Category: Book o’ Verse

  • Sleeping in

    Lying in bed
    scooping a little more sleep
    into my bowl, like soup
    until the soup goes cold
    and starts to overflow
    onto the table.
    There’s the metal
    of the ladel and it clinks
    as a thin carrot wedge
    rotates past
    following the current
    toward the table edge.

  • Morning Sounds

    Twee birds, rumbling boat horns,
    rough timber movement
    rolled up for the night
    into a living room carpet spiral
    with socks and cat toys,
    spoons, string, lost chopsticks.
    Leaned sideways through the timeline,
    bending toward a corner wall.
    And then shook out at new light.
    Dropping like 6 am jacks
    onto the hardwood floor.

  • Pears

    Jane won’t eat pears. No matter the context.
    Stranded on Pear Planet.
    Attacked by toothy pears.
    Armed with only a pear fork.
    Peckish.
    Oh, she’ll kill ’em. Oh sure.
    She can be savage.
    But she won’t eat the flesh or drink the juice.
    And she doesn’t want to talk about it.

  • What the people did last night

    They went driving in the rain.
    They watched it fall down
    on jelly-eyed twenty-eight-years-olds in gold paisley coats,
    side-burned thirty-seven-year-olds in suspect camping gear,
    fit fifty-year-olds wearing thick, graying furs plucked from cardboard boxes.
    Early on, almost at the very first beat,
    the rhythm section took their jackets off.
    Red shirt, tan shirt. Suspenders. Brown towels in easy reach.
    About an hour later, the piano player followed suit,
    folded his coat up neatly, leaned over,
    laid it to rest during the drum solo.
    And now here they are — the whole gang.
    They’re lighting flat matches in dry marble corners.
    Thigh-high boots over too-bare skin.
    Balds heads, stylized facial hair.
    Then a busload of high school band kids
    hauled up from San Diego
    pours out all over the sidewalk.
    Clarinet players. Trumpets players. Sax.
    And the aged. And the infirm.
    Oxygen tanks.
    Wooden legs.
    All rolled in to hear
    some jazz sincere
    on a wide stage.

  • Building a flock

    They’re building a flock of geese
    out by the base.
    For six months now
    they’ve been working on it,
    piece by piece
    sun, wind, rain.
    First came the bones.
    Then the organs, the muscles.
    Fat and flesh.
    Last week they put on
    a soft undercoat of feathers.
    Then beaks.
    (Honk.)
    And I was like:
    “wow, these really are starting to look
    like geese.”

  • Frogs

    I remember frogs --
    feeding them, caring for them
    pressing that spot on
    the base of their spines...
    Small frogs, caught by the creek
    cupped for a moment, captive, fluttering
    released
    open-hand.
    Huge store-bought bullfrogs
    kept in shaded back-of-garage aquariums.
    I don't remember naming them.
    But I do remember
    holding them close
    looking down
    their slimy skin
    soaking up
    against my shirt
    and it wasn't gross at all.
  • He was a fine mouse, and other laments

    Put it in a box and bury it
    by the side of the house
    with a few friends, a eulogy.
    Soft voices and a
    turning embrace.
    Gone, like our grandmothers
    and grandfathers. And not
    coming back.
    No matter how young we are inside.
    How frolicking. How ready
    to go to the circus.
    But it’s gone. Long gone.
    Giddy-up gone.
    And we never took
    a still moment
    to say
    goodbye.

  • Mouth-feel

    Saying the word “doodle” out loud —
    “Doodle.”
    “Doodle.” —
    makes me feel
    three months more young, light, and lean
    three months less gassy and gray.
    Noodle
    Poodle.
    Streudel.
    “Doodle.”

  • Old Dude Goes to a Show

    Five minutes after the lights go down
    I hear a familiar rustling two seats over.
    Someone’s making things happen.
    I’m a little stressed but not surprised
    when a hand in the darkness offers
    two white pills.
    “No thanks,” I say, false cool, thinking:
    “I am old dude.”
    The hand withdraws.
    A minute later, I ask:
    “What was that? ‘E’? Ecstasy?”
    “Altoids.”
    And I nod a short,
    tight nod,
    as if that was my second guess.

  • Crime scene

    "Live for today,"
    he said
    "We're all going to die."
    "Especially you,"
    she replied.
    It was a short conversation.