Poems

Cracker's Anthem

To harm a person,

you must go for the operating system.

Why Atlas Won't Shrug

This poem is a statement against Randenoia, the belief that society depends on "great men" to hold it together.

Dorothy

As soon as she arrives at work

behind the pane of emerald glass

the receptionist sitting beneath the American flag

tells her that the patriot owner

is sending every job to India.

Untitled

You should read so and so

you write just like him.

Resistance: A Found Poem

Press one if you support the resistance.

Bout Number 3

Juan Peron ran out of luck.

No longer could he champion the Argentine.

A Premise for Poetic Appreciation

All poets

speak to and from the same soul.

Death on the Internet

....the blue Pacific

endless and unperturbed

Fragile Women

I am getting tired of fragile women

A Terrible Sonnet

From death none shall arise.

Anaphora

I am writing at my desk.

I am writing at my desk, pounding the keys of the keyboard till the acid-weakened faces erode under my fingertips.

I am writing at my desk to fill the box that says "Entry Body" because I abhor the naked space.

Nightfall

Slashing swatches of sky

the knees of scarlet embryos just before dusk

R.D.'s Jesus

Do not think of me as flesh, but as graven images

Amergin in Orange County

I am a street: fronted by strip malls.

I am a flood: gushing from a canyon.

I am a wind: that dries the brush.

I am an SUV: hungry for rough roads.

Pan Troglodytes

"Stupid homo!"

Valentine for Lynn

It's a damn fine thing that I'm not a deer who has 
     antlers that get caught in the low boughs of 
     oak trees;

The Sum of Its Parts

"What's the use, Joel?" she said.

"At noon I will fall in love."

Santa Ana

I was suffocating

so I opened the window a slit

no larger than a cat's lit pupil.

75,000,000 Canteloupes Shipped In Six Weeks

I suppose

you had better come here

Viola.

Baby Flesh

The Weekly's selling baby flesh.

Christmas Day Terror Alert:
Santiago Canyon

The only explosions we saw

were the sycamores --

Midwinter's Day: Orange Alert

Don’t fear Fear, says the terrorist.

Saddam Hussein has been Captured

Inside his ventilated grave

he flicked his eyes, probing

strobic flashes of his last seraglio.

Allergy
I must avoid horses. Their hair gallops in my lungs, tearing me up like they tear up the turf with...

Just before a reading
Key to understanding: The last line isn't meant as it first reads. Before we even get started Lee's saying "Be...

Pushy

You shoved me.

Two Poetasters, Gloating

Did you hear he blew his brains out?

Rude Awakening in a Critique Group

Pardon me for waking you up to tell you this,

but I need my sleep.

Coyote Gourd

You the earless one

keep my whispered secrets well.

Unguligrade Remnant

This trophy shall stay here, sky-buried.

A Dark World and Wide

Gravity pulls you down toe-ways

as the shout to your rear comes

surfing on the wired zeer of wheels.

On Eavesdropping

I'm looking for the real voices, the real life that people lead.

Cinquain No. 18

I curled inside dreams,

a paper nautilus swimming

in blue.

Cinquain No. 17

Write a December memory.

Cinquainfull and unrepetant

Voters
feel weakly
elated about the
Terminator. Arnold let's them
not think.

A few more cinquains

A dwarf
short back, long legs
properly extended
down below, abbreviated
above.

More Cinquains

I'm turning into one of those people who writes down the silly music words that pop into his head.

Five Cinquains

Cinquains contain five lines, of two, four, six, eight, and two syllables respectively.

Checklist

For everything else

There's the bankrupting flexibility

of credit cards. I travel

therefore, I must be a free man.

Evening July 2003

Away for the afternoon because of the heat

I return to the condominium to find it

reserving all that I missed in my absence

Some Orange poems

I'm mad about orange.

I'm mad at orange.

Without Looking (One for the Drawer)

The molecule pattern smashing on tympanum is classed as "purr".

Realty Talk with An Intercalation
"If you mow the grass frequently it will never go to seed." "Looks nice," all this lush barrenness. "Sells property."...

Acrostics

Simple folk

Language

Asshole speech

Nonstandard.

Go fuck yourself.

Cut from My Notebooks

I laid out a cross deliberately.

With what fierce thirst for penance I have tried to mortify in myself the throbbing of the flesh, and make myself wholly transparent to the love of Jesus crucified.

Life's greatest danger lies in the fact that men's food consists entirely of souls.

Coins in the Cup
Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer's Book of Days. It's something of a...

Making the Bed

"You made your bed: you lie in it"

My mother used to say to me.

After a Reading

....Perhaps I should build that

plywood cabin in Mexico, mould a little figure of me

out of amaranth dough, crucify it on mesquite,

and spend a hermit's life praying to my patron saint

as a way of passing obscurity.

Goodnight

That's the problem with this place, this body

Too many Is and I am the only "you".

Blog Poetry Report

Wordsmiths have blossomed online lately and I'd like to point out a few places where people have been risking their blogging reputations to express themselves in verse.

Riley Wilderness 2

August 1976 - Her name is no one's business

They say that Mormons and Catholics live to breed.

So aside from the catch of the blue book with the golden hornblower

the two of us should have been naturals in the flesh.

Tuna Fish

I don't know that it is even a question

in the part of my mind that is a tuna fish.

Out Patient

I'll die in an uninteresting fashion

and they will forget me with clear consciences.

Describing a Silence

Draw an old-fashioned television screen

flat on the top and bottom,

rounded at either end

around each of these scenes.

Holy Jim Canyon 2

Before I was Born

Before I was born,

Before I was a curl in my mother's womb,

Before I was a shrimp swimming in her uterine sea,

there was nothing.

Ages of Joel

And it was at that age,

thirty five,

that it all started to cloud into a deeper clarity.

When I stopped advancing against the thunderhead

let the rain fall

and stopped expecting rainbows in every pearl prism

that rushed to smash itself against the ground.

Coming at You Live and Past

I create radio.

Mirage

Even the Old Woman Mountains need to see that they are pretty

Bryce Canyon

Bryce is the scream of the altitude sick
swirled at the Dairy Queen.