A farmer waters long green lego blocks
and builds a spherical sun with yellow.
He sweats blocks of lego sweat
and toils in blocks of heat.
A passing block of bird
dropping white blocks of
excretion on a farmer's block head.
He wonders when he will be able to block
all of this out from his lego head...

little blocks of doubt float upward.

Red and Green

A man stood at the edge of his garden,
whipping rows upon rows of tomato plants.
When the man wasn't looking
they uprooted themselves from the soil
and trotted off toward the horizon
where they were reddened by the sun.

In the flower is the earth,
all ground up and then spit out again.

Silver Lining

An old man awoke to his mouth
devouring his own face.

As pieces of himself
fell from the bed,
he wondered why
his blood appeared
so silvery.

He concluded that it must be
the silver lining.

She sleeps.
Oh how she sleeps.
In the whispers of forgiveness
cradled far from me,
she sleeps.

A Patient Lover Awaits

To the snail I have watched
make its away across my lawn,
where are you going?
are you meeting your lover?

From a park bench

I watched
as she emptied
corruptness
from her
third story
window.

and also then
as she turned away
before
it splatted
on the sidewalk
below.

Luminosity

In any day with you,
hidden in warmth,
is the sun not rising
but approaching.

So much travels
from her face
to her neck
and then

deep down
into her shoulders.

Crying over a game of Sorry,
we quickly moved to Chutes and Ladders.

Sour Grapes (slight return)

I ran to her
partially dehydrogenated
body
baking in the sun.

Pieces from the Whole

Scent of rain so wet with you.
I can remember depositing my love
in the banks of that river,
watching it flow far far from me.

My wrist snaps off
and crawls away.
I wonder if it will
make friends
or fester in a corner
somewhere.

Like a stalking buzzard

I hold a mindful in my hand,
wondering if the trap
of spill fall I've set will spring.
I wait like slow motion teetering

He disappears in a puff of logic.
So much for cause and effect,
Mr. Conlin

While taking calls on his cell phone,
the ice cream truck man
calls to children with his song.

I have surrounded myself with mirrors,
hoping that the last bit of hope I've held onto
won't escape without the chance of reflecting back.

An old man suffered

Poked and prodded until
he was just a turtle -
long, stretchy skin
without a home.

Subtle is the warmth in your embrace
like a fog unsure of its descent from above.

Labor Contracts

We have two problems
with our little construction project
over which we disagree.
I say it's the ladder,
but she says it's the foreman.

Alone (in a dark room)

Silence within the darkness.
In her mind,
a shadow illuminates the way.

I tell you
there's something
about
that flat tire
rolling along
the street
which reminds me
of myself.

Quick

Grab
the fire
extinguisher.

Forgiveness wanders in -
a croaking frog calls for attention

I saw a blue ribbon
falling
so graciously
managing somehow
never to reach
the ground below.
Yes, I saw a blue ribbon
and thought of you today.

On a bench
so near to violence,
our silence
was the very
worst kind.

Mistress at the breakfast table

Cereal no longer talks to me.
We used to exchange words
between the first and final
slurpings of breakfast.
It has found another lover,
someone else to suck up
the last remaining drops.

On my way to heaven -
A floating decimal point
mistaken for an angel

The clock juggler

never ceases
to amaze me.
Crashing his clocks
upon the sky,
I wonder if
he ever stops
to think about
how careless
he's been
with time.

Waking this day,
I took a hold of time
and slammed it
against the bedframe.
I watched as a chunk
of morning fell from it.

In the courtyard

Clanging bells
celebrate
noon's otherwise
unnoticed arrival.

She searches
for her own bells.
There are none
to be found.

Choking

Voices stabbing over lunch.
Clusters of personality
coagulate around a table
as I try to keep my mouth full.

Home Sweet Home

We waltz through the walls of our home
passing back and forth through drywall
hoping we'll get caught in between the frames
of our home sweet home.

There are nights
I fear
I'll catch
my skin
trying to escape
while I sleep.

I complain
of the sour
taste of grapes.
She says,
You are what you eat.

Table Talk

Lights flicker in the kitchen
above our sad
whispers.

My only smile muted by
the buzz of
electricity.

A sweet deal

Black dog
by my side.

I agree
to
pet.

She agrees
to
wag.

Lazy sunday
abides.

