Is there a Post-game show?

At the end, after my four quarters 

have been played,

are there commentators

analyzing

my big runs, foibles & fumbles?

Are ex-players turned orators

spouting my reasons, explaining

my whys

like a Sunday post-game 

show?


(2011 football season)

Like a dice game in the backend of an alley

Blood numbers - CE (B.F.M series 2011)
Giclee prints available; 16"x20"

Do 

the gods decide

or are they too 

at the mercy 

of a universe

mathematically 

cycling forward

spitting out 

one species

after 

another ?


(2011)

9 a.m.

You’d think 

the walking dead

would rise early.

Not here

his shift

starts after

9 a.m.

Soylent green perhaps

In this country we can all be millionaires. We just -

just need a million dollar idea, capital and the stars aligned in our favor.

You can take any good thing and corrupt it into a bad thing. Take pre-made chia or hummingbird food – first ingredient water then sugar.

I can take any love and ruin it.

A respectable life and crash it.

If only I could take the idea of homelessness and make it into a million dollar idea – soylent green perhaps.

All the opportunities are in place – we only need a treasure map,  Red Chucks and a MBA – unless you have the million dollar idea. Then you need a ship, a crew, a parrot, an eye patch and fire power.

All the opportunities are overseas.

But we can become millionaires.

One day I’ll learn one foot in front of the next. It wasn’t a million dollar idea, however it gets me around.

(2010)

She

She tweets under – Lovedog.

She cuts hair.

She always looks like a million dollars.


(2010)

Dirty Napkins

Napkins pile up like Pavarotti 

singing Christmas carols.

The tea stains page after page

the way a desperate writer 

wishes to write line-after-line.


(2010)

Hey Thanks

Rolls and rolls of cash are laid against dying grass

by immigrants, getting five cents on the dollar,

so we can golf 

or 

enjoy this pastoral scene

while drinking limes swimming in Coronas 

and eating guacamole made by the maid.


(2011)

(2011)

Fearless Act

A male Gambel quail

walked a tight rope

without arms or net.

He stopped half-way

looked at me and said:

“if she can do it, so can I.”


(2011)

Desert Bell

Sabino Canyon winter 2011

Rain hitting rocks

awakens Sabino Canyon

to possess the torrential 

drops between her legs.

(2011)

Peep

(2008 BMM Collection - Giclee print)

My youngest cat, 

a collage,

plucked off 

the sale racks 

at a quilting store.

Loose threads swim 

in oceans of white 

surrounded 

by orange coasts,

and inland

she is various 

grays and blacks.

An idiot 

with no imagination would

have called her Patches.

You know all the rules

Parcheesi 

was your favorite game; 

you’d read the rules

inside the back box top 

like it was a Keat’s poem – 

that’s why you never won.


(2008)

An Art Opening

When you leave our conversation about this painting,

with it’s red marks, 

a shape like a head, 

a shape like a boat, 

a shape like a bird, 

a tree colored blue,

and after you’ve had dinner with friends at table for three,

and you’ve gone home without having had the crème brûlée, 

will you pet your cat, 

brush your teeth,

floss, open the mail,

or first find the vibrator,

because it’s easier than going home with a conversationalist?

When I grow up

When I grow up, I

I want to be a canyon

whose rock edges are

ravished smooth by

water’s falling madness.

Mary Christmas

Giclee Print

From my Ollie M Collection

The Love of Space

I’ve thought about what you said,

About the economy of space within the walls of poetry.

About not using the same word

Over and over and over. Then I decided 

The rules are all about fear, about control. About dread.

About the de-evaluation of poetries dollar

On the page. About the plummeting value of words used loosely.

Then as if none of that matters, I turn 

And think about space. I love space.

I love to turn in space, 

especially the space between sheets.

Mad Love

The lady in the white sleeveless 

satin blouse coughs up 

a toothless fairy that proceeds 

to grant her three wishes.

Her first wish was to love like a tornado; second 

bend like a willow; third flow like the Milky Way.

So the fairy 

turned her 

into a fairy.

(a lighter one for L.G.M.)

Brighter Ideas

I thought of you today. I thought of us. 

Differences, similarities. Fear. Thinking.

I thought of gratefulness. Then asked

myself – what do I want? – more than once. 

I thought about being and being coupled 

like a cufflink in a brighter blue shirt.

I thought about driftwood drifting 

like canoes down a polluted stream.

Then I thought about the sun, it’s rays, flaring up, 

burning it’s self to death, like our bed.

