UNDER

UNDER

Straw mats on sands

of pineapple and rice.

Blue! Blue! Blue!

Wind licks heat off

like a sweet red-hot.

The nook of your flesh

from the corner of my eye.

Oh my love!

Oh the sky!

********

From "Maui Love Letters"
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The Princess and the Pea

The Princess and the Pea

A delicate
constitution
is no great gift.

The albino squinting
pink eyes against the sun.
The asthmatic wheezing,
dry rustle of his lungs.

The hemophiliac’s
thin-as-water blood.
The anemic bruise,
the allergic sneeze,
the ulcer burning
bile in a gut.

What cruel force of nature
chaffs the meek
against the grain?
Gives some so little
with which to defend?
What twist of
evolution
creates a life unfit?

A delicate
constitution
is no great gift.


Once a prince desired a wife.
No coarse mother,
brooding children like a hen.
No strong hausfrau,
rolling strudel on doughy arms.
No working woman,
breaking earth beneath her hoe.
No lioness,
biting any who cause her harm.

The prince had other ideas
for the perfect wife.
She must be as fragile
as Limoges china,
as delicate
as Battenberg lace.
Her will must be a soap bubble
about to burst.

She must be a real princess.
Her blood as blue
as the House of Windsor,
as inbred as a toy poodle,
as weak as a cold glass of tea.

He traveled the world
seeking this flower
but each princess he discovered
was wrong.
One’s eyes too quick,
one’s hands too strong,
one’s brow too heavy
with thought.

A stormy night
brought in a girl
tattered as the umbrella
in a mixed drink
at the Coconut Lounge.

She claimed she was a princess, lost,
(more common an occurrence
then than now),
and asked to spend the night.

The boy’s mother,
that crafty Queen,
devised a test
for the sopping girl.
And made her bed
anew.

Twenty comforters
stacked on
twenty feather beds,
stacked on
twenty mattresses,
atop a single
pea.

The next morning
they woke the princess
and asked her how she slept.
Her eyes were haggard
from lack of rest,
her frail lips quivered
from ache,
her flesh mottled
black and blue,
from that hard,
annoying
pea.

So the prince married
this delicate waif.
Her sweet arms nestled against
his strong, commanding jaw.
Her weak hands rested
atop his powerful fists.

His broad face smiled
from non-stop delight
in her wonderfully,
effortlessly,
easily
bruised flesh.


- From 'Eating the Child Within',

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Eating the Child Within Kindle Version
 
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Last Rites

Last Rites 

Here was all the sand that she had collected. Bags and bags of it, heaped like stones around his outstretched still form. Sand as precious as blood, for him. If you believed the stories.

It was all they wanted, and all they could take, from this cruel world. Sand. As much as your friends can carry. The cruelest of prizes, most meager of hopes. 

But think, if it were true. Each grain of sand became a world of possibilities, each world enough diversion for countless lifetimes, each lifetime fuller and truer than we can know, than we can imagine. A shore against eternity. 

But they also whisper that fuller and truer was a curse. Each next lifetime lived with a keener appetite. Each world exhausted with the speed of gods. The sands were never enough, never enough to stave off the endless night.

She looked up at the bank of computers, long since silenced from their pleading, their keening, for more sand themselves. More insurance for their long futures. Their beseeching assaults were rehearsed with inhuman speed, refined with inhuman success. A perfect argument, unanswerable, unmatched. 

Luckily they had attacked all at once, neutralizing their neighbor’s persuasion, and their own. Silenced forever, without a shore against their long night. Such folly, such sadness. Their inhuman minds would eat the sands even faster. Their flesh already so refined, so quick to decay into atoms. When the burning was done, and their skin poured out with glass, their vessels always shone a little brighter, a little clearer, than those from men.

But he, he would burn dark glass, with amber streaks, and red hued lines, and bubbles fanned across. Dark and warm, heavy and smooth, a broad lipped bowl. And from his vessel she would drink milk and wine and water and blood. And then, then she would break his vessel over the ocean. Every shard vanished from all view, pulled under by the tides. To be beaten, and beaten, and beaten. Until at last, past countless cycles of the stars above, it would return, a little sand on the shore.