The pile

words pile up.
congested.
infused with
the sacrifices
of lost ones.
compelling them
forward. past
erasures and
omissions. telling
tales of their
own obituaries
before the funeral.
processions of
image tumble
upon on another.
splattered with
blood and irony.
emerging with
no form. they
never had a
chance
to breathe.

Waiting

There is no coffee this morning.
So I spill onto the floor and
slosh around uselessly for hours,
hoping someone might slip
and fall and accidentally embrace me.

I swear to you that the
hair on her back rises
when I enter the room.

Hiding in the closet -
she said
he was no blessing
in disguise.

Palindrome -
I wondered why
it wasn't one.

People, people, people.

Walking away
he said to himself
the only thing worse
than people
is lots of people.

Morse Code

I remember when
we used to
tell each other
I love you
on the tips
of our fingers
in morse code.

In the long
and short
pauses of
our touching,
which my hands
have not forgotten,
I still wake
to those rhythms
now and then.

Overgrown cucumbers -
She asks if we have
outgrown our home.

July Weather

It's a matter of
opinion

(for now anyway)

whether our
efforts

(and there are
few)

will weather these
storms.

Dirty Jobs

Poems written with vomit.
The poet spends his days
mopping things up.

Early Spring Planting

We went out to the garden
and covered ourselves in dirt,
hoping that something
good would grow from us.

* Exodus *

an asterisk of ants
carries eggs

from the nest

I saw a bird
(or was it two?)
each perched upon
its very own shadow.

Love exists in outer space

On the moon with you again.
No one breathes.
No one speaks.
Somehow we always
get here.

Tragedy

A wall breaks and atoms bleed on the floor.

God grace the
bling
and the
bling bling.

Of Pond Life

I pardoned myself
into a duck
and quickly
learned to swim.

She said I wasn't
a very good one,
So I turned away
and flew south
for the winter.

Nothing Extraordinary

She and I made a blender
It was a not an extraordinary blender
By any means
But it was sufficient to get the job done

So we chopped off our fingers
And tossed them in
With several cups of ice.
Oh to be free of this utility

Just Pretending

What will become
Of the woman I saw yesterday?
She ran so carelessly
Across the street.

And when I caught up to her
She pretended to be asleep
But I knew better.
She was ignoring me

A picture of us

Catastrophe crept in,

disturbing everything
in sight.

Alone it traced a figure
of looming

doubt

and colored frantically
between the lines .

She dreams, therefore I am

She imagines me dead
and I am disappeared.
And then for decomposition .
So I reappear
in a dumpster
not far from my home
rotting with banana peels
and expired yogurt.

Saying So long

She stands, still as silence.
Surrounded in solitude,
she sets her secrets
on the soft setting sun
and says so long.

** first line taken from a Poets Who Blog group poem **

Perspective

The ground sits upon me
upside down.

Slaloming through columns of wood,
a sole leaf seesaws toward the ground

a prayer unfurls hope
that fortune's arrival
will not pass unnoticed

Bad shopping trip -
her failure to find
clothes that fit
ruins the day.

Evergreen -
The tomato
waits me out.

Somewhere

light snags at the horizon
and stretches outward.

Somewhere

amid a liquid memory
I still wait for you.

Somewhere

at tips of your fingers
I lost grip...

Did I turn back
to kiss you?

A jar labeled cancer.
I remember when jars
were labeled
cookies

A poem inspired from misunderstood lyrics by Fred McDowell's Write Me a Few of Your Lines

Oh, Baby
won't you write me a funeral line.
I ain't so far from the ground.
Oh Baby
please write me a funeral line.

Something right in my life

My son's
wonder for fireflies
and
fear of sparklers

I am tackled
by love
right in to the dirt

Clowns Cups and Monkey Mugs

It's not illusion or psychology.
I understand
that it actually
tastes better
in the right container.

Guessing a poet's age...

Can you guess the age of a poet just by reading her/his poems? I was wondering about this as reading other poet's blogs, who either don't have pictures of themselves or information about age. Because I typically imagine a voice and a face (albeit not necessarily detailed), a gender, an age with a poet even without explicit knowledge of it. Then I started thinking about what impression of age my poem's left people with.
Any one care to guess?

My Car and My Life.

Driven with a cracked windshield.

Common Ground

Coming back
from sleep mode -
The difficulty
my laptop and I
share.

Flower Girl

Beauty captured
in flowering curiosity.
She remembers
to make everyone say cheese.