Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Crossroads

Jimmy coasts up
to the crossroad.

A crow sits atop
the sign.

Left road goes
to Armageddon,

right goes to
the newly

constructed
national prison.

Straight ahead
the eastern sky

is blackening,.
nightfall beckoning,

with the pink
and yellow glow

of a slot machine
palace where

the house wins
ninety nine times

out of a hundred.
Crow dances left,

bobs right,
flips around

and thrusts his beak
towards the gleam

on the horizon.
Jimmy figures

that his odds
are better at the slots

and eases forward
across the intersection.

As he passes,
the crow chuckles,

squirts a crap,
and flies off

to a cozy nest
where the western

sun is reddening
into night.

Friday, December 22, 2017

We invest our souls and dreams in stone:


We invest our souls
and dreams in stone:

the ten admonishments
Moses brought down
from the mountain,

the silk-shrouded one
we circle in the square
of the Great Mosque in Mecca.

The walls that seek
to seal the empires
from influence, barbarians
and strawberry harvesters.

The prayers we slide between
the limestone blocks that remain
of the Second Temple.

The standing Buddha
that the Taliban tried to erase 
with cannons could not eclipse

the billions carved and cast
that have comforted and consoled
the millions through the centuries.

We prize the eternally incorruptible
property of gold, but it never
touches the heart like the current

that ran through me
when I kissed the marble slab
that covers Jesus' tomb.

Pharaohs and emperors,
party general secretaries,
and generals on bronze horses

aspire to outlast
the strange creatures
limned in the Burgess shale.

Will they even last as long
as the humble rotund Venus figurine
carved from a Mammoth tusk
in the Pleistocene?

Does Lincoln now gaze sadly
up the Mall at the Capitol
where lesser men scrabble
for loot and booty?

Memory will not preserve
their battle like the wasp
and spider trapped in amber
a hundred million years ago.

We surely have a date
with some future mute
insensate stone,
a collision with some lump
arced our way by Jupiter's
slingshot. It's happened before.

Some years ago I had
the pleasure to see
the mineralized, desk-sized
skull of a Triceratops

that covered all of a big table top
locked in an obscure storeroom
of the Earth Science Building at Cal.
He never saw the Chicxulub
asteroid coming. We probably will.

Perhaps some Eve and Adam 2.0
will gaze in wonder at whatever remains
of cities half devoured by jungles
or drowned beneath the waves.

I look each day at a smaller wonder,
a fossilized leaf I split from a layer
of Eocene silt that sits, placidly,
beside the monitor on my desk.

A message received:
all life is by chance
and sometimes by chance,
rendered in stone.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Winter solstice innovations


There's someone under
that thick synthetic plaid
on some kind of improvised
sleeping pad.

Man or woman unrevealed,
head nestled on a stained
white vinyl office chair
tipped on it's back

that does double duty
as a pillow and a dolly
for his or her possessions:
goodwill boots and shopping bags.

Second block, second sleeper,
upright soft skin suitcase
unzipped so the sleeper's
head is sheltered in the suitcase

from the pre dawn December
wind - which has whipped
the golden ginko leaves
off the street trees

and sprinkled them
festively on the man or woman
hidden under a blanket 
with his or her head

snuggled in the
once upon a time
smart and stylish
carry on nylon luggage.

Monday, December 4, 2017

Body of evidence


That lips remember
more than toes,
for that kiss
purchased with betrayal
for a moment's bliss.

That half a century
can be dissolved
by the scent
of orange groves
on late april nights.

That warm arms
are more comforting
than well meant words.

That our world begins
and ends
-at the boundaries
of our skins.

That the scar on my left knee
from a farm house tumble
still itches when the weather is
as hot and dry as that 
summer in the valley day.

That I have to mute the radio
if certain songs come up
before tears steal my vision
and my throat.

That I can only fly in dreams
but I still recall the fall
when the branch of the cottonwood
snapped
and I landed on my back
breathless, alive, unhurt.