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Poetry
Slaughterhouse Poems
When My Father Passed Away
This theater is a slaughterhouse
where filaments of grief
are too shifty to cut,
amusing guests who come
along with gestures
broadly understanding
what brought them in,
inscribing very clearly
associations overhanging
with the deceased.
The bereaved insists on
what needs to be preserved
along fertility lines, which
unkind behavior should
be dismembered.
Here,...
Reunion Introspection
Life at 75
My silver mane shows
Natural beauty of age
With warts, lines and all
My silver mane speaks
Of struggle and redemption
With passion and faith
On departed classmates
Gone forever now
Memories we celebrate
Lives well lived and loved
On our humanity
Human lives deserve
Peace that is socially just
Fight for it we...
The Pruning and Other Poems
The Pruning
Deadhead
the ground
where petals lay,
not the blossomed
branch, rivered
& riveted
this garden,
this square
of pear & pine.
Unlock
the pruning knife,
cut the roses
back to thorn,
back to distel,
to angled light.
Be frugal,
light-handed,
bent shrubs
are rain-heavy,
grit-weary,
saddled with
the days
of May’s
cloud weeping.
This June
cuts back
to essential
bone, the boughs
watered
& wounded.
Fold your knees
before the muted
ground, listen
to the...
My Magnificat
In the Marian month of October
Magnificent madness
My savage spirit you stunned
Bones leap out to dance
Something inside
You touched and exploded
Unleashing the torrent of one hundred springs
That rush to embrace
The vineyards lost in my memory
O blessed be
Walls you have broken down
Oppressors you pinned to...
SHARK WALL KEY
(Or Triste at the Santa Barbara Sea Center)
Maybe it was the quiet desperation of the
sea horse, holding on to a spine of sea grass
inside a cobalt blue aquarium that brought it on.
Or perhaps the distressed Stingray flicking
a missing tail, as the frantic hands...
FOUR POEMS FOR 2024
Philippines, Proposed Addendum to Definition of
noun
: a stream that cuts through districts or fields of grass
: an enclosure of water (see Badjao or Aquarian)
: a subterranean wanting
: a recollection of faces
: a great and significant number, just below innumerable but above sufficient
: parable,...
