Picayune Poetry

It's time for this circus again, huh?

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

No Rules, just right; NaPo. that's right, I'm starting before April and no one can stop me.

God Sleeps Under an Empty Mountain

Not because it is comfortable, but because it is empty
and there is nothing else to fill it.

On top, white clovers flicker in the wind,
and lakes bare waves to the sun
who tickles the edges with trickles of honey.

In the canyon, there is the picayune boom
of distant dynamite, slush of rubble.
The sun spies God for the first time in years.

And the geologists say, "Well this changes things."
And they try to puzzle the rock back together,
but they can't find reverse explosives.

So the cave stays open to the public
and they put up guardrails
and signs that say "NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY,"
although no one is quite sure why.

Distance is Love

Today I watched two seagulls,
sitting on separate lamp posts;
thirty crows crowding the top of a pine;
and some guy trying to walk his dog
and his cat at the same time.
The forsythias looked starry-eyed
at me, breathtaking as always.
Raindrops clustered on a handrail.
The scratched-up look of black-bark trees.
I saw the black and white and red
from my umbrella swirled overhead
as I walked down an empty street.

Flash Blind

When there is a shine that drills
from its reflected surface
deep into my cornea
and I have to blink away,
eyes watering, photo-bleached,
ghost lights floating,
I can't help but think of you.

Your watch that would blind me,
accidentally of course, when you
rested your arm on the door of the car.

Now you are underwater, the ocean
breakers miles above you.
The light just barely filters down and
your watch is waterlogged.

I am above you, skipping stones,
wincing as the light
bounces off the water.

Messy

I haven't cleaned this room in weeks
and the dirty clothes on the floor are mountaining.
My bathrobe drips down the side of my couch
the huge empty cardboard boxes in the middle of the floor
are so cumbersome. They get in the way.
They'd be so easy to move, but I can't.

The desk is piling up with garbage.
I keep trying to throw it away, but I just get more and more
every day. Everything feels paused
like it's cheating to do anything at all.
Like I'm holding my breath and conserving my oxygen
by remaining motionless.

And then there is the garbage I can't bear to throw away.
The thermometer instructions (what if I forget?)
the birthday cards from family (what if this is the last one?)
The expired food I can't stand to waste (it probably wouldn't kill me,
yet.)

XIII: Death

Death comes first, before anything lives.
But from that nothingness
came somethingness--
or so we have been told.

Death rides upon his pale horse (always the traditionalist)
while a priest--his robes lit by the sun (is it rising or setting?)--
prays over a fallen man. A woman weeps, kneeling.
She coughs a rose of blood.

Death looks at me with eyes that saw the beginning
of things. "LET GO,"
he says, not unkindly.
I wonder how he knows.

Entomophile - a Nonet

Insects are made of gems that distill
from raindrops that linger on twigs.
They’re roses, bloomed from eggs. Wings,
soft-petaled, fold under
a hard, external
skeleton, and
careful, they
twitch a
leg.

The Queen of Cups (not a Nonet)

The Queen of Cups has been mummified, wrapped
in scraps of linens, propped on the throne, cup
in hand. A river runs at her feet, eroding away
her toes, soaking her wrappings, dampening
that dried skin. She moulders. Festers.
In the distance, cliffs rise, though
they only reach her waist.
What burden is the cup,
the crown, the throne?
How long must she
sit, gazing at it
with empty
eyes?