ANTICIPATION

June for me 

rather sounds 

like the tin-shiny 

jingling

around—of just these 

very few sorts 

of words—

bike chrome!

and dark juice

in perspiring glass 

bottles jostling around!

and—ultimately

the frosty 

tinkling

bells—

of any dime-a-

dozen

anonymous pushcart icecream man.

IDEALLY

You'd think that this 

chilly glass

case—fluorescently

backlit 

and keeping so 

quiet and safe—such alluring 

dollops 

of pure lemon

frosting crowning 

perfectly 

round 

and impish-

ly small 

emblems 

of tender cake—

really would have

to have a lot 

more little 

finger—not to mention

nose-

prints obscuring it!

VAULTING AMBITION

Across the street
the baggy 

cocksure—
figure of a redcapped 

landscaper 
swiftly manning his gas-

powered weed whip
like nobody

else's
business out there—

stirs within me
pangs

of yearning—
to similarly manipulate

a given situation.

QUICK EARTH TIPS FOR INTERGALACTIC DAYTRIPPERS—

Red as your rocket
and neon-

yellow—
paint coating shabby 

heaps of brick—
almost 

always
means—authentic

American taco shack.

FELIX CULPA

Typically kid—the worst 
kinds 
of problems

are the ones
you didn't 
cause—but the best

ones
are always—
the sort you can solve;

for instance—when 
the morning path

on which you 
ordinarily 
hungrily walk

gets suddenly 
and dramatically—overrun
every summer

earlier and
earlier—by such impassibly 
huge and abundant thick 

stalks—of wild 
rhubarb.

REAL PROGRESS

At first—that 
rude and 
sort-of right 
angle of shade 

where all 
our thought-
less rubble—

crumbling road-
side's shredded 
gravel, shocks 

of greenyellow 
Heineken bottles, little shards

of grass in swollen plastic 
bags of Swedish 
Fish and Bugles—

butts awkward-
ly
up 
against the balmy woozy shade 

of a midwest south
suburban woodfall—doesn't really 

seem to be
particularly 
special—let alone amazing;

until 
a certain
single day

when suddenly—and only 
in that 
shady tumbledown

and particular 
kind 
of place—

there's daisies.

INCIDENTALLY—

Such vigorous bays 

of pesky roadside

weeds—insisting 

wild purple

waves of circumstantial 

flowers 

are—difficult!

to ever get 

rid of—

once they're

pointed-

out to you.

ASCENT OF MERCURY

The priceless 

silverbright

ardent glint 

of a generous 

holiday

weekend sun—off vanishing

single and double

and quadruple!

lines of proud 

and warmwaving 

contours—almost

blinds you

mercifully—to 

the 

obviously personal

onslaught of 

traffic that's 

foisting the gift!

RHYTHM IS THE INSTRUMENT

Honestly—constantly
there 
are days—

grave 
or engrossing  
or frivolous days—

when I
have absolutely
nothing to say;

but I always
force words
out anyway,

regardless!
of whether 
or not they're great—

because—that
to me
is poetry.

CONGRATS GRAD

Caps-

lock

plastered wide

across 

silverblack

balloons—really 

says it all—or 

tries to.

PIGEON ENGLISH

And in the morning
after those 
hard rains that came 
mercifully went—

the same fat
iridescent purple-
white 
birds came right back,

perched, and sat
on their usual 
slanted stacks of bricks
and mortar—and flatly

proceeded
to holler-
out all the louder:

Glory be!
to any good-
old Chicago neighbor-
hood—that's still

standing after all that
helter and 
skelter last night!

Otherwise—what on earth

would we shit-on!
while we sat
around and chatted?

OVER IT

God—if you're 
really 

up there at 
all—I dare you

to make me 
a small 

ant—
who just works

tirelessly! across 
one hard small 

crumb his whole life—

and never 
even once—thinks of

being 
anything like—

humbled by the circumstances.

NATURAL FLAVORS

Crumpled-

up layers

of artificial 

peach clothes—left-

off and littering

the tall grass underscoring—

snappier highlights

of dandelion-

yellow

and—

Good Humor wrappers.

