Storm

Rain falls, words form, sentences puddle.

BFM

Watch

Dear poet, step away
from the laptop, put down
your pen and watch
the sparrow navigate
the Mesquite’s thicket.

BFM

Returning

after a long needed break

i return to being the self important
cartographer that I am:
the faux poet.

BFM

Fishing

Two kingdoms 

face-to-face

thumb side up.

One life line 

a choppy sea.

The other, 

a smooth lake 

from palm bottom

to Thumb & Index Bay.

My pen bridging 

torrid waters

resting on edges, 

waits for a nibble
on the cast line.

B.F.M.

Lute

Cavern dripping stalactites 
pooling aquamarine and black. 

Here, the pen dips into ink pots. 

Here, the wind plucks water reeds 

like a lute vexes skin, bone and chromosome.

B.F.M.

I row & row

A little rower 

in his chipped blued rowboat

pushing and pulling words 

into 

and 

out of 

a barren sea’s 

slapping waves.

B.F.M.

Fukiya

Love your work, but

have you ever read: 

The Iliad?

The Divine Comedy?

The Golden Ratio?

The field guide to birds - Arizona & New Mexico;

Fermat’s Enigma?

The Wise Heart?

Pain Free by Peter Egoscue?

The Wild Iris?

Anything by Basho?

B.F.M.

Gathering Material

Each morning I hang

yellow sticky fly traps

hoping to catch a few

and write down their

last dying breaths.

B.F.M.

Editing

Burn every word.

Scorch every sentence.

Return tomorrow

to read the ashes

like one reads 
tea leaves. 

B.F.M.

Not a Haiku

Words comma
  comma
  comma
  comma
word word period

Yes, I am fully aware that this has been done before. Think of it as a page, a meditation, a reminder on your calendar that says stop...forget your formulas, read the words. Then forget the formula of forgetting the formula forget the words. Crawl out from under your rock. Notice the shadows you cast and try not to stuff them into a bottle. Try not labeling the bottle.

Write 
word word word
return some words comma,
more returns, morph clever
verb nouns semicolon
return word. Pity.

B.F.M.

All the Pretty Girls

In a mountain college town,

I, the elder, pose 

in a coffee shop,

a cliche scribbling 

notes for Mr. Poem.

B.F.M.

Abandonment

My rime formed
in formative years
is meant to keep you at bay.

My slick craggy shores, 
lack kindling or foothold
is meant to keep me distant.

My charm: 
trapped coolness;
glassy particles;
seething–hatred–remorse;
thick tarry dark matter;
belief in a Simoom fairytale.

B.F.M.

Tipping Dominos

Losing morning after morning,

hermetically sealed inside a

windowed room 

crowded 

with ten foot wooden ladders

he rants his Poet-ness

atop a 

plastic footstool.

B.F.M.

Expectations

Betwixt two maypoles
light contorts, yet
I’m to walk up right
without support.

B.F.M

Earlier in the day I posted and image from my notebook, the before. This is the after.

Click here to see the before.

Before

scribblings. a look in my notebook; the birthing of a poem.
B.F.M.

Click here to see after.

Dolt

Sitting under 
a cottonwood 


pretending 
I’m a poet


I listen 
to echoes


plunder 
a breeze.


B.F.M.

Advertising : Poet Laureate

If I hold my spectacles
in my right hand, placing
one of its hinged arms
in the right corner of my mouth
like the posing Billy Collins
on the back flap of 
Horoscopes for the Dead
will I too once have been
the Poet Laureate?


B.F.M.