This Insomniac
Head between
two pillows, like Johnny
Jump-Ups pressed into Merriam-
Webster somewhere between poor
and prosperity so that all I can hear
is the flannel rubbing against my ear,
there’s no way I can sleep in any position
with so much still unwritten about
the glory of basements, where,
with all the promise in crock pot boxes,
small animals go to die, piles of laundry hide
the machines, rusted tools fall
into other rusted tools giving way
to unsung sculpture, soiled playing cards
and unmatched socks strewn atop
a punched-out screen door make a shaggy
parquet; and a famished, leggy
fluorescent tube barely winks on the entire scene.
Going there is a kinder dread,
so fearing overnight alienation
from it’s grit, I barter sleep to keep me
out of dreams too random
for narrative, and nightmares
fit only for screams.
Unison
What if there was an uncanny moment
when all the birds were grounded
from Cape Town to Juneau, and everywhere between— all feathers frozen in a universal stutter, so quick
as to make a snail of light, and even Stephen Hawking’s mind would miss it? And what if there was that one note no musician has ever found, not Mozart
in his fever, nor any Diva at the height
of song, not in all their hours of practice,
not in their weeping? In another poem,
some drunk will happen upon a ukulele,
pluck the note, quite by accident,
and pass out, never knowing he was
someone all along. But here, it is God’s
best kept secret, unsealed only at our dying,
when all birds from crow to lark, in homage
to our dive into the earth, stop their flying,
and wait for our wings
to join them.
Raising Poems
I feed you,
(research and imagination)
bathe you,
(editing)
hold you close
(feeling).
We sing together
(music)
follow rules,
(measure)
make tradition,
(rhythm)
memories,
(content)
and travel to new places
(images).
I lecture about the basics
(direct statement).
Sometimes we go without speaking--
(line breaks and white spaces)
but no matter where you are we are
always connected
(soul);
turn the page
(and we’re together again).