but sometimes

Television announces
with a zest for crisis
the terror alert level
has gone from "oops"
to "oh, fuck it"
so today is a good day
for watching the skies.

:)

And so goes winter
in the gold rush years,
the tiger getting closer.
Poetry based on faulty premises.
Rubicon river just behind me.
Thought I was running forward,
but I've barely begun to gather.

:)

Sleep almost feels like a memory
after seven nights of insomnia.
I slide the bed into the corner
and pile atop it the collection
of books known as to-be-read
and so
when sleep comes like a flood
(and it will, someday)
I will curl up on the rug
like a man in a lifeboat.

:)

The weather ahead feels invigorating,
the electricity in the air causes
the hair on my arms to stand straight up.

northern wolf

Lenin sits
banging on his old typewriter,
that 1961 model with
the sticky S key and
a missing question mark.
This goddamn great novel
will not be coaxed so easily
from its Platonic cave it seems.

Summer, 1979, 4th street.
It's like a scene from an American film,
curtains in the breeze of a summer day
while the smells of human endeavor drift
through the open windows.

Russia, the idea of
a Soviet worker's state,
just an image, a memory.
Only America now, and fuck it
there will be a great American novel
spilling from his worker's
stiff and callused fingers.
American because
the line between the haves
and the have-nots is deep,
flows down into the bedrock,
forms a crucial part of the foundation.

Yet this is old news and
there are other divisions
worth celebrating
and writing about.

From the apartment down below,
same time as every day,
the sounds of rock and roll.

happiness is an option

The Mongol Hordes besieged our city
during the heart of winter,
as a blizzard swept in like a shroud.
Visibility was measured in inches and
not even dogs would venture into the snow.

When our bullets ran out
the captains ordered their men
to load the catapults
with fallen soldiers
and fling
those broken, bloody bodies
at the invaders.

I tried to tell them
that I
was still breathing.

no regrets

Putting on the mask
is the last thing I do
before going to work.

It's showtime!

black ops

Bought special glasses
for viewing the eclipse,
went all the fucking way
to the island's western shore
to buy those special specs,
only to leave them sitting
on top of Sartre's "Being"
when the darkness rose.

And today of all days!
Monday's usual curious
shotgun mixture
of early-week hope
and casual despair.
Only the strongest coffee
can possibly shore up
my pierced defenses.