The Reason We Breathe

Only this morning, my mother died
as I sat holding her hand.
Her eyes were shut tight, her mouth wide
Only this morning, my mother died
I watched her chest heave; the oxygen tried
to fill up her lungs, as nature had planned.
Only this morning, my mother died
as I sat holding her hand.

The Rape of My Hawaii

When Roosevelt was President

Your country went to war
This land was filled with discontent

Pearl Harbor underwent
Bombings to settle a score
When Roosevelt was President

Despite his skill, couldn't circumvent
The blazing battle on our shore
This land was filled with discontent

Your boys, they prayed, pledged ten percent
"Please, dear Lord," they did implore
When Roosevelt was President

Your god didn't save not one red cent
Home in a box sailors went galore
This land was filled with discontent

I painted my face to represent
An American version of a whore
When Roosevelt was President
This land was filled with discontent 

--Kukana Wong 1919 - 1962

(written by Susan Budig)

Heaven

Holy
Ever
After,
Victorious
Eternal
Ninth Cloud

Herbert Joseph Budig

1931 – 2015

Picking Tomatoes

These are the cherry tomatoes my father picked

on the morning he died

He woke at 7:15, missing the sunrise by half an hour

on the morning he died

He pulled on his summer robe and brown leather slippers

on the morning he died

And made his way upstairs to the kitchen

Dug around in the container-drawer

For a plastic dish then stepped outside

His back yard faces southwest, there was dew on the grass

Sunlight slanted between the houses

And cut across the pepper plants and rose bushes

On the morning he died

He didn’t hesitate as he drew his feet through the lawn

On the morning he died

His fingers found the bright red balls surrounded by green leaves

On the morning he died

He filled up his cup with cherry tomatoes,

Which I am now eating one by one

Today, August 31st

My father died while eating
peanut buttered toast and sliced bananas

Before he finished his last bite
his head fell back as if to inspect
a cobweb on the ceiling

This is how my mother found him
when she returned to the breakfast table
carrying her toothbrush smeared with mint paste

“I felt for a pulse at his neck, but
there was no beat,”
she explained for the eighth time

Neighbors flood the phone lines
and stuff the refrigerator full
of wild rice hot dish, tuna salad, and slaw

Instead of his arms hanging limply
at his side, Mom described how they were spread out
palms up, his devotional still open on the table

Like a skydiver prepared to take flight

Time in a Palindromic Lesson

You don’t notice that time has passed
Unless
You aren’t having any fun
When that happens
It won’t help to tap on your watch

Measuring sky by sun might work, but
It’s best when you ignore time altogether
Throw away contingencies because
Time will escape you if you don’t

(this poem can be read line by line starting with either the first line working down or the last line working up)

I’ve learned to notice

I’ve learned to notice where water comes from
Down from the sky, caught in cisterns and saved,
then used by the single scoop-full to flush a toilet
or poured by the bowlful to take a bath

I’ve learned to notice how skin is covered
out of protection, not modesty
out of practicality, not frippery
a sign of age, a mark of adulthood

I learned to notice where my foot is pointed,
how not to step over someone
or touch their head
even a yang-sow of the night has an honored head

I’ve learned to notice
every other place in this world
is the center of their universe, too.

-a poem about being a foreigner

Space

Alone
Being
Cosmos
Dione
Existence
Fool's Paradise
Godliness
Hole
Infinity
Jetsons
Knot
Lost in
Manned
Nebula
Open
Plethora
Quantum
Room
Spool
Tool
Uncrowded
Vacuum
Wasteland/Wonderland
Xyst
Yuri Gagarin
Zero, don't you know how wonderful you are?

The Sweetest Drink

Yesterday morning, she didn’t awaken

Sometime at night, as stars shined
Her final breath left her forsaken

Moonlight bathed the living room, outlined
a fleeting hospice, this snippet in time.
Earth’s incessant crush confines

Yet in death, it slips away, like a dime
through her frail fingers.
We mix life and death in a sublime

porridge over which we linger,
then lick our lips, taste the sweet
prick of death as it malingers

close enough to trap all in complete,
eternal verdict. It snags my arm,
but I do not concede its grasp or retreat.

Death has come for her, it signals no alarm
as it curls and caresses up her form.
It purrs, “Come willingly, there’ll be no harm.”

I watch her aura as she faces the imminent storm
Susurration amongst the clouds, she hears
a bugle’s echoing call as if to inform.

Then walks the path, picking primrose and baby’s tears,
clutching bouquet to her face.
Yet the perfume abates and disappears.

