Is there life
after death?

The better
question,

Is there life
before death?

empty dirt vista
I turn to her
she asks how did

we get here? I say
I think I’m asleep
dreaming she says

she thought that
too then a fierce
wind all is gray

dust the monkey
yells cut! he tells
the camera-man

they have captured
reality truly next
thing I know I’m

here face down in
the water washing
ashore on a sand-

bar she is fetal
naked the monkey
kneels over camera-

man’s corpse like an
alter-boy weeping
she yells shut-up

you ***** little ape!
the monkey howls
bites her leg she

crawls to one end
of the ******* I
to the other all is

water the monkey—
television actor now
director of acclaimed

historical dramas
lamenting camera-
man was the Da Vinci

of modernity I’m
thinking Da Vinci?
yeah the guy who

never finished
anything I ask how
did we get here?

she says she must
be asleep dreaming
I’m thinking yes that

must be all there
is to it—simply
asleep dreaming

Who is it that sits
on the cushion
on the floor, here
in the twilight,
during the final
hours of spring?

Living on
the roof of
hell we tend
the flowers
that perfume
our sacred
interim home.

After carefully
observing us,

the monkey
declares, You

are certainly
not a part

of nature,
what are you?

Fish in
a tub
swimming
in circles.

I am standing with
five rolled-up pages
of poetry in my

hand, ready to lunge
forward and smash it
into oblivion, when

she says, Don’t ****
that fly. Can’t you
see it’s praying?

The green
grass is
wet from

rain. Her
elegant
footsteps

have left
their delicate
impressions.

He is a
yardstick,
a measure
of something.

He is a
body, something
worn like a
suit of clothes.

He is a
string of words,
a sentence
to be parsed.

He is an
individual,
a myth
that is told.

He is a vast
space,
a screen life
is projected on.

Just the outline
of the thing, the

stench of something
rotting somewhere,

the inexplicable
puddle of water in

the front hall closet,
but for some

a chance, like
the universe,

to emerge
from nothing.

He can’t help
himself. He

knows his
thoughts are

distorted, but
like a criminal,

he’s compelled
to return to

the scene
of the crime.

Employ science,
the way a poet
employs words.

Employ belief,
the way a
mathematician  
employs arithmetic.

Or, be the eye
that sees, and be
employed by death,
the way life is
employed by time.

X is dragging the body of the
dead history professor, a man of
enormous girth and monstrous
height, through the empty

landscape, then the vast ocean
appears and X drops the body
into the water, where a shark
whose ancestry is four hundred

million years old, eats it, as X
recalls the professor’s sleepy
eyes, artificial smile, and
remarkably unreliable memory.

The finch
sings its

song as
if it just

discovered
itself in

the wonder
of nature.

It chirps and
and squeaks,
and whistles
and buzzes.

For twenty-two
million years
the hummingbird
has been

singing that
same song, that
simply says,
I am here.

You are
bathed
at birth.

You are
bathed
at death.

One can
bathe in
every

moment
and shed
the dust

and soot
before it
accumulates.

Even in
these
perilous
times,

flowers
are
blooming
everywhere.

The magician pulls the

rabbit out of the hat.
The dog in the field

follows the fresh scent.
The magician produces the

dove from the handkerchief.
The cat hears the quiet

mouse behind the wall.
The magician saws the

living assistant in half.
The owl in the forest sees

clearly in the black night.

There is an avalanche of syllables
uploaded day & night. It’s a wonder
one can find a verse to connect with
in the mountain words. I’m grateful
for those I have found. It’s like those
two hands reaching out to each
other, painted on the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel by some dude a
long time ago.

And I’m trying to read the longer
poems, those that might take
3 - 5 minutes to read—oh, the
commitment—the same amount
of time it takes to brew a
cup of tea. In both cases, it’s
time well spent. If you read this
past the first few lines, thanks.

A dead chicken
on the sidewalk,
embers—little bits
of  burning paper

drifting in the
air, a man asleep
in a king-size
bed in an empty

warehouse, a “she
done me wrong”
song with a slow
cha-cha rhythm

playing somewhere
distant, and no one
there to talk to, and
no where to go, and
no way to get there.

