BIRD CLOCK

My sleep is all wrong

even my dog can tell

when I walk her in the neighborhood twilight

she hurries me past the houses

and the birds hidden in the trees

trading their evening songs.

My dreams don't flow

except when I'm awake

and I see them as shadows on the lawns.

I slept too long to have a nap

but not enough for a night's sleep

and now it is near dark

it was the birds outside

hidden in the trees

that woke me

confused I did not hear their morning songs.

I wonder what will it take to fix my sleep

Maybe I need to tell time by the birds.

June Poems

Posting a wonderful crop of June poems. 

Free Information

Technologists say information wants to be free
Tyrants want information kept under lock and key
       
Information lives best in its natural habitat
running wild
in giant herds
like wildebeests
on the African Savannah

Who would want mass-produced
information from industrial information farms
rounded up and branded,
processed and packaged and
served with unknown ingredients?

We need free-range, organic information
allowed to grow and roam
unimpeded, uncorrupted.

That's the information for us.



Your Call Is Very Important to Us

I know they think
of little else but
my call.

So important
it can’t be
trusted to unreliable humans.    

Computer-generated
almost human
transmissions that deliver sincerity.

That’s the sound of
automated caring.

 
Growing Pains
 
Everything
is
smaller
screens
tweets
attention
except
information
now
unleashed.

MONUMENT MAKERS

The monument makers

said they could match

the size and style

of my sister's tombstone

even though

it's been forty-five years since

they made the last one

for my grandmother.

But the hill in the back yard

of our old house shrank

to a slight gradient

Time can shrink

houses, trees and yards

but we can still

make our monuments the same size.

CLOUDY DAYS

Because we cannot talk anymore

I send you a cloud

and in conversation

you send one back

Our talk could be anything

from sleek stratus in the morning

to a flotilla of billowing cumulous in the afternoon

My favorites

are on Saturdays

if the sky is blue

I like to start off with high-flying streaks of cirrus

and you answer at sunset

with impeccable timing

in red-orange nimbus

trimmed in gold.

I'm always watching the sky.

FLAT TIRE

 

FLAT TIRE

When your daughter gets a flat tire

at 10:30 on a Monday night

you get to grab a flashlight

and go out and press

your face into the pavement

into little pieces of gravel

and smell that cold pavement smell.

You thought you'd teach her to change

a flat but you never did

you send her home

with her mother in the other car

without the flat.

You fumble in the dark

with the untested jack

cranking your Japanese SUV into

the air by a few inches

pull the flat off the lugs

roll it onto the ground

and struggle

to align the good one

and twist the nuts on as tight

as possible with your hands

"Always use your hands before

you use a tool," your eighth grade Shop teacher

once said.

Two days later

you're still cleaning road grit

from the grooves of your fingers

which remind you

of the treads of tires.

MOWING THE FIELDS OF THE REPUBLIC

I mow my lawn
 
in concentric squares 

shrinking green tufts


into a disappearing island
But no lawn is an island
why not past my boundaries
to the neighbor’s yard

I'll need to take time off from work


as I race up and down


suburban streets


connecting rivers of lawn
with the Capitol lawn,
New England town greens.
and Kentucky bluegrass
which requires a stately pace
 

to please pampered thoroughbreds.

In the midwest coliseums


100 yards are precisely coifed 


Is it any wonder artificial turf 
was abandoned 

and returned to grass and earth?
Where are the dreams in artificial turf?

My vast grid 

extends to summer lawns of memory
front yards of modest Ohio towns


and to graveyards of my grandparents.

I mow Little League fields
in diagonal textures
the kind you see on during the baseball highlights.

I'm left mowing in the dark


one giant island of the great republic


with rolling lawns
--from sea to shining sea.

TRASH DAY

Trash  Day

We know
it's trash day eve
when green and blue bins
picket the street
like sentries
posted curbside
to stand watch
through the night
until trash trucks
smash the dawn
and flip idiot lids
relieving us
of our discarded histories.
 

New February Poems

 

A new batch of February poetry. Put in your nickle of attention pull the lever and see what whether you're rewarded with something you like... 

 

The Cost of Shadows

Even when we're not there
we leave lights on
like burning suns in space
because darkness
would dominate
better to fend off
mysteries
of Rembrandt shadows
and keep safe
with shinning sentries
until your father says
to an empty room
"what are we made of...money?!"
and flips the switch.

###

YELLOW BUBBLE MAILER

​
 

 
Business yellow skin
lined with bubble guts 
on an international mission
of commerce to a customer in Berlin.

Special one-time emissary
proudly appended with postage and customs clearances
tossed on a belt
and dropped into a dark hold

Carried eastbound on a night time flight
arcing over the North Atlantic
intended for Deutsche Post's afternoon delivery
for a reader on Karl Krugger Street

Somewhere between here and there
an interception
yellow skin sliced length wise,
and contents emptied like a sturgeon gutted for roe

Months later
disgraced by pink and green stamps
a soiled yellow husk is returned
with a final message like a joke in bad taste

Received without Contents