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?

An Unexpected Lineament

I’m tired of hearing, “I love you.”
Weary of words without weight
Love must be strong like a sinew
I’m tired of hearing, “I love you.”
These ropes of love have been cut through
Love in the mirror looks like hate
I am tired of hearing, “I love you.”
Weary of words without weight

Swedish Blues

My sister, Jaci, and Marguerite in 1988. 

Her Swedish blue eyes, never wan
As she sits, concave in her chair
Kyphosis has claimed
Her regale deportment
Has left her gasping for air

She pants a warm invitation
“Pray, sit, the seat is not taken.”
I perch on her couch
And gaze in her eyes
Her beauty not yet forsaken

The air hangs vacant of words
Her thoughts have scurried away
I wonder aloud
Is there anything, Mum
Say the word and I will obey

She smiles again between breaths
You have five children, she asks
I nod in agreement
What else can I do
Then adjust her oxygen mask

My tongue in my mouth is like lead
Her final example: ascesis
Pills at her disposal
A handful could end
Her grasp on life releases

But the easy way, she will not take
As days turn to nights without end
She patiently waits
For her turn in line
When Jesus will bid her ascend

--for Marguerite 

Global Changes

“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him?”  --Blaise Pascal

The sun might burn a little hotter, toast the moon to crème brûlée. The ocean tides roil wider, coaxing the insistent surf. Children play in pursuit of enemies and baddies. But too soon, they graduate to coursing-games without protection of the scabbard tip. Wing tip, felt tip, tip-toe, tip.

Suddenly cartography becomes a stylish profession. Whoever draws lines wields power like a bulldozer. Lines in the sand. Lines on their faces. Battle line, toe-the-line, bloodline, soup line, bottom line. 

The moneyed sets acquire mercenary education. Too busy with League-of-Legends and Inter-Stellar-War games, their lackeys nothing more than a repository for sound-bites. Trilobite, snakebite, overbite, Jacobite. 

So what’s left beyond climate—it’ll be volatile; politics—sub rosa; and power? Yes, the humble-god-of-love, which flows around the obstacles and firms up to make a pudding. Who doesn’t love pudding? 

Make mine tart.

Why I Am Sending My Dad a Father's Day Card in November

I still have the card in my desk drawer, lower left.  I look at it very rarely at this point. It reads: "Happy Mother's Day to my sister who showed me how to be a great mom..."

followed my sister
choir, college, marriage, child
cheerleader in each

I found the card at a rummage sale; I accumulate cards like an old lady sprouts chin hairs. Rifling through a stack of greeting cards filed in an old cardboard box in July, 2002, I pulled out one that stated my thoughts exactly, intending to send it the following May. I never dreamed I'd instead bury my sister the day before Mother’s day, 2003.

anticipation
a seed catalogue in winter
but spring never comes

So the card sits in the bottom of my desk drawer, lower left. I cannot throw it out. I cannot mail it. Why did I wait, I wonder. Why did I wait?

When a Child is a Poker Chip

Holding out his hand, palm-side up,
he grinned wide. So I asked, “Wassup?”
“Gimme a buck, could you?”

A dollar in this beggar’s cup?
He stood expectant with his pup.
Would he buy grub to chew?

He looked skeletal, this close-up
“Come on, we’ll go someplace to sup.”
With a frown, back he drew.

Mister, see this measuring cup?
Boss man demands to fill ‘er up.
If I don’t—black-n-blue.

Kid needed food, not a wallop
This trafficked child was enveloped
His world: a cut-throat view

Panhandled more like a stick-up
He a pawn, me like a bishop
In the end, we’re both screwed

Kent

Balmy and pleasant, first Monday in May,  passions burn like fire
Chickadee chirps at the crack of an egg, abundant life abounds
But on that day, it could also be heard, pistol shots fifteen minutes prior

One hundred yards away, guardsmen fired sixty-seven rounds
Twenty-nine edgy men squeezed the trigger on their rifle
Under a cloudless sky, four students fell on University grounds

Since that day, the fourth of May, many have tried to stifle
But secrecy reeks when justice uproots, it’s best to be transparent
Back in 1970, despite 'Nam, war was losing its disciples

We lay to rest the hottest fears, those moods that stir up the aberrant
Toss flowers on graves and cross ourselves; pretend it’s not that dire
 But the nature of war, of the human heart, knows conquest is inherent 

Kent State was a bed of unrest, flames reaching ever higher
Sandra and Bill were just two kids, to protest, they didn't aspire

Mao Zedong 1893 - 1976

Western world believes he committed acts of genocide
People’s Republic of China revere him as a shining knight
Forty million people starved, no one could have testified

“He led us in accomplishments,” the newly modern Chinese cried
His deeds are doubtless striking, but not in the best light
Western world believes he committed acts of genocide

“He improved our education, our health care nationwide!”
No one mentions the forced labor, an allegiance to recite
Forty million people starved, no one could have testified

He and Nixon in Beijing, standing side-by-side
While behind them a class struggle waged, a violent fatal fight
Western world believes he committed acts of genocide

“He was a Statesman, poet, visionary bona fide.”
He was a murderous despot, let history not rewrite
Forty million people starved, no one could have testified

The Red Emperor, so misaligned, his glory by others denied
Not so, his wild fantasies led to millions dead of blight
Western world believes he committed acts of genocide
Forty million people starved, no one could have testified