The cuckoo
sings to me.

The cuckoo
was sacred

to the Greek
goddess Hera.

The cuckoo
resonates like

a flute and often
sings at night.

Those Bavarian
clocks got it

wrong. The
cuckoo is a

singer of the
hallowed song.

The riddle of
everyday life.


A balloon rises
as a paper airplane
descends, and below,

a yardstick,
one end broken
off, while a ripening

pear sits on a
nearby chair, as
the drama unfolds.

I was the shadow
puppet, a barking
dog. Then became

the vigilant cat, that
apprehended the
ruse. Now I am

the rarely seen
mouse, too swift
even for the cat.

The sky is
icy and blank.
There is no
one visible,

anywhere.
A phone rings,
from some muffled,

distant location,
as the garage
door
mechanically

lowers.
I stand near
the heater,

gazing out of
the window.
Everything
is stark and

frozen,
like printed
words on a page.

The pilot is flying the
small white airplane in
circles, for the fun of it,
in the cloudy blue sky,

and below the black dog,
in the red car, is looking
out the window, barking
at nothing in particular,

and across the street
the banker in a gray suit
scurries, preoccupied by
a problem at the office,  

and in the apartment
above, there is only an
awareness, sitting on an
empty chair, breathing.

The verbs are living in
caves on mountain tops.

You can only call your-
self on the telephone.

The nouns are wearing costumes
to look like you, or the place

where you live, or the thing
that you bought recently.

Your mail is being spell-
checked by smiling burglars

who ply their trade by
strolling through the front door.

Adjectives have a dress code;
blue suit, white shirt, red tie.

Everywhere you sit there
is a whoopee cushion

that makes a long
repetitive mechanical laugh.

The old woman’s
gardener plants the
sapling in her
front yard. Then a
night of fierce winds
and rain. The new
tree remains intact.
You could write
a poem about that.

She wades in the
river teeming with
life, holding her
sandals above her
head, her bronze
face illuminated
by the brilliant
late afternoon sun.

My father was
a salesman, all
of his adult

life. But I don’t
know much about
him, really.

Old and ill, he
fell into a coma
for many days.

Then, suddenly
his mouth opened,
round and wide,

like this world.
And without a
word, he died.

How to navigate
civilization

in four steps:
Find a chair and

sit quietly.
Then, dismantle

the chair and use
the pieces to

build a ladder, for
a panoramic view.

Return to solid
ground, and

remake the chair.
Sit quietly.

Having toiled in the
garden, the young
woman sits in the
shade of an ancient
tree and sings a song
—as if serenading the
tulips and tomatoes.

I am in

the present I was in

the past I

have seen the future and

we’re in it

I won’t bore you with the
whole story, I’ll go right
to the end, when it’s
the day of the wedding
between the gangster and
his bride, the lawyer, and
the priest at the church
is eating his lunch, a
strip-steak with creamed
spinach, as the bag-man
delivers the airline tickets
for their honeymoon in
Borneo, and the gangster
is tossing the gun
into the river, as his
bride is passed-out on

the floor of the church,
under the circular apse,
having been struck on
the head with a sacramental
chalice, and the priest, who
is really a spy, is dead,
apparently poisoned
by God knows who, and
the gangster is on his way
to Borneo, alone, as the
concussed lawyer-bride is
half-awake and can’t remember
where she is, how she
got there, or why she is
wearing a very ******
creamy-white wedding dress.

He is on the porch,
to escape his wife

and kids. He smokes
a guilty cigarette.

It is yet another
New Year’s Eve.

White paper folded in
the shape of a house,
next to an egg
in the sunlight,
casting a long shadow,
on a pastel green
plastic table top.

