ROCK AND ROLL CRUSH

your bandmate pulsed and ebbed beside you
as you sang and squinted under the lights
or watched your fingers move across the strings
like your guitar was the only thing in the world

and it turns out it was

"CULTIVATE YOUR GARDEN"

Pulling weeds is a mundane task
but necessary

Running a brush through your four-year-olds hair
doesn't often garner recognition

Who is there to see the mentally-ill man
you allow to sit at your kitchen table in the evenings
and eat your leftovers?

Does the mention that you live with your aging grandfather
impress people at a social event
as much as the letters behind your name?

There is so rarely applause
for the kindnesses that go unseen
and unpublicized on Facebook

And as you stand on your porch
and look at the lives around you
ask yourself this:

Am I taking care of the flowers in my own back yard
or leaving them to wither and die?

THINGS THAT MAKE ME FEEL ALIVE

It's the small things
like the smell of fall leaves
or hearing a song that I love

Sometimes it's being at work
and remembering a time
--when I worked somewhere else--
when I was younger
and I had my "whole life" ahead of me

Other times it's the thrill of learning something new
or seeing the look in a student's eyes when they "get it"

At any rate
there's still a lot of things to live for
and they are not all behind me

"GOOD DAY!"

On the container door of the Mack truck

a two-fingered path through the dust

flashed in the sun and wavered on the metal panel

Flicking from a positive to a negative

in the shadow of the underpass

And reminding us all

ARECIBO

suspended above the sink-hole like a metal seed pod:
a Gregorian dome, spidered aloft by whitened wires
over the equator's navel--a freckle on the map

your tensile threads snapped that unlucky Monday in January
interrupting the power to intercept asteroids
that could splinter the earth and splatter the ground

but you look like a thrill ride

buoyed above the rippled foliage on the undulating northern shore
for tourists from land and space

TURN ME INSIDE OUT

your heart is white and colorless
your chambers hard as walls
you shut me out to forget
and hatred fills your stalls

but I'm still in your heart
where all was downy and russet
the bedclothes soaked with bleeding
i'm still willing to discuss it

you're shut up
and i'm shut out
your love is gone
and mine's about
you held it all in
i needed to shout
you kept it to yourself
it turned me inside out

LONGING, MOANING, GROANING

There is a longing
that aches with memories of what once was
and hopes for what could be

UNTITLED

I never thought I'd be glad that you forgot about me That you failed to notice how I've changed Or how you've stayed the same Until the taste you left in my mouth Became like so much silt in the bottom of a foot bath I spit you out and took a breath And now I'm alone for the moment but loved none the less By others who saw what you could see And saw what you couldn't

HUNGRY, HUNGRY, HIPPOS

These days
I'm burrowing through books
like a wild mouse

like Pac-man:
my golden face
gobbling up specks of truth

while keeping the ghosts at bay