Where's the Museum

where we can hang the lute purchased unwisely on a driving trip to Italy, where we can shelve the bins of old movies, the heavy boxes like velveeta bricks chunked with slides of this campsite, that Easter, the roses again, new hybrids, new to our mother's gentle OhWalters, where some docent will placidly open the jewel box and unwrap the Purple Heart and the chamois with the rust bloodied bullet and show to the children see this small and it blew open a shoulder see it was saved it was morbid it was necessary it was this small just right for our museum

Call Your Mom, Ishmael

Fancy the caulking ribboned thick
The sails freshly stretched
The wheel plumbed anew
The captain experienced the limes wrapped neatly the weather predictable the mothers
not consoled

Crowd of Crows

Why say murder when crowd contains the bird?
Honeys do, yes, and honeydews don't
Rusty hearts need rest apart
This here cat is purring across the scars flapped on my chest
Even after years padded by,  a cat's weight is an iron clamp
A reminder you are gripped, some choices gypped, and a greasy
love will scour the pot.
Crows settle in the live oak.
  They aren't looking for us, we are no bunch.



(Thanks, Shakespeare)

Waist Deep with Muddy Pete

The cadence of stories our children never tired
of  songs that fell out of the mouth rounded
plunged in the drinking fountain
drunk only as a word friendly with skunk
a lived life a loved wife a leg long enough
to balance, a horsey ride for
an invisible Pete too small to crawl
and the father , two griefs to carry.




(Pete Seeger, Sr., d. 2014
 Peter Seeger, Jr., d. 1943)

Baby Makes Three Sorrows

The sorrow of repetition, of vital, infantile patterns,
Of weary long mornings, o brother, another cotton square,
And the sun in tender eyes.

The sorrow of the alien, boxed in and boxing out.

The sorrow of older sisters, of sudden slapstick displays,
Rolling along the floor, clinging to mother's tired legs,
The slow shock of displacement, Claire's fierce growls of love and loss.

Mysteries Abound!

Ease your child into the world of playground,
Ahem, the world of semi-supervised playground,
With a simple series of charming disclaimers.

Taking too long on the swing?
Practice whistling whilst casting your sights to the heavens
When the chains are grabbed, shout, "Threat level Orange!"

Ringing bells during an excellent game of Splicing Dandelions?
Run to the picnic tables, duck, and cover
When hauled out, protest that Room 8 is the 99cents!

Cornered in the corridor
By a teenager with a backpack and a big gun?
Bring him the good news that Mysteries Abound

The Courier is our paper, and the paper says...

That villagers are incensed that the less well-to-do may soon
live among the more well-to-do
The villagers are awash with fear of fire
The fear of fire is less than the gasps from the police blotter printed each week
And this week there were two burglaries via doggy door,
and both in neighborhoods where it may seem the dogs are ignored,
where the hubcaps get more polish than seems practical,
given the proximity to the freeway, overhead, scraped by the giant pepper trees
in the backyards,where the pets hunker down for a scratch,
when they're not jingling crouch through the rough-
edged flaps at the back of the houses where the inhabitants
just might be packing to move up to the condos in the Northern neighborhood
where there are no doggy doors because you never know, you never do.
The fires may come, but not at our backs! We have tattooed the ears of our pets
should they flee.

Lonely Band

One gal, her voice hers
One fiddle, amped to reverb
One machine, enslaved to repeat
It's a band! Charismatic, Solo-Width...
Crapshoot over, Shulamith would get it

Two hands, count ten fingers at birth
Two x's, genetically diverse
Two is the new million, irreducible
It's a baby! Putting up witcha crimes against feathers
Gotta shoeshine cloth for drool-shiny leathers

Faces on the Metro

Faces on the Metro

###   )w(      !!!!! 

{* *}   [',']     {*+*}

Only three passengers today

It ain't Spring

No cherry trees bloom

And it's not raining

Not an Ezra day

Wogglepot

Ceramics class like an affable train station
Folks all folksy, advice from everyone,
All in the soup, a majority of loners,
Pound, pull, throw, trim, easy verbs=
Particular motions, perilous judgements,
Hands in the glazes, painting with wax,
Iron oxide tattoos,*> <*
Birds in a stare-off.

Heamdream

The deer scuff up the landscaped slope
Hooves tearing the lisianthus swath
Roughing the hostas, one striped leaf perfectly split

We stand by the window, my father, me, and everything
Watch the deer pause at the patio, sniff munch along the border
We are closer to the deer than to each other
Which is an argument against sliding glass doors

So since I am dreaming, I bring us back to the old house
Where we can look out the kitchen window together
My shoulder bumping his ribs, our similar eyes
Watching my mother mow the lawn determinedly
Though she is sick unto death soon, and it takes two jots
Before we both bolt for the doors

Crockpot Cranium

Don't siphon off that crockpot which is a cracked pot,
But only the lid.
Don't tweegee off the surface oil, or stir it back in to grease the stew,
Cuz its' purpose is to cloak.
Make do with the spices in the fucking rack inconveniently nailed to god,
That kitchen god you dared me to replace.

Pack Up the Daddy

So gone, spinning bobbin free of thread,
The needle can't pick up the nothing bobbin,
The foot pounds down the cloth leaving no dent at all.