SIMPLY PUT

I wish I was
a bristling little

undesignated
bluewhite fish

deep in sound-
less silver water—

all kinds of humble
men—bending backwards 

to catch me!—and 
no such occasion 

for these sorts
of wishes—

ON THE CULTIVATION OF ROUGHNESS—

Quiet but defiant-
ly
undulating

thing in an other-
wise stilled apartment—I may be
your intermittent

master—but you are
endlessly
my brazen teacher!

Defiantly reclined 
and abundant—on the darkest 
of all our fuzzy

and stylized 
area rugs—and smoothly staring-
down the approaching 

front-line
of sticky 
Chicago summer hardwood—I don't think

I've ever
seen a creature—simply 

be hot!
with such ample 

and instructive Wabi-sabi!

AUX SEND

Lest it should 

seem

as if he's actually singing 

you something—rest

assured, dear reader, that

he's merely returning 

back to the world 

what he's already heard—

a fraction 

or so 

of a whole lifetime later

only—darker,

more diffuse,

and a little less useful;

because a poet can't explain

even the tail-

end of things—he just covers it

quick—

with feathers. 

FULL OF HOLES

If I am not
the man 
that I thought—what then? So much

the better—perhaps
to shave 
such bedraggled shadows off!

Who would even 
notice me there
I wonder?—a daffy pink tall boy, olive-eyed 

lanky, domestic; I'll pick
out a bowl
and populate it 
with apples
and water with sugar 
and cover from flies—and feel so small
and satisfied;

I will genuflect 
before high freezers 
and prepare toaster waffles 
or stoop low—to get water 
for my blueberry girls; so much the better!

who would notice,
or listen,
or read? Who ever even heeds
a word that I utter!—other than the careful 
company I target

privately—in short,
to lob 
the word family at?

Kate would still 
marry me;
Lucy will wag; I'll pick my nose and eat it
and laugh in cutoff pants;

so much the harder, in fact
than that man 
that I'm mistaken for—and so much 

the stronger—speaking of that!
ought now 

to stand—this imaginary case 
for my 
stay of execution!

THE BAD NEWS

The less 

and less

sanitary—your 

world starts

to get—the harder 

it'll be

to notice—just look!

even now

at everyone 

out there careening 

and sloshing 

around—all clueless 

in everyone 

else's shoes!

TRAPS

20 Minutes
or so—for lunch
is just 

enough—
time to fly 

out and pick-up 
your shaken

faith—from vacation

in an imaginary land-
scape of a lakeside 
town—where the streets

and the rolls
are both
jammed-

full of jelly

and the flavors 
of entrees
simply can't—be politely

constrained 
by plates
but rather—need to be

captured!
in rude red baskets—

PROJECTIONS

Black and beat-
up blue brown picture

of big 
shouldered city—half-occluded 

by low clouds in the 
gloomy morning

panorama 
of my rearview—

you look 
about like—you could really 

stand 
to include—

a water tower,
or two

at least—
of fresh hot

coffee in your composition.

CONFLUENCE—

You can't really 
blame

the poor 
careless pair—

of slick 
perfect silverbacked 

drakes over there—

that came floating
fair as ever

toward the muddy 
crew at this—

too swell! 
little manmade

and overly-
enthusiastic pond—

POWER TRIP

Lookout!—little 
silverbrown 
roly-poly bug zigzagging—

zealously 
through 
themeparks

of rain-
scattered 
woodchips!

Here comes—perhaps 
first 
a lousy partial

then a 
total kind
of sidewalk eclipse—

if not 
worse—a complete-
ly incidental  

though still 
pretty 
unstoppable—apocalypse!

EASY DOES IT

On one of those 
mornings—in May
when it's 

sunny and simultaneous-
ly raining—and I'm feeling, 

as I shuffle distracted and
alone through soft puddles 
of blossoms,

all at once—tired,
hopeful, slack,
smart and at least a little hungry;

I just cannot think

of any good words
that are light-
to-the-touch enough

to send 
to a breeze-gentle and faraway girl.

But then
what? is any of that—here 
before me

to this unself-
consciously mudglazed and
gadabout robin

plucking and gobbling
proudly—a wet 
gristly earthworm

before turning,
excreting quick and then darting-

off
in any old good looking woodsy direction!

