July 28, 2015
I witnessed drones in east LA
A red auto speeds down this hill
Nudges my feet back to the curb
A street dog gnaws upon his bone
And the steps to your flat react
As though we’ve never met before
Six days and six bottles it took
To put to ink inchoate thoughts
And tuck inside this envelope
I read your name in my printing
And I think of your ceiling fan
I can feel the blades’ empty air
“Finding out the girl you like is
Seeing someone else” – is poetry
Though instead of rhyme there’s the chop
Of fan blades; And words; And the air
August 2015
Two hands grip the post
While another heaves a hammer
To its flat wooden head
The landing is silent
Except for some words
A letter
It begins “dear earth”
Dear earth emoji
If we’re being precise
Two hands grip the post
A mind in between heaves rebuttal
From their flat wooden head
“Democracy has fallen”
More words and a hashtag
To remember the dead
The stakes sink deeper
Into cold parched mud
With each flat wooden head
Two hands grip the post
While a robot twists wire
That wraps the whole world
October 2009
The Grange does teem of elderly Chinese
Might even say “infested” should you please
But that’d be racist – so let’s say instead
Distressed I am! Behold their languished tread
One never sees them at the gym or pool
Old lives bereft of work or play or school
Can merely pad about the hallway floor
And circumscribe the condo’s corridor
And pondering my own time come to that
Pajamas, slippers, solitude, a flat
And mired in constitutionals, oppressed
Our footsteps drag death’s hand into our chests
No thanks to walks I shan’t the will to live
For that’s just holding water with a sieve
December 2008
A school teacher in soft grass
She’s looking for four-leaf clovers
Her red dress covered with white polka dots
My elbows grind the green park lawn
We rode our bikes to Trinity Bellwood
After first contact and coffee
And now my eyes drool with the taste of marijuana
And fingers tense from frustration
She holds up a questionable specimen
“Does this look like one?”
But I can’t tell from clovers
And I push out words when I need to breathe instead
August 2007
August 2007