Twenty Something

You walk the crescent
moon of a Michigan road,

lunar thresher.

The fabric of fields,
the body of a coyote,

a deer perhaps
floating in the spoon

of a small lake.

Will skeletons rise
to greet you?

Cut a hole in the ice.

Postcard from Indiana (Dadaist Poem)

Game of false home
cream,

Promised.

Stuff the mixture pan.
We're on

Commercials

and printed
on other vanilla—

the topping

cannot change every-
one's postcards—

     Indiana.

Boxes

I lost my intuition.
I mean, I removed myself

from her body.

I trusted raspberries
and crescent moons

to take me for a walk.
I mean to take me

to the afterworld,

not the one in movies,
the one where we

communicate in bones,
my fingertips

on your lower spin,
your ivory brow

resting in the space between forever.

Circle Removed from a Circle

You are just
cold wind

pushing the warm
wind around.

Cryptic,
somewhere—

Minnesota.

Bound to push
out the wolf.

Lips puckered
for removal,

not like a kiss—

after

the fall.

Earth Star

I am eternally
yours,

10 hours
west

on 80/90,

700 miles
through 3 states,

waiting
on the banks

of the St. Joe
river.

Waiting
for Wednesday

morning's
crescent moon.

Good News!

More of my poems to be published. I have two poems forthcoming in Two Hawks Quarterly.

Three

I arise, move things

around with you 

wolf

ish

grey

sleep

between sheets 

of fog and ether-din

deer 

spiral

fright
ful

when morning collapses 

into noon's ejected star.

The Distance

In the awkward
air a place
to place your eyes.

The Fog

I love the way
you look
out the window

when you
don't know
what to say

(quickly)

coming up
with a sound
to fill the silence.

Adorable

I walk out
the door you
on my mind
the crescent
      moon

Handwritten

I
anticipate
a
letter
as I prepare to leave
this ocean with a hand

full of earth.

How
will I say
I love
you with a rock?

What shape
will the branches take?

Will I leave
the heart-shaped
leaf
of
a poplar,

or will it blow away?

November Sleep

North god suddenly alive

knows the body in shock.

Diana fleshed over the dunes,

the grass on your back stands up.

Flight, tongue, membrane over membrane

the way birds take form in the palm.

One look in the hound's eye

and your hands forever dreaming.

Astral

Wild river
indigo

with your back
turned

to my sun,

quit killing
me

northward.

Point your nose
to Orion

wild chinook.

Come to me and
kiss me.

Rectangles

Leave me
like a toppled grave

stone,

the moment my face
crumbles away.

Cathedral rays

of a star,
cast shadows:

oaks

stand up
like the hyena

of dusk.

Rapt in
your tendrils,

bramble of earthen

       chimera.

Poem

life is a question

there are no answers

does that make me a modernist

post-modernist

post-post-modernist

waiting for the revolution

Questions

*
If the Father is right,
will I not be right

until I'm a father?

Living wrong days
in the rain, long days

beneath black clouds.


*
I remember the day
we first met.

You said yes

and we spent hours
in the snowdrift fields

of Indiana.

You and I bundled
warm in a blanket

of white,

our eyes floating
with the same flake

of snow.

(And for that moment
we were almost omniscient).

A Bedtime Story

The American
ghost is white, ubiquitous.

The type of encounter that lays eggs
in the moon's reflection and lurks

from the tree shadows, dreaming.

A near-death experience
in search of a nightmare like you.

The astral lips of osteology,

the eye of the Raven, Nevermore
like the teeth of the witch doctor, Nevermore

This cryptic ocean

will take a bite from the baby
doll inside of you,

an arthritic old man,
the giant squid beneath the epithelial.

You think you are alone in this valley?
360 your gutter ball head and inhale

the phantom cat over your shoulder.

The St. Joe river valley is a zoo
south bent to the charmer in flames.

Sleep with your body facing north!

Parallel

Two cardinals
cut the street

in twos.