I am sitting on a branch,
near the tree’s top, next to

a Capuchin monkey and
we are watching a man

wrestling an alligator. In
the distance an industrial

truck belches black smoke
as it nearly runs into a

very old man slowly crossing
the intersection. Then the

monkey says, Looks like the
dude’s got the alligator in

a choke hold. And I say,
The old guy barely made

it across the street. Then
the alligator gets free and

scurries away, but gets run
over by the truck. ****, says

the monkey, then, I got a
job, working with a private

investigator. The monkey
peels a banana and hands

me a piece as I ask, Doing
what? The monkey looks me

in the eye and says, Help
solve crimes. I say, Sounds

like a TV show, and the
monkey replies, Yeah, very

much like a television show.
And we watch the old man

very slowly amble down the
street—until he is gone.

The minotaur, trapped for many
years in a labyrinth, is the
sailing master, pilot of the
ship. His mother, a depressed
biologist, is below deck,

lamenting the loss of her
husband, a bull who was
killed by a matador—now a
pirate, chief executive of an
international fast-food company.

The rigger, master of the sails,
tracker of air and ocean
currents, hermaphroditic,
was a juggler, a high-wire
walker in the traveling  circus.

The look-out, with telescope,
in the crow’s nest. An orphan,
raised in a Taoist monastery.
Describes his life as a
journey of wandering solitude,

All looking for—refuge—
a place to live, to be,
an island with fresh fruit,
not sinking into the sea,
and not on any pirate’s map.

Thank you.

that's the beauty of attention.

Children imitating
flowers in the
school play. A
father in the
front row falls
asleep,
missing their
great allegory.

The dog howls
as a dark cloud
slowly passes
overhead, then
lays down, curled-
up, tail wagging
waiting for all to
be still and bright.

The rain ends.
All is lush,
and glistening,
and verdant
and a
beautiful
young girl
yawns from
boredom.

The very tall man, the owner of
a cosmetics company, is reading
a detective novel about a con-artist.

The little girl in the corner of the room
is calculating how long until the end.
The end of what? the very tall man

wonders. In the room above his head,
his wife, a chemist at his company,
is having an affair with the town’s

only physician. Outside in the tall
weeds, lit only by the dim glow of a
waning crescent moon, a fortune-teller,

formerly a lawyer in the public defender’s
office, is giving a reading to the
very tall man’s chronically ill twin sister.

Using ordinary playing cards as her
vehicle, the oracle looks like she’s
playing solitaire. She stares blankly at

the ill woman for several long seconds,
then states flatly and decisively,
No hearts, my dear, simply no hearts at all.

A countryside
dirt-road, a black
crow in the blue
sky, a scarecrow
dressed as Jesus,
and trash swirling
in the late
November wind.

Alone this winter,
an elderly man,  
with an eyebrow
raised at half-mast.

The news anchor,
with perfectly
formed ripe red

lips, describes
another unsavory
political scandal,

as the leaf blower
loudly propels
autumn’s colorful

debris from the
driveway, while the
iron heats up,

poised to press
the wrinkles out
of the white shirt,

with its faint
brown stain of
forgotten origin.

The summer
sky is a
vivid azure
blue. The red
hibiscus is
blooming on
the white
porch. Below
lies the old
photo of  
a man in
a gray suit.
The yellow
kite, tethered
to the hand-
rail is waving
in the breeze,
as the photo
suddenly
flies away.

In the end, it can all
be explained, and none
of it can be explained.

Tomorrow will exist,
of course, but by
then it will be today.

Language becomes
a long gurgle and
a quick sputter, and

as expected, by those
still paying attention,
it is irrevocably broken.

Adam, having just popped
out of the ground like a

time-elapsed plant, is
enchanted, almost

mesmerized by the snake.
Eve descends to earth

via parachute from god
knows what height, and

points out that the snake
is clever, creative and,

by-the-way, poisonous.
The snake shapes itself

into, the not yet invented,
letters of the alphabet.

“It is speaking to me. It is
creating a visual

language,” proclaims Adam.
“First you must charm it,

and then use it carefully,”
implores Eve.

But it is already too late.
The snake bites Adam and

he dies. Eve, ever prescient,
looks up to the sky and says,

“I know. This is what we
have to look forward to.”

The boy in a new
shirt, when asked
his age lurches
forward, all five
fingers splayed
in front of him.