Some Old Stuff

So, I'm cleaning out my room, paring down the junk, and I found some old poetry on a few 3.5 in. floppies. Some of it's embarrassing, but a few I still like. So, here ya go.


Afterwards

Tonight, she is a pepper stuffed with romance.
Outside a glass pane, light rain falls on her
horse, the street, a Pinto maybe.
She will not release doves tonight, the closet door closed,
inside cooing avian dreams.
She will not watch seeds and sea water
down the shower drain trickling, or put on her
good silk dress, red spaghetti straps.
Only lie here, knees curled
against her breast, dreaming vegetable gardens and sunshine
and children.


Peyette County

Two charred logs lay like lovers on the shore of a
river in Peyette County.
They embrace between limbs as we fly by on Idaho
highways, cutting across flame blue skies
And fields that grow nothing, yet, race towards bounty.

An oven of northwest sun is baking fly guts on the windshield.
It heats me to sleeping, then waking, then
sleeping again.
Now it’s Dave and I in Idaho, highway shaking our battered
Honda fenderless
Streaked windows showing movies of small towns
and untended farms.

Later, a fish jumps, scares the shit out of me, smashing back
black into black.
Then black becomes gray haze as the sun rises on another Boise day.
My thoughts turn to damns and concrete, spawning paths blocked as we pass
judgment on roadside clearcuts.
Nearby, some future roadkill is no doubt waiting in the wings of disaster,
And in Peyette County they’re lined up shoulder to shoulder,
waiting for the salmon to come back.


A funeral for the grass

Good grass,
no one could ever say different.
Green and pleasant,
cool and moist
We’ll miss this grass,
but we’ll cut it down
just the same.


The Evidence

You have Bar-B-Q sauce on your beard,
like a blood trail leading to your mouth.
Evidence of the recent atrocity
that went on there.


Sonnet #38

The great men of these times are all lushes.
What kinds of heroes are those?
And if they’re not drunks, they have "intern-al" crushes,
Or else like to powder up their nose.
What is a person to think in such times?
When geniuses have all been arrested.
If this what becomes of all those great minds,
Should I hope that I never get tested?
Those in power are corrupted, crazy and dim witted,
Beholden to a few, while raping the masses.
In elections, Tweedledum against Tweedledee is always pitted
To think it’s fair, you must wear pretty dark glasses.
Our world’s in the shitcan, there just ain’t no denyin’
Now you can do somthin’ ‘bout it, or you can spend your time cryin’.


Do poetry and politics mix? Well, not when the execution is this ham-fisted, yikes!