and now the pears are sizeable

two blue grosbreaks make the item.
plunged up from corn, like swimmers
come up to breathe. im sorry i am
no match for the ghost from your past.

                                             Boring

What does it mean when I go to the bathroom
(like a child escaping boredom)
during a restaurant meal
just to get a break in the tedium.

In the bathroom, I’m chanting
boring, boring, boring.

You might ask why I subject myself
to this.

And, doesn’t she probably sense this
and feel the same?

                     for jib jobson

On my computer screen, first thing this morning, this gift.
Disturbing and enticing, like a dream. I was alive
when this happened, but I never knew the blood, the pain,
the noise. I was busy making an almost parallel life
out of grease, of family, of familiar pepper trees
fifty miles away. I practiced with a rifle when I was twelve,
quit the first time we went hunting jackrabbits in the hills.
My father made a bow for me of fiberglass, an orange streak
like the sunset over the Pacific’s molten mirror,
and I practiced till the blood rose from my wrist
where the string hit as the arrow passed. In rage,
I hammered an innocent elm tree instead of his
shiny head. Still, I didn’t get to climb rock faces.

People died nearby, bloodlessly, the news delivered
in wives’ walking round the corner. Joe Abbott’s
older brother suffered a divorce after a bullet
scarred his handsome face, a policeman in
the wrong place at the wrong time. His wife
rebelled the only way she could. I wanted
to leave the stinking neighborhood, the reckless
life, the chickens running round without their heads.
I wanted to free my heart to beat wild for that sun
sinking over the ocean, so far away, so present.
Of course, I never got away. It’s everywhere,
violence gathering in a quiet, perfect storm.  

no words for 
stars too big 

heard and not heard 
let us all call down 

this startle of death 
a heartbeat of stones

one silent question 

Blood feathers fall to the ground like ash
Blanketing a grave of hopes too high
All the things I gave and would have given
Disappear into a blackened sky
Entering your castle clearly defined
A two-sided mission, live or die

My mistake was to never take up the sword
To let you go without offering a fight
Even in those final months of life
When the end was constantly in sight
But I couldn’t imagine life without you.
How else would I sleep at night?

So soft was our destruction
It did little more than leave me with cracks
In turn it failed to kill
There were no knives in our backs
For you that was fine because
You’re not the one the darkness attacks.

So once I was back in your glorious presence
It was a fight to be something more
Or failing that, an excavation
Try and rid you from my core
And with the latter as reality
I could not comprehend the hurt in store

For I could never come home with you alive
Else the gravity would keep me forever close
To the poisons eventually spread in my soul
Evolving into the pain no one else knows
And in my struggle for death, I found
The dagger that you chose

A secret kept as we were slipping away
Shows how little I could know of you
And in every potential branch of the future
How little I’d ever be able to trust in you
Except in the necessarily miniscule miracle
Of you convincing me, of this sin, to forgive you

But that’s neither here nor there anymore
I speak only this time of what you chose to hide
The relief of pressure that helps me survive
The shit that always gets trapped inside
In some time I will heal and face tomorrow
Knowing you and I have at least died

While our essence remains
We can go our separate ways
We coexist and consider
What else lies in future days
And at last I can hope in tomorrow
From the ash, my soul to raise.

lie listening to 
rainfall on sightless
ferns and stones

or is it nightwind
high in the pines 

listen to  darkness
as it slips into day

into silence and elegance 

Purgatory of sleep rushes in as 
Chamber doors burst open 
Snapping to attention 
Like a good little warrior to 
Ward off the hallelujahs 
Tickling the attention of consciousness

Like the stain that continues to emerge 
No matter how many times it’s scrub away 
The moment fleeting as outlines resurface 
Piling bodies upon the stage of redemption
Masks worn like oppressive armor

To rid oneself of holy haunts
First, one should dig up their bones 
Second, torch them
Third, walk away and don’t look back

Starting from the start, scrubbing, blotting, scrubbing the stain away.

