Off Your Meds

Wander through a sunny afternoon off your meds
savoring the signficance of every gesture.
Each glim and glint seems to peak and trough in its pattern;
car radios sing jingles to you then dart away,
distracted by the cycles of the traffic lights;
blind men tap six feet of surrogate senses on the sidewalk
and cellphone solipsists wander, focussed inward,
listening to voices of their own
as invisible and insistent as yours.
Listen to the whisper of studded radials
on dry pavement, or the
sixty-cycle hum of a transformer
stepping down the voltage
to something mere mortals can conjure with--
Remember:
Ohm's Law tells us all that
resistance isn't futile—it's
something you just have to factor in.

Let Go

She's decided to let go
and follow every impulse that sings to her

She has taken on a number of lovers
and fucks one per night
in alphabetical order.

She's detours now through
the old landfill on her way to work,
so she can spend a few minutes each day
flinging liquor bottles at
stacks of cracked windows
to listen to the smashing glass carrillion.

She indulges her texture fetish,
touching everything she can reach,
comparing rough with smooth and supple,
and slack with taut and tingling.

She's picks up every finger-sized object
she finds on the sidewalk
and tucks it into a bowl on her desk.
Someday soon, she figures,
a whisper from a shadow
just behind her thinking mind
will propose a project for her,
and the whole bowlful
will be the key ingredients.

She drops five bucks in someone's hat every Friday
and calls it a cover charge,
even though she doesn't know
exactly what club
she's trying to get into.

Tiny Gods Hiding

The bohemian teenagers of Edgemere,
innocent of nothing but hygiene and regulation,
wear the public faces of tiny gods hiding.
Feed them tequila and they'll smooth your path.

Forty days in the wilderness
of alley canyons and rooftop mesas
flenses the plaque of propriety from their souls
and sets up sofas inside their minds
for godlings to surf, just for a while.

Wily urges take over their voices
and let slip secrets to each other.
Listen to them chatter while they
chain-smoke handrolled cigarettes
and gulp coffee on a sunny stoop.
They'll jumpstart your sense of wonder.

They'll peel away the touch-ups and repairs;
the cloudy lacquer that your mind has applied
to the fresco of your reality
and show the lowest layer,
brushed into the wet plaster of your childhood.

You'll be shocked
at how vivid the colors seem.

Oracle

This week Kira has been dreaming--
dreaming of smoke signals
puffing gray out of
a lake of pale fog;
a ravine half-full of mist;

dreaming of graffiti
scrawled underneath the eaves
of the tower of a subdivided Victorian;

dreaming of the staccato chatter
of a freight train
swaying over a truss bridge
tapping out a prisoner's message
from she-knows-not-which cell.

Now she's listening
and her waking day murmurs to her--
oak trees snapping in
the hostile cold of a February shortcut;
wind off the lake
strumming the guy wires of a phone pole--

a child in a circle of children
whispering corrupted data.

Question for ya:

Should I post some of my older poems while I get feedback about Tiny Gods Hiding, or should I post only completed collections on this blog?

Let me know what you think.

Coming soon: Tiny Gods Hiding

I've finished most of the work on my next offering, Tiny Gods Hiding. I just have to run it by a few people I trust to see if it's ready to be released to the wild, or needs more cowbell, or whatnot.

This time I'll make sure that I post the last poem first and the first poem last, so one can read the whole thing from top to bottom. As with Jocasta and the Sorcerers, I'll be dropping hardcopies in and around Burlington, VT. Stay tuned.

Explanation/Thanks

I shouldn't explain, but I will:

I worked for a while slapping stickers on boxes and sending them away-- a monotonous job, so I amused myself with names and places. My co-worker said her favorite name from a label was, "Stoneburner." The tag in my hand was going to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and the name and the place murmurred in my mind through a long afternoon. What name could be exotic enough to pair with "Stoneburner? "Ariadne" didn't quite fit, but "Jocasta?" Well!

Around the same time I read Someone's review (I don't know whose) of Someone Else's poetry, (I don't know whose) sneering: "It reads like Assonance 101!"

Assonance 101?
Sounds like fun!

Weeks later, after I'd written a couple of drafts of the first poem, a friend mentioned a set of stories featuring "Jocasta Stones."

Oops. My apologies to Patrick Carman, whom I've not read (yet).

Thank you to Tina for her favorite name
and thank you to Susan who inspired enthusiastic magic and roisterous joy!

(This whole blogging thing is new to me; I apologize for the bottom-to-top, early-to-later order of the poems. The chronological first post is the first poem in the collection. I'll do better with the next series of poems, which should be ready soon.)