My Poetry

Srgnt First Class Grandpa was born a Corn Husker nine years before the market crashed. One of nine, he grew tall, lanky a cornstalk topped with dark tassels, eyes like rich soil. From cornfields to battlefields, he mopped up Omaha Beach before the ocean could rinse the blood from the sand. In combat boots he toured the arid sands of North Africa and the stony ridges of Italy. A grenade tore through his best friend, like a combine through a field and planted kernels of steel deep beneath Grandpa's flesh. Saving freedom overseas he lost a son on a stateside base  just a child playing army. Back home the war continued when leukemia tried to lay siege his strength but Grandpa charged the battle lines and forced it to retreat. To support his family he drove a CAT in fields owned by a Fortune 500 and secured smooth landings for the early space shuttles. Grandpa has outlived his children and wife but he lives in 1945, and it’s been ten years since he knew my name. Today fluid surrounds Gr...

Blessed Alzheimer's  He sits on his bed, knuckles like concord trunks fumble with shirt buttons, “Where are we going?” he asks, for the fourth or fifth time. “To the cemetery,” slips past the swell in my throat. “Oh? Who died?” I have to tell him again, “It was Jessie, Grandpa.” His mouth opens silent grief eyes dip  “Is the funeral today?” This conversation replays all the way there. Full moon shows through the blue and white painted sky. Lavender and yellow daisies cover the casket  of the second wife he has outlived.  Faces of family and friends are all new to him. Each condolence becomes a fresh fracture to blessed Alzheimer’s. He sits, eyes in the past as Beloved Wife is eulogized. Present slips in when her name is said and a new mourning period begins. How many more times today  will his heart be broken? tomorrow when he asks can i just say that Jessie is still  In the hospital And let him continue in the bliss  of dimentia.  He’s borne many...

Claustrofornia Confined between the Sierra and the ocean smog pollutes my head. Movie star politicians break promises from quaking platforms.  Living out of Starbucks                             venti caramel macchiato with soy milk, two pumps hold the caramel in a carryout cup labeled “HOT.” Glamour glides down red carpets and people hug redwoods.  Can you feel the love?  Armies of leased diesels jam traffic driven by windshield warriors phones growing out of their ears. Shallow dreams and deep debts keep BMW's humming down highways. Money throws its voice around people just move their mouths and dangle from greedy strings. Seas of illegal blondes in designer thongs nourish eating disorders. When the Valley Girls grew up the Galleria was washed up fresh fashions forever show up and not even the Joneses can keep up! Still they build, and people pour into shopping malls and health clubs- neon grocer...

It begins with a boom and a fireball wreckage rains, sirens race   black smoke billows.  Papers float like confused confetti looking for a parade.  How many people cry out to God  when they see a second plane hit  the phallus of American capitalism?   Eyes glued, mouths open we watch people jump helpless to help them. Then comes a roar  louder than Niagara. Day turns to night  in lower Manhattan. A hole in the sky  a tomb of three thousand.  Those who can't outrun the rushing cloud  duck into delis and lobbies the towers in their eyes and lungs.     Cars covered in ash broken windows and stray shoes. Everything else either  blown out or burned up.  Fire trucks and firemen  buried in debris. People covered in dust struggle to breathe.  The fright in their faces  still haunts me. 

I met him in a dive bar he was all swagger and rock and roll  looking like The Clash was his opening act.     Magic and myth he played the Excalibur  of guitars. He melded with it submerged in heavy  echo and reverb a kaleidoscope of sound.  He broke barriers  with that Fender  all wild blue and purple haze ghost notes bounced through a hall of mirrors.  I knew that he would be  famous some day.  All the right people heard him play Soon he was opening for the Beale Street Blues Boy. His future was glitter and gold until the night  he got in the wrong car with the wrong driver.  Like Lazarus he died and rose again  but not so miraculous  he suffered paralysis  in his left arm.  Days grew dark  his guitar gathered dust.  He dreamed of ways  to compete with his yesterdays. Then came the day an angel was born, a baby girl who gave him the will to move on to reinvent himself.  He pic...