  Day four on Poros  

I walk toward the sea,
early while the city sleeps.
My internal clock is a buzz saw
that awakes me at daybreak as it was set to do
in my youth. Every day of the week,
it would wake me, for I was the one
to bring the cows to the milk shed.
I was the one to milk the cows
before the school bus ran
in the morning, and after school,
for my father drove the bus.              

I never raised a fuss,            
not about milking or school,            
not about plowing the mule, Dan–            
not about being too bone weary to carouse,            
to be with girls except in my head,            
where my dreams would hit a homerun
every time. One day in Old Seventy Creek,
my sister’s friend lost her halter top,
two pink nipples dropped my jaw
& she did not deny my curious peeps
nor know that I memorized lines of poetry.  

From the wall I watch small fry dine
on sewage, piped straight from the hotel
into the Mediterranean Sea with no regard
by management for polluting water as vast
as that sea.  

A small sailboat docks near me.
A fisherman waves for me as fast
as he can, and points his scarred
hand into the boat. I get in. We sail.
He speaks no English; I no Greek. His wine  

is warn, sweet & white.
The sky is blue to its height.    

Day Five on Poros  

I walk down to the docks again
in the morning, hoping to go to sea
again with the old fisherman.  

It is not to be, for the fisherman
has a young man with him who approaches me,
“Thanks for helping him,” he says, his English plain  

& proper.  “You should return
to your home; sell everything you own,
& come back to Poros & our sea.  

Grandfather says you are surely
good luck. He always sails alone;
you gave his life a good turn.  

The squid will wait.
Grandfather will yearn
to have his good luck charm back.  

If you choose to come back
with the money you earn
from all your things, Fate  

will smile on you
like a woman in love.
Here, you can live like royalty.”  

On the hydrofoil in the afternoon, royalty,
Poros, the old man, blue sky above—
Athens ahead—reality breaks through:  

before another morning dawns on Poros,
I will be at my job in Kentucky
& the young lady who granted my wish  

& the old squid fisherman
will be separate,
but unequal memories.

Day four on Poros  

I walk toward the sea,
early while the city sleeps.
My internal clock would buzz saw
me awake at daybreak as it was set to do
in my youth. Every day of the week,
it would wake me, for I was the one
to bring the cows to the milk shed.
I was the one to milk the cows
before the school bus ran in the
morning, and after school,
for my father drove the bus.              

I never raised a fuss,            
not about milking or school,            
not about plowing the mule, Dan–            
not about being too bone tired to carouse,            
to be with girls except in my head,            
where my dreams would hit a homerun
every time. One day in Old Seventy Creek,
my sister’s friend lost her halter top, two
pink nipples dropped my jaw
& she did not deny my curious peeps
nor know that I memorized lines of poetry.  

From the wall I watch small fry dine
on sewage, piped straight from the hotel
into the Mediterranean Sea with no regard
by management for polluting water as vast
as that sea.  

A small sailboat docks near me.
A fisherman waves for me as fast
as he can, and points his scarred
hand into the boat. I get in. We sail.
He speaks no English; I no Greek. His wine  

is warn, sweet & white.
The sky is blue to its height.  
 

Day Five on Poros  

I walk down to the docks again
in the morning, hoping to go to sea
again with the old fisherman.  

It is not to be, for the fisherman
has a young man with him who approaches me,
“Thanks for helping him,” he says, his English plain  

& proper.  “You should return
to your home; sell everything you own,
& come back to Poros & our sea.  

Grandfather says you are surely
good luck. He always sails alone;
you gave his life a good turn.  

The squid will wait.
Grandfather will yearn
to have his good luck charm back.  

If you choose to come back
with the money you earn
from all your things, Fate  

will smile on you
like a woman in love.
Here, you can live like royalty.”  

On the hydrofoil in the afternoon, royalty,
Poros, the old man, blue sky above—
Athens ahead—reality breaks through:  

before another morning dawns on Poros,
I will be at my job in Kentucky
& the young lady who granted my wish  

& the old squid fisherman
will be separate,
but not unequal memories.