Alive

What do you reckon
keeps a merchant ship alive,
the sailors all gone to shore?
Rats? The unlucky in the brig?
Seagulls? Old seafaring fables?
The few left to stand watch?
Rhymthic lapping of seawater?
Wind clawing away at the flags?
The ship's own love of lighthouses?
Or just all that potential, Honolulu
to Siam, San Diego to Taiwan?
How we could leave this life so
quickly if it allowed us onboard,
where we'd sneak off, down below,
down into the dark, as stowaways.
The vast all of somewhere else?
How it's sure to sail in our daydream or
sleep, and we may ask what it means,
but we'll never know, don't really care.
So much is there and not there,
the thing here at dock,
the thing gone to sea, and
when we describe it to friends,
we leave most everything out,
our failure with things that float.

Alien

Energy and air surround it in water,

as it ripples through this world,

daylight and darkness all the same,
as if death could be transparent.

Points its ray gun anywhere it wants.

Waits on words like new mornings,

sure to drive the Earthlings wild.

"Please, can you love a broken man

where the moon once jumped around 

this dreamy kid's head. Got branchwater

and bourbon in the back of a limo

to let bright country kiss the city dark,

and that's all mine, from the holler

to the Italian couch in payment

demanded for a gambling debt.

My balcony, admiral on deck, 

on the mobile, to order that building

to spell out your name in all its glass,

so I could say 'choice' and mean it,

like we do back on my old planet."

Bullets, ha! It laughed as it loaded

this fresh batch of talk into the chamber.

What's The Frequency, Kenneth?

Sticks his head from our dimensions,

weed through concrete of the real. He

wants to be the howl after leaving coyote,

in language squared or maybe cubed.

Brain of mostly mystery, cycling through

a raincloud of unyielding clues. Scribble

over the lines of our lives if he has to!

Every step to power...till windowshatter,

what he says unbound by molecule, matter.

1st, he learns why ghosts are never heard

chanting their own names. 2nd, he finds

where we're not looking—there all along!

3rd, power is again the worm inside the air.

4th, the sun rises once, now and forever.

5th, 6th, 7th...then he stopped the world.

The Tumor That Was A Medieval Church

You’re no astronomer

if you’ve never witnessed
a full moon from a Louisiana swamp,
because any time I felt I had a soul,
it was the color of those craters.
What’s out there is in here, right?
And the view from every telescope depends
on where your feet are.
Turns out, as I grew old, I had something like a tumor,
     I guess,
but it was an empty medieval church, so the voices
     maybe
weren't out there after all, but in here, something yelling
from inside, with all the saints painted flat with gold
looking stunned at what was being said. A voice
from the universe that had not been pre-approved,
not so much from the altar, not so much the pews,
up from the old stone tiles on the floor, in ghost flight,
that whooshed out the door, blew the candles shut.
You see, we’re an extension cord to everything else.
Energy moves. And moonlight and marsh circulate
through a man until he’s wattage and make-believe.
The moon directs rhythms here on Earth, playing it
like a drumset. Heartbeat, stomp of feet, memories
of music played rough and sweet, sound of glass
breaking every time someone bubbled up a smile,
fish dancing up and out of water, buzzing insects,
chattering birds, and love slippery fine as moss

on river rock tripping everybody up.

Sweet Peas

My wife's wild sweet peas rise up in Dr. Seuss skyscrapers, colors

from chalk drawings, embarassing me because I'm nothing like that.

Joyous way of life, standing tall and happy all day long, fearless,

a civilization that conquered its demons generations ago. Simple.

Could blame cancer, or old habits from the working life, sobriety,

blood that seems to have been pasteurized by age...blood lite.

As if you end up being a thing the world made, and not yourself,

what you meant to be having run off down an alley one drunken night.

As if another person is struggling to push aside muscles and ribs

to escape from inside and finally take over, and love is freed.

As if I protected this person all my life, like an armed chauffeur,

the client helpless, stupid, without guile or guilt, just sitting there, safe.

And I get a hint about why ancient man thought sacrifice delivered something

special to the gods, the only way out a shiv pounded into the chest.

Flower Fields Of Carlsbad

Gunning down the I-5 to Del Mar,

shot at a lot of new coin in the fifth,

when fields of color so bright, shock

of afterlife, would appear jewelry

on a shelf just east of the freeway.

Oz. Versailles. Elysium. Camelot.

Flowers of gold, pink, purple, red...

in broad straight lines, rectangles,

gliding over hills, scale so grand

tourists turned to twiggy insects.

You plain forgot about 80 mph!

No one slammed on the brakes?

Clouds could appear as fighter jets

in formation, air show celebration,

made of white smoke and wishes,

or they'd loll across the sky big,

slow as cotton ball parade floats.

A pure blue sky shoved the flowers

your way, while the sun shined down

like a proud father. Grey skies

presented them butler-style. Mist

turned all to watercolor, reverie.

Southbound, herald of a winning day!

North, redemption maybe blooms.

Rudy The Dancing Bear

Viktor starved the dancing bear

so all it thought about was fish,

and came to know feeding time

as a thing beneath a street light

on pavement busy with Man,

which crackled and cawed out

an awful noise, poisoned, mad,

mouths agape, lips upturned.

But, as long as he jumped up

and around, Viktor threw fish.

The red cap with dangly jewels

and a vest with gold stitching

announced a gypsy prince,

with a wretched curse of fur,

big as a parade's bass drum.

Somehow, the bear could see

itself in a world of green moss,

bushes, and trees, where others

like him wandered in purpose

the same valley every year—

at bottom their friend, Stream—

after sleeping, yes, it recalled,

in near disbelief, deep love,

sleep the weight of boulders.

Berries? Where are berries?

Man made the bear weary,

yet aware of its size, claws,

teeth, muscle, growl, blood.

What are these gifts for?

The other world impossible.

Viktor. Fish. Viktor. Fish.

Viktor. Fish. Viktor...