The sound
of your hair

turns my river
around.

In twos:

birds silhouette
your crescent

moon eye.

You wash my
name across fields,

unearth
my railroad

lips of
unearthly explosion.

The Howl

Something in your 

physiognomy screams

dog-person. 

Say, "I love you." Say,

"I love you."

I love you,

cat-person in the dog mask.

Odysseus

Where are
the leaves

headed?

Bounce, tumble
ship-like in one

direction.

Forward motion
away from my

lips like Penelope.

Autumnal Slap

*

Leaves fall

cathedral, oblique.

Did I just imagine 

it all. And now

the bark falls

off the sycamore 

like the flesh 

off my bones.

My pastoral static

cryptic in the pyramids 

of oak, ash and thorn,

the low weeping 

tentacles, electric,
methuselah. 

*

You folded your arms

like a mummy

and in 11 words

my silent ferris wheel 

           eyes 

hung darkful over oceans.

All that Remains

The days of a young corpse
are the glory days for any dead.

Just ask an old skeleton,
it will tell you.

The morning stench is gone
the rot, gone.

The toy expressions of children,
the cold hands of osteology

The stagnation of stone,
chamber of white

white dodo cryptic.

The Fowl

The Geese have taken the place
of bats in the spiral-milky, darkful

barking like tall dogs
in the wild shadows of oaks,

laughing like coyotes in the
odor of cool October farmland,

howling like wolves in the dying
embers of a witching hour fire.

(No one expected these strange birds)

hovering ancestral grounds,
haunting sleepless nights.

Chords

Oh no, not again!!!

it was just
the cling-on

of a gray alien

creeped across
my office window.

It's face
like it had just

grabbed

ahold of my
intestinal cable.

Matter

Like the wild
goose over

the river valley,

I crack open
my head

mid-tree.

To count
the leaves

and branches,

tomorrow,

skeletal morning
of burning October.

Edward

Snow will come
before the leaves

can dance

in autumn's ball.

(This world is

for you)

An infinite

number of stars 

reflect

an infinite 

number of ships.

(Turn it upside down)

The sands will

sail again.



In Memory of Edward A. Goerner (1929-2012)

Fading Youth

Two moons steam
over the city:

the end of a horse's

snout.

It is one of those nights
that begs you

to imagine the world

beneath the cobblestone.

The silhouette
of bricks and metal,

an occasional branch

from the surrounding forest

Beckons eyes skyward.
And somewhere in the middle

Mid-ground, stage left,
a child wrapped like a mummy,

rapt in the permafrost,

                      eyes like daggers.

H. sapiens

I look at how
the man has become.

In the 80s

he used to carry
a briefcase

and walk

like a tooth
pick. Tan leather,

disco awkward.


Awkward
when he ripped

off the leather.

The village,
moon-awesome.

The pallor

of human flesh gone
ape-shit

into the ether.

The Page

Today,
like a manatee

with 2 human hands

prying
at the earth.

This is the moment

of the caterpillar.
the moment

of a leaf

between its branch
and the ground.

A single page

of life's story
with its high beams

on you,

skeleton black
eyes of autumn.

Raspberries

*
I don't know
whether to think

it was a good
thing or a bad

thing, but as I came
by with the blower,

the bird's
wings opened

and it took flight
one last time

into a sacred raspberry
memorial.


*
A sacred memory:

The summer
you reached your hand

out to me
and offered your fruit.

The Egg Van

*
I was stopped
by Barnum
and Bailey's Circus

train. A rainy
September day
in Elkhart, Indiana.

*
I am the stunt
man in the minivan
preparing to jump the tracks.

This is my job.

Unconsummated

For One Thousand
and One Nights I slept
under your half-moon eyes.

Exodus

Did you see the wilderness within me

And come to tear down the sky between us—

My Midwestern dream-face

Shackled in her Arabian Nights.

We shared the Red Sea

on the banks of the Saint Joe.

I wonder, was it Moses who rose

His staff in the air and separated us forever?