Merry Christmas

Angsty Foreign Film

Damn my emotions are loud 

swinging a wide wake, like

a barge down the Cumberland 

carrying every one else's shit 

the way I carry on like an angsty

foreign film.

God V2

God v2
Giclee print
16" x 20"
2011

Ancient aunt

Blue eyes I've never meet, but knew,

an ancient aunt perhaps – kinder than

my mother – said: "you look like an actor." 

Mother, hellbent on filling my

life with her story, said: 

"my hair was wasted on a man."

My distant auntie goes on:

"You've got the stare of an empty parking lot filled with 

upturned push pins, just like a matinee idol in New Brunswick."

I tell her: "I've never been to New Brunswick." 

So we plan a trip by train, to feel

the clanking metal wheels on metal tracks

getting hundreds of miles to the gallon. 

I bring my family photos for entrainment. We’re

lost for hours, until we come across a young 

photo of my mother, she looks just like my traveling 

companion on a good day. 

I close the book, gently put into her lap.

I walk hurriedly to a door and jump from the train.

Blue wheelbarrow

A blue wheelbarrow

Dies on its side, waiting

for anyone, it’s not picky.

I lie on my side emptied, blue 

waiting like a dead clown found 

in full gown blacked out

in my trailer. Blacked out

waiting for anyone.

11-18

18th.

day one, of two

two day tomorrow.

sorrow sounds off

a handball court.

ping, thunk. day three

the cats won’t eat red meat

laid out like a cadavered cow.

day, then a day, then a day, day four.

the 18th, i’ll wake, maybe, too

breakfast sausage, eggs, buttered toast

rosemary peach jam. getting me out

of the jam i’m in: strawberry. 

blonde vanilla ice cream

passes for day five.

then, the answer on

day six to eternity:

the 18th.

Migraine

My head continually throbs

from thinking I’m spiritual.

Clouds

What else need be said: “clouds”

You're clever, you’ll figure out the rest.

Flaking

Dust before dust is how some die.

The white flecks on the dash – flakes 

from the old man slowly blowing away.

Earthworms

Under all this lawn

gravediggers tunnel 

night and day.

Boxer’s Training

I carry my father’s battered single edge blade 

in my back pocket. The bulge, a reminder

to stay on my feet, least I fall on my ass.

Poet’s Curse

I love to watch the sprinklers blow like whales 

against an ocher ocean of dying grass.

The curse of the poet is to harpoon every moment

with verse and punctuation.

Step-Father

Every morning that he wakes late,

I wonder if he’s in there breathing

or has his soul descended to Hades. 

There he can freely abuse 

Persephone who’s wearing my mother’s 

go-go boots and polka dot min-skirt.

The Surgeon

Shadows are precise, unlike the wind.

The winds a clumsy oaf scattering leaves, 

breaking limbs, toppling trees, whereas 

shadows cut daylight in half like a medical

practitioner qualified to practice surgery.

If I could only name them

Every man lives in a valley 

limited and protected by the hills 

of his making.

That was then

I watched a man, similar to me, pulling 

a weighted roller over newly laid grass, 

like a man trying to crush his past.

Foreign Exchange

Have a nice day

Within minutes, I dawn new gowns: 

neutral, sad, happy, oblivious, present

and fear reigning with her three tiered tiara.

Then, I do it again:

neutral, sad, happy, oblivious...

Dying Alone

blood numbers

For forty-five years

he’s driven me away

using numbers or facts

as a prodding rod.

Breathing

I know longer care about

the big questions:

tuna or chicken salad

and all it’s variants – god, no god.

I’d rather watch the landscape

turn from dawn to noon to dusk to stars.

I’d rather lay my head on your chest 

with it’s moving up and down.

Warehousing the infinite

For my taste the infinite

is better boxed, labeled, and

safely stored in an out of the way

forgotten warehouse guarded 

by grave robbers and the CIA.

Signs

Is it a good sign

the down feather floating

from heaven, or has

another pigeon been

sacrificed for a priest’s meal?

Death plays solitaire

When death came to linger

he was slow, tender and deliberate.

He did not demand entrance

instead he tended and care for the quail,

the ravens and coyotes. 

He pulled weeds in the front and backyard

whistling lullabies and singing

an old Arabian folk song. 

At night he lit his fire, tended 

the stars and was content to play 

solitaire for the forty-billionth time.

Questions 34,451 & 34,452

If the universe is expanding,
what’s it expanding into?


Who’s the marionette
behind the marionette?