Camping with Richard Dawkins

The foremost atheist

invokes a dune

of ash sailing

westward, the wind

exchanging

grain for grain until

it is new.  It is new

and yet it bears forward

the crescent ridge

and curled horn

of memory.

He maintains no atom

of my veins or bones

claimed me when first

I drew breath.  I am

a new alliance

of dust, in a forest

in Missouri, far

from desert waves

and Oxford.  My sweat-

beaded brow now

a salty crown, after

the long cold, I am

sunk in rain-slick

loam, claimed

like a thing with roots.

This equinox, chartreuse-

flecked underbrush

and fat gnats

emerging tell me

the moment grave turns

cradle.  Sky laced

with branches still

bare, and air thick

with singing. Throaty mud

kings usurp my sleep.

At camp, I scry coals

for a name to lift

my tongue, before

nodding off, exalting

none.

Near Circus-Lyon Community Garden

Winter 2011

The bullet savages

a young man’s jugular

as I salvage

child’s pose and cup

warm tea a few doors

down.  In a town

too small to yield a slum,

distinct worlds revolve

in singular space,

and we resolve

to forget other orbits until

lead or Jerusalem

Artichokes pierce us.

The wintered garden, softly

encased, awaits someone

to clear the murky bottles

while Black Oaks bare

their bones. The paper

does not provide

his name, only the location

of his woundedness

and an uncolored shot

of the plot where Daniel’s

berries grow.  There are names

I don’t, and names I know.

Religion for the Lonely

Imagine,
primordial soup.

Elements
in the early
atmosphere
allied in the spirit

of nucleotides,
becoming chains
of potential,
which rained down
from heaven
upon the desert sea

like the seeds
they would beget,
along with lungfish,
cockroach, and spleens.

But in the beginning
was only acid
learning
to re-imagine itself,
to remember,
to distill

life, and then stronger
life, and finally
order.

What a revelation,
the membrane, creator
of internal worlds.

Infinitesimal
sanctuaries
realized the first
individual
gifts--molecules
to strengthen
and to commune.

The joining
of worlds, inevitable.

Here a tail,
there a hook,
and a mere billion
years later
acid was algae.

And algae learned
to exhale
oxygen, invented
sex and thrived
on its own breath--

turned verdant
and rooted to stone.

Diaphanous
animal forms gathered
exuberance into fins,
shells and spines.

On land, over-teeming
green and the first
creaturely ventures
against gravity endured
catastrophe
upon catastrophe,

exalting only the strong.
And perishing
gave rise to eloquence.

Shimmering scales,
gracious bloom,
and mammalian warmth.

Imagine,
a suckling babe.

And imagine
forgetting all of this,
the very legacy

of the cells in my old friend's
wrist where he so blithely
drew a razor,

not intending to die,
just hoping to prove he was
not already dead.

He and I do not speak
anymore, not least
because the mind fails
to comprehend
its own grandeur.

But at Christmas
I thought of him
when I peeled back
gold foil from a small world
sealed in glass.

Within, fairy shrimp
feasted on algae
in a sun-fueled Eden,
which I placed
on my desk, a reminder
that we are at least
as marvelous as that.

The last time I saw
my friend
was the funeral
of another young man
who had a problem
with forgetting,
and a shotgun--

such a crude tool
to end the work of eons
that have already borne
innumerable endings.

Yet I have a paper
packet of cosmo seeds
in my pocket, the beginnings
of a trillionth miracle.

And I still dare to want
for love.  We yearn
for what we are beneath
our blunt object egos.

Consider the lilies,
salamanders,
and grazing ewes.
Offer thanks
to who will listen,

personage in the sky
or child on the corner.
We are progeny
of an exploding heaven.
Forged in the roiling
waters of a jeweled orb.

Let us rejoice.

Twenty-five: Confetti

*I intend this poem to be the first of a series of birthday poems--snapshots of what I am experiencing as my age turns.  I'll be twenty-five on September fifteenth.

I stole the peonies

that reminded me

of my great-grandmother.

They blossomed

effusively

through the fence—

which I did not mention

as I gripped the chain link

against a kiss,

also stolen

and displayed.

Heads of pink petals—

obscene cabbages

that shed their bounty

overnight, and left

refuse on my nightstand. 

***

I wake late
and hung-over
before the ceremonies

of a dead elder

and wedding friends.

Top down, we drive
over hills that were
mountains.

In the back,
my eyes closed
against the rush and light—

sound of struggling
underwater 

and illumination
of inner eyelids.

I sit in a pew,

my hair askew,

and proceed
to consume

the Perfect Body
saturated in wine.

***

My mind a child’s

folded fortune teller,

a different future

under every flap.

Mansion, apartment,

or shack—all of  paper.

But now I have a house

with bones and square feet.

I spackle

the bullet holes

and paint over—
exuberant teal.

My colored
and white crusted

palms testify
to the cover up.

I scrub them

in the sink,

laden with crystal,
and I think

how the broken wine
glass glitters

prettily, like spent
sweat or semen.
 

I sweep it up,
admonished

to forget
the cabernet

and his solid form—

We are enraptured
by shattered things,

which never catch
this light intact.

***

My loveliest dream

happened in a sewer:

Tiny orange
and fuchsia hearts

from yards of crepe
paper—

we punched them out
ourselves.

Our pockets filled
with extras

soaked in refined
sugar and  rum

stuck to our hands
and mingled tongues.

Intending

to take the city—

we slide grates 
and descend

to taint the water

with saccharine seeds.
Confetti.

Project Echo & "The Question"

Project Echo--a collaborative art show that I am organizing--is the first time I have applied my poetry in an unexpected way.  I hope interesting things come of it...  

Visit the site!

Poems about Hips

Homage to My Hips
-Lucille Clifton

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

--Response--

Homage to My Hips: A Burnt Offering

My mother hates her
mother's hips, through which she came
to be-- rudely formed
those hips. And cumbersome.

The Old Masters admired
plumpness-- full hipped
and smooth shouldered.
They waxed rhapsodic in oils.

And Lucille said, Power!
These hips occupy space.

But my mother abides
the kitchen cross-stitch
that claims audaciously:
pleasure is fleeting,
hips eternal.

In ecstatic moments I grow--
an enormous moon--
and know no fear.

But in harsher light
I wish to be a tight
strung bow, stripped
of every blessing, formidable
as a burnt offering.

Inspired...

Asheville, NC is beautiful, and so is the Asheville Poetry Review. A gem:

Don't Wake the I-98
-Anna Connors

We didn't know the highway was closed.
Dark clouds' bruised underbellies
clog the sky.

Road colors radiate
through their dusting of ash,
blak-eyed susan yellow
in unsung morning.

Our car,
the only moving shape.

We find the occasional image
hold it,
an impossible breath.

A-frame churches,
steeples pierce the air.

Crushed animals
like moccasins
at this speed
their lovely, beaded bodies

incarnadine
and black
in the rearview mirror,

carrying us
one mile marker to another
until all signs say
go home.

You'll wake
the enthroned bulldozers,
tall and curved
like pitcher plants.

You'll wake
the broken billboards
that plead redemption,

the abandoned shopping carts
that couldn't possibly
be out this far,

directing us toward home.