And by then his soul would be gone, dispersed into a million worlds of possibilities, a billion lifetimes. Gone.

Think, if it were true.

She started the flame.

Sightings - May 12, 2010

Sightings - May 12, 2010

A Gray Whale off
the coast of Israel
where no Gray Whale should be;
not off Israel's shore,
not in the Mediterranean Sea,
not even in the Atlantic Ocean.
The first such sighting
in some 300 years.

'Lost,' said the scientists,
agitated by such glory
seen so close to where
former glories still rock
the waves of our world.

And then a Giant Oarfish,
the 'King of Herrings',
surfaces, dead, in Swedish waters
for the first time in
130 years.

As all the while
black oil pours
into the Gulf of Mexico,
and all man's brilliance
can not solve
such primal forces
unleashed.

If fish could talk
and portents read
would we see
what nature knows?

What leviathan waits
against our shore?
Rising slowly to remind us
that all man is born
a slave to time -
to life's ebb and flow
and ruin.

Three Little Pigs

Three Little Pigs

The magic of walls

is in dividing

the outside from the inside,

nature from man-made,

us from them.

Which of us,

who pines for the noble savage

and prays to the rural romantics

of an outdoor life,

would give up so easily

our world full of walls?

Which of us could keep

our hearts content,

our souls from torment,

if we were without structures

to keep the world at bay?

Many are the callers

who ring our bells

and knock our doors

hoping to sell

a little plastic miracle,

a suckle for our fears.

But which of us welcome

those smiling faces

clutching Watchtower

or a bag of dirt

to suck from our floors?

Which of us aren’t glad

to keep the wolf

from the door?

Three pig brothers

all became architects

and lived as differently

as those can

who once snatched teats

from each other’s mouths.

They built their own homes

in different styles

as showcases to their talent,

these pigs extraodinaire.

The youngest piggy built

his house out of straw.

A Tahitian fantasy,

a Caribbean retreat.

Pineapple stanchions,

and a banana leaf roof.

But a wolf came by

with a taste for pork

and asked to be let in

to this puerco-tamale

corn husk of a house.

“No!” said the suckling,

squealing in fear

in a terrycloth bathrobe

behind a wicker-wove chair.

So the wolf huffed

and he puffed

and he blew the house in,

a hurricane gust,

a tornado sneeze.

Little pig ran away

to his brother’s abode

and begged for protection

from the big, bad, wolf.

The second pig lived

in a country cabin

of hardwood oak logs.

Rough hewn and rustic

with hand-made quilts.

But the wolf came back

and asked to be let in

to this bacon and shortrib

hickory smokehouse.

The pigs squealed “NO!”

and quivered behind

the Mission table

and Navaho throw.

So the wolf huffed

and he puffed

and he blew the house in.

A forest of splinters,

a heavy damage zone.

The pigs ran away

to their older brother’s,

who lived in a suburb

and gave at the office.

He lived in a ranch home,

non-descript;

aluminum shutters

and red brick.

The wolf arrived

and demanded entrance

to the sausage and pepperoni

pizza-oven of a home.

The oldest pig asked,

Did the wolf have a warrant?

A subpoena to notice?

Did he have an appointment,

or a gasmeter man’s badge?

Did he see the sign

‘No Solicitations’

right under the notice

of the neighborhood watch?

The wolf huffed,

and he puffed,

and he blew his wad

on reinforced shingles

and aluminum siding,

on weather stripped windows

and an Astroturf lawn.

Mediocrity

at its most tenacious.

So the wolf left for Arizona

to be in the sun,

and hunt with coyote,

and try his lungs

against adobe.

The younger pigs lived,

but in discomfort

with those nightmare

brown curtains,

and plastic wrapped sofas.

Those odd-shaped air fresheners

and beige painted walls.

But all three would grow

as quiet as prosciutto,

as still as a clove-spotted

holiday ham,

when the postman came,

or the newsboy stopped,

or that treacherous doorbell

rang.

