poems

• The Cardboard

  The cardboard

  minutes

  are

  a flimsy

  raft as I wait

  for the answer,

  drifting further out.

  The benevolence the

  more seasoned

  philosopher

  said

  was

  coming

  is coming,

  like mythology

  to buttress everything.

  Three

  two

  one,

  nothing

  can explain

  why they left

  to settle elsewhere

  at the very equinox

  over

  the void

  of tranquility,

  my summertime.

• Pacific Notion

  A cigarette

  butt amid stones

  on the breezy

  beach relaxes

  from usefulness.

  Nobody owns

  the orangeness

  of a sunset.

• All for the Tuft

  The whole thing is,

  I guess, growing

  way beyond whack

  harmoniously,

  like an old tree

  overleaning

  with new phrases.

• Scanning for Rhyme

  The flannel shirt

  hanging on the

  wall in the bar

  like a killing

  vindicates all

  &$%#hood as shorn

  of its ultra.

• Mellowing Idyll

  Basilique

  du Sacré-Cœur,

  I’m still walking

  toward your Montmartre

  in the gloaming

  for actual

  distilling air.

• Conundrum Close-up

  Why do certain people bounce

  up and down when they walk, like

  they are trying to leave earth

  and failing, to stay?

• Stowaway to the Star

  
  There was a piano

  in the garden, where she played

  for no one

  
  but the daffodils

  and the Japanese maple,

  and the memory of one who cared.

• I’m Looking

  I’m looking

  in the mirror

  of a Pink Floyd

  lyric

  again,

  because

  it’s summer

  and my body

  remembers

  when.

  In Cascade,

  a neighborhood

  in Seattle, east of

  South Lake Union,

  there is an old church

  I admire whenever

  I walk past, and

  never go

  into.

  I wonder

  how the dance

  will

  win

  in the end.

• Descending the Hill

  A recently

  vacated seat

  on the #

  8 bus is mine

  suddenly, and

  I’m knowing heat

  from some body.

• Pink of the Prow

  Previously

  holds every now

  in her fragrance

  as soon-to-be

  opens the shore

  to anyhow

  from endlessly.