the bug

clings to the cracks in

the bricks of my vestibule

like a blind rock climber patting

the surface with stick hands

and a cane,

probing for new lines to chock its

bug-spit carabiners,

waiting for a brighter light,

the touch of a mate,

an acrid puff of air.

it has no driver’s license,

and it smells bad

devoid of compassion, its life

charted by a

jagged, vertical path on the wall.

without malice, but then a sting,

it may unwittingly

kill me.

no public notice, no knock on the door.

I will not understand its motive.

It will not understand my funeral.

opened flowers

 

near-buried in the summer-young hay

with afternoon flits, swallows sounding in the wind

and grain-thieving varmints swimming

in the waves of this four foot tall

field cover, I wondered

what crayon color this was and dozed off

in the liferaft of a do-nothing day.

with each breath, a tide of sweet green air swelled in my lungs.

there is no quelling my thirst for green like this and

I drank deep the prairie vale,

its emerald fluorescence breaking along the moving hillside.

all that I could see before me was immutable, opaque, plate glass green.

I awoke standing (to opened flowers),

a challenge of parasols on fire

in the meadowed embers of the sunset,

and drank heavily through the evening,

washing down the mood-ring sky with these

flamenco blooms, their floral cast, and slowly lost my way

into the dark, azure tarpaulin shade of night.

Garage Sailor

there are definitely a few things better than the drudgery of a day’s work! this poem is how I might act out my impulse to end the day early.

Scuttle the click of keycaps

beneath calloused fingertips and

anxious gangplanks

cantilevered above

your business meetings -

strip from your office-soured clothing!

Jump into the port-side wake to

tred through the eddies of

weekday flotsam

for the trinkets, knick-knacks,

the neighborhood buried treasure;

…but now hear this …

Reach for the bargain lifesaver!

Like a ouija board on the water,

let it pull you up

the driveways;

new discount harbors,

navigating

the perfect price!