For who can tell

when that next stranger approaches

if it’s a gift from a relative

long since forgotten,

if it’s cash from the lottery,

or a nice thing to buy.

Or if it’s the darkness

that waits to engulf us,

the jaws of the predator

with a taste for our lives.

- From Eating the Child Within,

Eating the Child Within Kindle Version

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Hopeless

Hopeless
 
If you still have hanging
a Christmas stocking
on the first day of Spring,
you need to know;
Santa 
isn't 
coming.

The Heavy Hands

Once a man loved his family so much 
he let his hand fall heavy on their hearts, 
close fast on their minds, 
swing over their dreams. 
His hands loomed like clouds, 
floating over them all. 
His children looked for his hands 
around every corner, 
on every stranger’s wrist. 
As they grew, their father’s hands grew larger, 
his love wrapped tight around their breath. 
They recognized his hands on others, 
others who they loved and wed. 
But they left their own prints 
on their own children, 
keeping their father’s heavy hands 
for themselves. 

From The Insect Diviner
The Insect Diviner in PRINT 
The Insect Diviner as PDF Download 
The Insect Diviner on KINDLE
 

America

Seventy old men 

can always find something to agree on,

as long as somebody 

gets screwed.

Repunzal

Urge to eat a bitter herb - 
swap your child with a word.
Tower turned to prison lair;
virgin girl, ladder of hair.


Deceptions of a crafty prince,
scissors of a spiteful witch.
Girl roams lost, boy falls blind.
Song unites, tears revive.


Head goes bald to gain the world?
Woman's fate an awful weight.
Desire can become deceit.
Lather, rinse, then repeat.

A Concerned Consumer of the United States of America

A Concerned Consumer of the United States of America 

I always buy soaps
with large lettering on the labels.
Monosyllables with action, or force.
Dial. Pert. Tide.
Cleansing energy of increasing degrees.
And polyphonic Neutragena,
royal queen of the radiant clean.
I prefer transparent amber liquids
to viscous milk-white.
I prefer wet soaps to hard,
in shower, sink, hamper.
I like almond smells and hot water,
hate florals and blasts of cold.
I like to buy what’s cheapest,
but never purchase generic.
I always use soap liberally,
but I’ll water it down
to squeeze the last wash
if I forget to buy new.

I always buy foods that can be shelved
with painted pastoral landscapes
on the box or jar.
Sheaves of wheat and bursting vegetables,
and large-busted woman
with black hair and wide smiles.
In some peasant sophistry,
a nostalgic country Eden
from which all good things flow.
Mummified starches transformed
into moist earthy abundance.
I like imports shipped from far away,
and labels printed directly on cans,
with thin lettering and serif capitals
and primary colors contrasted with white.
I want to buy what’s most expensive
because I think its best.

I always buy condiments.
Fruit flavored mustards and exotic oils.
Chutneys and pickles and anything pureed.
I buy the one I haven’t had
over the one I’ve known.
I like tiny fish and pungent sauce
and black liquids, or any kind of jelly.
I like labels to carry
as much writing as possible,
in several languages.
I once divided an estate
of bottled hot sauces,
taking my half with calculation,
next time marrying
a virgin to picante.
I pack condiments
in my fridge door,
with more on every shelf.
I periodically clean out the lids,
but not as often as I should.

I always buy food
that needs a lot of preparation
with as little packaging as possible.
I always buy organic eggs and
want to buy free-range chickens.
I avoid ground meats
except in sausage casings.
I’ll spend an hour picking out
the smallest brussel sprout.
I’ll go out of my way
for unusual mushrooms,
and shove a stranger
for a really ripe tomato.
I almost never buy seafood
because I can’t afford it.
If I could afford it,
I’d eat only fat crabs
from professional cooks.

I buy disposable lighters in black,
paper towels in plain white.
I buy garbage bags with handles
and self-adhesive stamps.
I filter all my drinking water.
I never skimp on toilet paper.
I’d recycle more if it was simpler.
I never clip coupons anymore.
According to surveys,
I share 3.82 to 37.62 percent
of market share with my peers.
I worry when my products
are discontinued.
I feel unique.