Akin to symmetry, 

And pray that when I’m finished 
And close the thin glass door, 
I haven’t said so much 
It crashes to the floor. 

Sparkler

Planted in the dark: 
Electric dandelion 
Shedding blazing seeds. 

Attic

Here the ribs of the house lie unconcealed, 
The skin of paint and plaster peeled away; 
The soft pink flesh of fiberglass revealed: 
The belly of the whale in which your days 
Were swallowed whole, with all this other junk
Like Jonah or Geppetto, while the world 
Was going on outside. In here you sunk
Your passions in your Pequod, and grew old. 
Neck-deep in the bric-a-brac of years, 
Which clings to you like barnacles — a crust 
Of sessile things that moved whenever you did,
And when you didn’t multiplied like dust — 
You stand behind a giant, filmy eye
And stare out at a world that passed you by. 

Time Slip

The pale green plastic saucer 
Wobbles a little bit 
As it flies from me to my daughter,
The way the Martian ships 

In those old science-fiction 
Double-features did, 
When we did not exist 
And my dad was just a kid. 

Now my dad is dust,
And the girl who wrapped her fist 
Around my fingertip
Plucks the puny disc

Out of the air, as if 
It was just a frisbee,
Or she was now a fifty-
Foot tall giantess. 

Charm for a Pencil

From dark, inchoate chaos, 
Summon now, ye wand, 
Words worthy of a poet 
As I wave you with my hand;

Or else if what is wanted 
Is magical persuasion, 
Then subtlety or bombast 
Befitting the occasion; 

If art, then render pictures 
Enchanting to the eye;
If fairy tales, then fictions
As real as you and I.