Category: Poetry

I asked the wind-beaten mountain
what she would become
Everything and nothing, she whispered
like song
Is all we’ll ever be
all and not at all

That night there was no mountain
where the wind-beaten mother stood
only darkness all
all and not at all

By her whisper-song unsettled
I turned to grandfather in morning sun
to ask who I would become
I was you once, he rang like a winter bell
like a river stone
And you will be me

That night there was darkness only
where grandfather stood
Darkness only in me
But I am no mountain

Fan Lewis says he’ll take out the knees
of any old boy who comes at him, why,
he’d hit ‘em with that
million-candle flashlight
and down they’d go.

Ain’t nobody
got the better of him yet,
shit.

Six beers at a time Fan drinks
while the Saturday sun climbs
Set ‘em up six in the Koozie cups
six cans down and a trip to the Royal

Three cans in, Fan Lewis wants to tell you how,
blonde hairs loose on his tee shirt shoulder,
there must be a way (four cans now)
to solve the problem of perpetual motion

We just ain’t
thought of it yet

Six beers at once Fan Lewis drinks
when the Sunday blues ring
Set ‘em up five, and four to go
there’s Monday coming with nothing to show

Notes toward a personal essay about the murder of trade unionists in Colombia by soft drink bottlers and about how the political is the personal: “disfruta la magia”

To believe a thing is made from people is to forgive.  It’s the things that make the people here: the things made of people there.

I was born in the russet flush of autumn, 1985, in an evergreen place. My growth in the intervening years has been a gut-wrenching display of limbs beating upon membranes of things. That’s not how it feels, of course,
Being alive.

To be in the Round is to Be. Each of us a Rebel. Each of us a Gifted Student. Each of us a Birth of the Cool. Each of us a King of the Lizards.

I became a data point in the carbon rush of 1996, in a climate-controlled room. My reduction in the exaflops since that shining moment has been a substantial work of engineering prowess. That’s not how it feels, of course,
Being golden.

Ink beneath the gloss.
Acceptable loss.
Consummation to Consumption.

When the sodium lights first come on

Those are the moments 

Those moments of departed daylight

Departed vision 

Those adolescent moments of endless

Possibility

.

Each footstep a promise to the future

Each breath an assurance of its promise to me

.

Tonight we walked the twenty-something streets 

In those adolescent moments

Senses awakening to the edge of night

Inhaling understanding as we each day grow

Footsteps to tomorrow