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3 Poems Submitted to the San Miguel de Allende Writer's Conference

Conflicted

As Snow

In the Interim



Conflicted


When she asked me to love her

I whispered: precipice, into heaven


Precipice like presuppose

because I wanted inundation


What? She said

Yes, I said


Her hair from afar

her eyes approaching


I knew I was done for

but could I sustain a song? 


Anywhere variously 

now would be best 


I whispered: statuette

monument come to life


To begin, I named us sexually

which sounded a little silly


So for purity I looked 

at the pristine ocean

discarding isles of vocation


Vision and ocean go together 

she said, and I said

could it be that you and I


Look at the ocean together?

And again twice, as if thrice


I would need to live in a large

space, she said


I was desiring, but asked

What kind of space?


Like that, she said, pointing

Oh, I said


Because the precipice is high 

and pristine can be such a mess



   going through both doors

   at once then hit from behind

   the moon amidst clouds




As Snow


As snow I could drift 

for miles. I could fall 

and rise again. 


Crunched underfoot, 

I’d be hard as a rock. 

I’d settle on stones 

yet make them soft. 


Like white drops from the sky, 

as white as I don’t know what. 


I could ride the wind. 

I could be piled up right 

against a tree, a happy way 

of saying death has arrived. 


I could soften Captain Green

who’s waiting for payday. 

People might say, hooray! 


I could be a haiku - 

etched on the bird’s wings

the story of one’s life

powder to the touch


Or be strange new thoughts:

Now I will dance 

on my brother’s head. 


People would slip on me 

yet I would soften their blow.


Fifty names I’d have, and none. 

If I were a flag, I’d really feel

the breeze, but would just 

be stuck there. 


I’d like to be a window 

but then hoodlums throw 

rocks at you. And as the sky 

I’d cry, so I might as well 

be snow.



     rustling dry leaves

     emerging like antennas

     as the dirt road ends




In the Interim


Historical arsonist, confusionist

and tantrumist, now aiming 

now deflecting, advances fork 

without a pie whose end-arrows 

have ouch, so that all are indexed 

early and vertically to a subprime, 

eons before the clock becomes 

rusty with happiness.


Personal Time

Tell me about your family.

I’ll get the vodka.


Is it by looking up to Cloud Daddy

that one can so easily release the wilds

of yesterday into today’s straitjackets,

where fluids that flowed through 

now sluggishly congeal into 

giving over the second half of life

to the recovery of the first half?


Kafka Time

Germany has declared war

on Russia – Swimming

in the afternoon.


To party in the bardo, let’s 

stop air-raiding doohickeys

on presumed nitwits, shish kebabbing 

them while networking ourselves 

as peppy, posh and sociopathic, 

drilling-down value-added

deliverables to operationalize 

quick wins for rightsizing.


Downtime

The use of montage

allowed the students

loosen up and fly. 


Long before slumping 

over metastasizing metrics

in clockwork containers that poo-poo 

airy forest wanderings; before 

the assimilating and squandering, 

serving those at Tree Killers Trust, 

kids know that school is a rotten house 

of dreary cramming overseen 

by the tired and wary, and wish 

they were snow so when thrown 

down by bullies can land 

softly on their feet.


Timelessness

Medicis, birds and movie stars

performing for eternity

on Utopia Parkway.


Meanwhile some will search 

for another way, bodying forth 

a latency surreptitiously lurking, 

a creeping thing softening in ooze 

and soon to quivering wings, 

a buoyancy in a world of pink 

puffy clouds, finally with empathy 

for the bitchiferous colonized 

by prosperity.


Current Time

Fun-loving America appears dead 

and gone, with Garcia in the grave.


Make the form also formless, he said,

going and returning not anywhere

else. Make the thought without

thought, he said, immersing and

soaking in the dazzling, where 

the most moving has already been 

written, whose script is the earth 

and whose rhythm is the seasons,

a slippery thing, like holding an eel

and while trying to press harder 

the sooner it escapes; like the scent 

of earth after it rains and before 

the trees start rustling with 

exuberance. 



       during the long night

       holding onto the mystery

       one star at a time



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