To her lips she presses the loving cup her hand at last has taken. 

Tsarnaev's Blood

I wonder

Who would Jesus kill
If he were the judge today?

It seems Tsarnaev’s life
While worthy enough for
Jesus' sacrifice

Isn’t worthy enough for
Us to preserve

The more I think on it--
Picturing my savior with
Nails pierced through

His hands and his ankles
Allowing his death willingly
For people named Tsarnaev

The more confused I feel
Because by using the death-
Penalty, aren’t we in effect

Saying, Jesus’ death was insufficient

We want not only our Lord’s blood
on our hands, but also the blood

Of Tsarnaev’s? 

Whale Song

There is a whale out there in the ocean who sings at a different pitch than all other whales. No other whales can hear him. Here's my luc bat in honor of the lonely whale.


Whale Song

Let the lonely whale swim
Out on a wave; his hymn, too high
For others to hear. Cry,
Lonely whale. No reply can bounce
Back to you, nor pronounce
Your mating call. No ounce of sound,
Not one whisper, has found
Your heart’s desire. Drowned, your voice,
Is dead. It’s Hobson’s choice.
There will be no rejoicing, no
Fete, no whale-bride to plough
Through the seas so let go and swim.

Forecast

My bedroom is the same,

as one year ago--  

darkness mixed with night light

casting static on the walls,

snow-clouds lowering the ceiling,

jets roaring overhead,

delivering night-riders to warm beds.

And I’m lying here next to my son who is one

year older now.  I’ve aged a century.

He nestles his head

into the hollow of my armpit. 

My husband’s voice drifts from down the hallway

reading The Velveteen Rabbit, our daughter’s favorite.

I catch the blurry words, Fairy she had gone--

then silence.  

My baby sucks his thumb,

fast,     slow,

at last, rhythmically.

A sigh escapes into blackness.

Squeaking away from the mattress,

tears trace down

my temples, tickling my neck.

One year ago,

she lay in her bed,

not hearing the rain. 

Head throbbing, purple

pain pounding out of her skull,

lightning taking a snapshot of misery.

One year ago

we did not know 

the forecast—

Even now, it is not clear.

Why our family,

why her?

She was forty-three.

Brain Science

Sunday afternoon at the Minnesota Science Museum

Claire holds up a four-pound plasticized human brain
pointing out the parietal and frontal lobes,
turning it over to indicate where the medulla once
connected to the spinal cord.
She balances his brain like a ripe cantaloupe.

This once pearly, now clay-gray wad
of tissue held a million thoughts,
both conscious and involuntary,
of a man--now dead.
When Claire turns her attention,
I poke my finger between
the flowerets of cerebral cortex,
dig up the memory of
his first dog, Ginger,
tease out the forgotten scent
of a Norway pine where
he sat in a deer stand,
waiting like a rabbit with a gun.
Claire glances at me
and I hide my hands,
knowing my transgression
of reading, like braille,
another man's mind.
I whisper into my
muddied palms
"How did you die?
Do you regret what
you've become?"

The lid squeaks as
Claire closes the temperature-
controlled mock-mausoleum
clicks the padlock shut,
punches out for the day,
drives home whistling
"Let’s Go to Hunting"
as if by magic.

Hard Scrabble

kneading under umber moon
this torpid eve-dusk

morning, sharp and spry
we chew our fruited baked rusk



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is a Coin poem I wrote a year or two ago. 

A coin poem comprises: 

• a rhyme pattern of a-b c-b or a-a b-b
• two stanzas of two lines each stanza
• syllable count of 7 & 5 per stanza
• the content should be a like coin, opposing ideas juxtaposed against one another

Twenty Questions for Ego

1. Who gave you your nickname? 2. Does it still fit? 3. How has your identity evolved over the past five years? 4. Do you feel you belong to an identifiable community or do you fly solo? 5. Which caresses your ego more: flattery or affirmation?  6. When was the last time you took a bath? 7. Have you ever foraged for mushrooms? 8. Did you find a Destroying Angel? 9. Did you taste it? 10. In your theology, does grace have meaning? 11. Should it? 12. Why didn’t your parents name you Chris? 13. If your name is Chris, wouldn’t you rather be Gene? 14. How old were you when you spied your first gray hair? 15. If no gray hair yet, when do you anticipate going bald? 16. Do you find life is one impossible question after another? 17. Have you ever free-associated with the word “hinge?” 18. What about free-based? 19. On a jejune note, do your socks match? 20. Why is that?