So gone, the records won't be packed,
The velvet cleaner with its mystery oil and
The phonograph donated, the speakers toppled in the trash.

So gone, the desk unsloughed its paper skin layers,
The leather stamp box from Spain and the brass bell
And pennypot from Yugoslavia haven't stamps, tongue, or pennies.

Stick around, we're packing up the daddy
His vanity frames of medals and awards, the conductor's stick with cork grip,
the perfect photo of our mother, when she was so young it makes his eyes water.

Disappearing Nation of Barbaras

A reappearance of Noahs, 

  clustered two x two

 per classroom per suburb

individuated by iPhone

as in olden days  by baseball caps

like the cousin Matthews in the  Catholic family  next street over, a-breeze with children, the bicycles sting-raying the neighborhood, the hamburger patties waxed n stacked, the beach gear  the transistors at full tin bleat, the cousins who visit all August,All Matts (though some were also Chris)

 until the new baby dispersed the children from the cul-de-sac

except the little girl, her scraped-high pony

 slipping around the corner, loitering for a cousin, 

dragging back when the dinner bell clanged

that everyone sit, ignore the stungun of the baby...

Where were the bigkids?there/their cereal boxes 

separarating territories on the L-shaped couch...

the washer  thrashed some uniforms

or diapers rank in plastic pails 

The girl wanted to heave them up to Heaven.

She twirled the edge of her bunk bed, it's a shipwreck,

She's calling the lifeboat, the pirates, the cousins,

Who mostly ignored her, or teased her

For answering to Pookyboo like it were  Catherine

Nobody calls the baby Babs or Bar or Barb or Dollname

Poor baby, poor haircut, poor robber hung up with Jesus

A lifetime of elders tut-tutting grandma was not a namesake

Some futures should be shot to ribbons, some names forgotted,

Like Ted. Like Barbara, Barbara, Barbara,

a way to start a motorcycle

Mooring Room. Roaring Moon.

In Nature,  rarely without submerged shoals,
Underjars of rocks, jetsam of junked tires, rebar threaded concrete chunks-
A rare find, a soft landing, a boat's double lot,
Mooring room.

A night walk,  a couple followed by the better cat,
Flares of brushfire rust-smudging the aura,
What we hear in disagreement,
Roaring moon.

Old worries, new as cornflakes before the milk hits.
Tendrils transparent as last generation pajamas,
The blood clot shorting out regrets, then reason.
Grin! A brain moos.

Love in a Rhyme of Collard

  A rockin' snore knocks his head back in his chair, no lollard
Reader, alert again, and reading more, a working scholar,
Dear to students, all smart enough to see their best smaller
When measured by his wise eye, then taller
When measured by his kind voice, " Y'all are
Keeping me on my toes" "Thatsa hunnert dollar
Question phrased with ten dollar words" he'd holler.
His tone down homey m'lasses hard to swallow,
Until he grew Real with family lore of loyalty, squalor,
Velveteen rabbit scholarships, cold donuts, and Mahler.

Walking talking

Tea-length stockings, stock phrase for teaching, clinkety brick kilns,
Stuffed glazed street.

Mournful ramblings, crumpled map torn, floppy popcorn,
A horrid screech.

Clamp-pronged buster, florid oyster, dormant grazer,
Denizen sheep.

Hampered pique-nique, shopworn flora, rape joke moron,
Marbled griefs.

After the Title, the Clever Horse Leaps

The owner of the horse was as convinced as one can be when one can be
Convinced a horse can count, can do sums, can be trusted to walk on stage
without lifting a tail for the schullump of drained hay, can wish to impress
a lecture room where schmoes crane their necks, itching in wool suits.
The horse was called Clever Hans, though that were it's stage name.
The gelding the man bought was just known as He, or That One, or Yon foal.
He named it, they say, for the boy he had lost. Oh, the crowds patted pockets
for more coins for more shows for repeats of questions that begged for a pencil...
They came back the next day with their old dripping mothers, even after
the University man outed the IQ of CH.
Even after the papers resounded with boondogglevich j'accuseowicsz.

They say that the owner still brought Hans crisp apples, still  posed tricky figures,
still praised the right answers
still loved him the same.
They don't say what Hans did, how Hans was a healer, how they knew,
in the stables, to bed him down with the sick ones, even goats, and
the owner had a goiter shrink back like a salt lick on a fierce sunny day.

Clay Feet

A line of pinchpots with gap-lips pout.
Tilted milk jug with drooping handle sags from a bad throw.
Sitting inna corner, chewing my tongue.
When the scrapey tool shaves a curlicue,
I spit a little pink in the scar.
It ought to burn off like newspaper.

Stupormarket Math

The daughter rode the end of the basket through the check-out line

The mother loaded the multi-storey packages on the jerking belt

She made the cashier scan the soda flats, the giant case of single serving chips,

And then picked through the remaining items,

Registering how each box or can increased her cost.

She pushed the cashier's hand from the last six items

The little girl began a protest, perfunctory, eyeing the hot dogs and eighteen egg carton,

Now abandoned to the care of the cashier

When her mom dug around for her last dollars

The girl swung her arms around the chips

Hugging the awkward sharp box, and pressing a chin dent in the filmy plastic.

We were next. We didn't buy the rejected eggs

And run after the family in the parking lot.

All the way home with our bok choy and baguette and hairballcare cat food

We imagined that we had.