THIS POEM IS THE SNOOZE BUTTON

The now

and then sort-of 

subtle sound—of a few spring

morning 

rain drops pinging

off a maybe 

not so

distant bedroom window—

marks the time 

past which a body 

really ought

to be thinking 

of rising-

up, and so gently nags 

employment! 

of the rest

of its 

prone and still-

dormant senses;

which should 

by now 

be just as 

busy—say,

smelling lilacs, tasting coffee—

RECAP

Once and maybe

soon again—the rolling overgrown 

acres 

of used car lots 

lay flat—the quiet

province 

of the robins.

NOT SO FAST

Like clockwork—a warm front
winding
easy through the bleary 

city 
streets and—every beating heart 
just stopping;

perchance 
to listen—
to the drooping drone of true spring

or to smell
the cottony vague white stink of its

trees—or to realize that
puffy breeze 
of popcorn or something 

has been wafting—ever nearer
to slow no

motion—on long filaments of Blossom 
Dearie air.

COMMON OR GARDEN

Ubiquitous 
as they are 

eyecatching—
and planted 

anonymously all 
along the dim woodfall—

another strong 
yield 

of such vivid 
and perennially

red-
colored plastic Solo cups—

WINE INTO VINEGAR

Recountable only 
precisely 
because it's so endless-

ly inscrutable—
the real myth 

of Orpheus
is first-off—

that he simply 
could have done 
anything otherwise;

that sacrifice—a mere 
ghost for those 

sweetest damn
bitter notes of almost—was ever anything 

less than 
his ideal 
and most- 

gilded of artifices!

And second—
that he didn't 
end up coming completely 

apart afterward—rendered
for the rest 
of his scrawny 

hollow output of days—
deaf-silent, completely
starving, and just going

around—desperately 
trying to taste things;

his disposition—piss-sour,
his calloused harp-

fingers—now
covered in mustard.

FIELD OF SOME DREAMS

Even the now-
lush 
and widespread wind-ticklish 

tufts of true spring 
green grass 
and daffy gold dandelions—

cannot un-depress! 
the old oak trees—off
on the outfield 

perimeter—still sagging
bald and completely
unimpressed

with such 
late-inning springtime heroics 

as that fallow slack 
grandstand—of distracted-
looking telephone poles.

WEST OF WESTERN

The sketchiest 
of old Chicagoland 

neighborhoods—slanted and

dismal strips
of colorless
bricks repeating—nonetheless 

once 
and again—repeatedly

punctured-
up 
by such 

fierce and occasional
streetcorner rivals—vying

for most shocking-
ly beautiful 

flowering magnolia.

FREE SHIPPING

The littlest wood-
colored 
finch's alighting—there

before me this morning
on the 
blue asphalt path—

perhaps may have seemed
at the time 
like—the cheapest

or at least 
the most-
capricious of gifts 

the world-at-large
could possibly 
have sent me.

But let me 
tell you something—afterward

it sure feels 
luxurious 

to keep
and 
to keep
and to 
keep on receiving

the gift 
of that image—not to mention

pretty
exceedingly 

expensive
to render—with any sort of great
sense 
of its bigness

later
on blank paper.

POINTILLIST POEM

This—spotty spring tree

that I just drew

quickly for you—though brand new 

to the world 

stands unearthly 

tall—

and probably

a little awkward-

ly out 

in the foreground;

and despite its fuzzy green

and brown 

crown of slapdash

limbs left half-empty—or perhaps!

precisely because of

that pretty

immature mentality—the poor dappled thing probably

thinks 

it looks—totally realistic.

A TEMPO

Finally stepping 

out from under-

neath my crowded

mind—I'm quickly halted 

by the immediate 

cardinal—undulating 

swiftly through the lower-

down branches—

who only stops 

to think to flap his

two wings—every 

once in a while!

SHAKY CAM

Rain or shine or 
harsh or mild
or spring or 

sometime otherwise—either way

appears perfect-
ly fine 

to looming companies
of dark 
birds colonizing 

thoughtlessly above-
ground 
power lines—strung 

along in whatever 
noon or gloaming

gloomy suburban
landscape is showing—that 

our poet's noble 

spirit first rose
then chose 
to unmake—only 

now can't seem 
to quite rake-
up—the scattered circuitous

contents of 
his flaky mind in.