**************************************

--a prompt from Jim Moore

Rainbow

This is how death looks:
on Earth, a beginning and
an end.
But from the top of the sky,
it's a circle.

Naked

Bless me Father, for I have sinned
Five years since my last confession
Envy, anger, my transgressions
Of my faults, with haste rescind

But there’s a fault, unfairly pinned
It was not due to indiscretion
Bless me Father, for I have sinned
Five years since my last confession

On Baltic Sea, of clothes, I skinned
In frigid waters, I was freshened
There’s joy indeed, free of possession,
Not a stitch I wore nor was chagrined

Bless me Father, for I have sinned
Five years since my last confession

Little Story about Susie and Dar

The girls were bored and at a loss

To find a treat that did not cost

An arm, a leg, no more a dime

They chose confectionary dross

They pulled two nickels from the grime

And gave them to the clerk part-time

He took the coins, he let them drop

Into the drawer, like bells they chimed

The girls ran from the candy shop

Their hearts aglee with what they'd got

Susie reached in, to her surprise

A fist of icky greenish glop

Back to the store with angry eyes

The girls cried foul, they did despise

Their hopes of candy were not met

The clerk endured their cruel chastise

When Susie said, "You are in debt!"

The clerk's raised brows began to sweat

"Please, Miss, you see, I didn't mean,

to cause you all of this upset."

Miss Sue, she counted to fifteen

Then calmly said, "What do you mean?"

The clerk, named Dar, a smile spread

On lips up to his eyes of green

I found your face, your golden head

Your lilting voice and what you said

It charmed me so, I wanted more

I tried to speak, my voice, it fled

The trick I used, I do deplore

I never meant to make you sore

If you'll forgive, let’s make a plan

To quell our silly little war

Miss Sue, she liked this scheming man

She asked her friend, "Oh, please, Dianne,

If you would hasten to my house

And straighten up the white divan

Dianne, all-knowing, did not grouse

She promptly scampered like a mouse

She cleaned the couch, and baked some bread

She hoped the two, they would espouse

Which they did, in weeks, were wed

Their love it tied a tidy thread

But when Dar makes a sweetened sauce

Sue fears something else instead!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This Rubaiyat, a Persian-form of poetry, first appeared in ClassicalPoets.org, April 2013

Panning for Staurolites

We hunted for Fairy rocks on the Mississippi river bank
today. Water over Blanchard Dam crashed upriver,
cicadas droned in their torpor of late day heat.
My cheeks rosied-up without my straw hat,
and despite our modest success, my son
sat on a jutting rock, marked by indifference.

When a boy nears his 15^th year, indifference
might as well be capitalized. His father, but a bank
and chauffeur, his mother, even less, a son’s
embarrassment. But we paddle forth on this adolescent river
of hormones and hope for the best. Hang on to your hat,
chuckles Grandpa, that boy’s burning heat.

When Grandpa was 15, WWII heated
the air. His parents doffed their different-
sounding German accents, wore their hats
low. At night, Mutti would pull shades, bank
the fire, make the sign of the cross while the river
took her eldest son away to the coast. Her son

vowed to aim low in case the enemy was the son
of her sister still in Berlin. Then lightning heats
the air and Grandpa sighs remembering the river
that took his brother away returned an indifferent
shell of a man who could only put money in the bank,
no treasure in his heart, who kept his hat

on his head when Old Glory waved. His hat
on his head, whispered Mutti, tears for her lost son
who came home from Paris like a 1930’s banker’s
book, closed and beaten, an indifferent
man. Yellow chin of a Blanding’s turtle flashes in the river

next to the rock where my son sits, Upriver,
a cacophony of gulls call; one swoops the hat
off an old man’s head. Hey, he cries, but it is indifferent
to our protestations, all a superfluous chatter, assonance
without meaning. Our feet blue, we seek the heat
of our dry socks and shoes lying on the bank.

Pascal insisted that a river made no difference
On either side of the bank, a man still wears a hat
And a son still grows up to pack heat in wartime

Lessons

Warm milk might soothe unless it’s sour
Likewise hands and fingers know
The tempestuous ridge of your brow
Icy palms induce your stern glower

This eggshell floor that on knees I scour
With dainty brush to elicit glow
To your ego, I daily kowtow
Genuflect to your stony tower

But what if I saw my reflection
Exclaimed in an unconscious voice
Who’s that sniveling pathetic creature
Without a map and no direction?
Would I recognize my choice
Could I be my own good teacher?