Morning Abstract

The idea
advances
across the sky.

Blue
cereal wings . . .
old twittering machine.

The Plan for Thursday

So
I should
come home again,

eat,
then head
to Vaughn's practice?

Let
me know
when you know.

Four for International Make-Out Day

Spread

your body
on mine
like Nutella


Yum

I break down
your polymeric
macromolecules


Completely

absorbed
of another
body coming home


To Think God

or heaven
would diminish
the moment
 

Stay

Be my ketamine—
keep me
safe.

When

I
say I
it’s someone else.

While

 
I See You

under
the picnic
table—let’s dance.


Good

I
want to
but I don’t.


Bad

I
need to
but I can’t.


Yes

Make me
sing
like a theremin.
 

Sappho Does

Sappho
sits alone
against the tide.


What
Sappho does
is her business.


Sappho
dreams, apples
fall from trees.


Three
naked girls
chase each other;

one
is love,
one is freedom,

and
one is
just a girl.


Where
Sappho goes,
crashing wine-dark throes.


When
Sappho leaves
three girls grieve;

one
is naked,
one is clothed,

and
one is
simply mind personified.


Sappho's
little credo:
To be continued . . .

A Dedication

To
Eileen Tabios:
Thanks for counting.

No Way, No How / No Why, No Who

In
my dream
this poem worked.

Each
line pushed
another meaning something

grave
like in
meant no way

out;
my dream,
no one here. . . .

A Way

Move in receive
the discrete
unit

starts
and stops
stays and goes

instigates silence like
lead exaggerates
follows

Rhymin' and Stealin'

Eileen Tabios's post on poetry-book stealing conjured up good times and bad times (you know I had my share) and inspired a couple of quick-sketch stories of my own—in the form she invented, the hay(na)ku.

The First

Took
Jim Morrison's
Wilderness from Waldenbooks.

Snuck
it home
and buried it

like
vodka in
my bottom drawer,

read
it only 
when nobody in

my
family was
around to see.


The Coup

Mailed
The Poetics
of Indeterminacy to

myself
from the
big pig “Pen”

I
was working
in back then

when
that whole
Lewinsky thing exploded.

The Hay(na)ku Anthology, Vol. II

Recently published from Meritage Press, The Hay(na)ku Anthology, Volume 2. Co-Edited by Jean Vengua and Mark Young, with work by John Bloomberg-Rissman, Allan Aguilar, David-Baptiste Chirot, David Giannini, Christian Jensen, Ray Craig, Bill Freind, Thomas Fink, Dion Farquhar, Alex Gildzen, Jeff Harrison, Geof Huth, M. J. Iuppa, Jill Jones, Scott Keeney, Leigh Knight, William Allegrezza, Karri Kokko, Rebeka Lembo, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, nick-e melville, Crag Hill, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Derek Motion, Sheila E. Murphy, Tom Beckett, Lars Palm, Chad Parenteau, Ernesto Priego, Christopher Rieder, Michael Steven, Ernesto Acosta Sandoval, harry k stammer, Jordan Stempleman, Eileen Tabios, Harriet Zinnes, C. St. Perez, Marcie Lynn Tentchoff, Michael A. Fink, as well as from one of Elizabeth Robinson's Poetry Classes at the University of Colorado, Boulder: Elizabeth Robinson, Adam Baker, Spencer VanBuskirk, Elan Benami, Chris Caruso, Audrey Knowling, R. Noelle Clason, Jessica Kirkbride Miller, Carnyta Lewis, and Eric Schrader.