No Moral

In the morning

after

cold rain–messy

constellations

smear

the wet concrete—smashed

ruddy knots of tree-

buds wasted by reck-

less wind and

long

abandoned by their branches—this is how

new worlds

get started—harsh and

muddy and without

fables;

just take it

from

these battered maples, kid—

life's a bunch of hit

and misses.

Prosaic

Fat hungry

robin out my

window—I wonder

darkly—are you

ever bored?

At first, I almost

want your bobbing

to seem to me

like busy

nodding—but look!

how quick

your frenzied

darting, gulping

secret grubby

prizes in the

lawn make crystal-

clear your rude

and wordless answer—

what a boring

thing to ask!

Breakfast All Day

kissed awake by warm 

dawn of May—morning

smells;

of coffee, lingering 

coconut 

mingled in the sticky 

dark kitchen—shy crack of 

feeble 

eggshells and stale 

idea of almond

maple

butter motivating glands to wet

soft action—

later, on the hot 

road; gnarled 

pavement cooks sunnyside—bitter 

hot 

smell of burnt 

rubber, fried, smothered in acrid 

jam 

of lumpish traffic—

but it's no matter; somehow 

I still feel ticked—alive,

egged-on

by 

the same kind burn

—called hunger!

HAWTHORNE OUTGROWN

Romance might look 

like all wild woods 
at first—some fervid

uncurbed, hysterical 

knots of old New

England,

but the real book's 
a scraggy bit 
more like this land-

scaped sprawl that I'm

skating by on—

here, a would-be 

shock of violets

crabgrass, upstart 

dandelions, 

allowed to crowd 

the patterned assembly of 

bought-in-
bulk chunks of limestone,

there, a thornless 

tuft of tulips, multi-

colored hand-

picked bulbs swaying 
just a little

in planned rows to the laughing

jazz of docile wind,

and—back 

at home, the way 

she left me lying warm

and dark this morning;

a spontaneous kiss 

with prefabricated implications,

the new but

same old way she flew 

apart from me today—

un-proud but 

on-time,

intentionally, but not

on purpose.

Lawn Ordinance

Endless so-forth and so-

on of inestimably greenthick 

spring grass—so young and

teeming with brash yellow dandelions, 

who dared pave this 

frame around you?

Your rhythm, I think 

looks unrude

as a picture—your colors

disengage me all 

wrong and your shading 

doesn't look quite so 

hot pulled apart;

but mostly, you're 

much too 

close-by to be balanced—your green 

reaches far too unlimited 

to have ever been started—besides,

there are some things

you just can't walk around, 

things that are far too 

broad to be pretty—

all this 

big diction, for a start.

Sprinting After Heidegger

After a fast

run—panting,
latent

sweat beading,

euphoria

waxing and
quickening waves of nausea
that sweep 

down
from secret
stomach's pit to far-away
little quaking ankles—I realize,

that I've
never really felt

like giving-

in;

or like getting
high—

I've only
felt

like
being both.

Blues for Commuters

Waiting in the slow 

lane moaning, we watched 

the bold sky clotting thickly over 

with gluey cumulonimbus 

clouds—arrayed in jazzy

asymmetry of bluegrey and cruising

allegretto westward, they felt 

the beat a bit faster than 

our clustered cars—but still remained 

neither moved nor bothered

by the overlapping and predictable strains 

flung up by their satellite radios.