Is it still writer’s block when you just don’t give a shit?

A million words and nothing’s changed

A million tries and it still seems strange

A million lines and a million breaks

& nothing feels like it’s going to take



A million letters make a million poems

A million smiles and still no home

A million steps and I’m still here

& nothing new to hope or fear



A million years since I crossed the sea

A million tears dried inside salt-free

A million reasons not to deposit ink

& nothing fresh to say or think

inauguration day ditty

goodbye bush hello obama
the past has a period the future a comma
let’s start the healing from yesterday’s trauma
goodbye bush hello obama

Buccinalia (for Robert Gibbons)

In a shaded cove
a flower grows
vivid
wishing he is steel

Buccinal petals
trumpet flowerness
“flower” “flower” “flower”
Forging steel

Turn soil & struggle
shit & sun
into bright burnished petals & peals of flower
& steel

Trumpets rarely flower
Flowers rarely trumpet
Edge your petals in sharpened steel
Root your roots in hidden steel

& blow & blossom
& blossom & blow

where eagles turn to ice

Where eagles turn to ice
& pines whisper rhymes to snow
I will pitch my tent & gather
wood & wait until the thaw
cocooned until the thaw

The mountain flows until it’s sand
& snow piles mountain high
Lost in white on white on white
sightfrozen ‘til the thaw
igloo’d until the thaw

My clothes will smell of smoke
& dust; my ears a shout
in air and amber-trapped
until the thaw
And amber never thaws

3 Sijo

I


It’s all playground politics and chimpanzee relationships
Only one universal law: how you treat the other
Karma/dharma are just metaphors but flowers bloom each spring



II


Pleasure is often underrated; need is a poor principle
A Spartan life may suit some people but it’s not robustly
satisfying. Wake up! Wake up! Joy is the payoff




III


As the shoot springs from the soil, as water shoots from the spring
As the blossom becomes the fruit and as the fruit wombs the tree
As hope floats at sunrise, so mind, self, and soul, bubble from brain



(the Sijo is a Korean syllabic form. from wiki: "Sijo may be narrative or thematic and introduces a situation in line 1, development in line 2, and twist and conclusion in line 3. The first half of the final line employs a “twist”: a surprise of meaning, sound, or other device.")

Day 192

I still walk around

to my side of the bed

even though I sleep 

in the middle 

now

If wars were fought by poets

If wars were fought by poets, the Pentagon would pay five thousand dollars for alliterations in iambic pentameter


If wars were fought by poets, there would be serious statues guarding the gates of Whitman Square Park; Shakespeare would be the fifty-dollar bill.


… there would be a sonnet in every basement.


If wars were fought by poets, every child would learn 4 R’s – readin’, writin’, rhymin’, and ‘rithmetic


If wars were fought by poets, crimson splashed canvas would remind us of birth.


… library cards would be mandatory.



If wars were fought by poets, the only borders would be our minds.


If wars were fought by poets, I would be a soldier.