poem a sometimes, i guess

I HAVE CONFLICTING FEELINGS ON THE SUBJ.

Sleep, after all, is a kleptomaniac

who steals moments and hours,

hoarding them until the time is right--

when it can appear from behind the couch

shouting SURPRISE, and saying that after all

this time, it has learned the lesson:

a life is for all cycles of the sun and moon. But

every time the room is empty, the last light

turned on with a timer to make-believe

someone is home to ward off the burglars, the

ne'er-do-wells, and you

who will never return

have gone. Or else, less often,

you and sleep sit across from each other,

the bags under your eyes darkening

as you look at the opened present on your lap

realizing that you had asked too rashly,

that you never really wanted this. Wondering

how long it has been since you both ran out

of things to say and

when you get

to open that other, really big present.

poem a man i should be sleeping

THERE IS NO WORD IN ENGLISH

And at the end I have only one

word that my life has com-

pressed between its slight layers so

it shines now pearlescent now

muffled like the last word

in a phrase bit back (i

t would have shed some fresh light

in the dark corners, where the

lamplighter of our conversation never tread) but

I have never been to Portugal and

time tips ever onward so I can say only

saudade, softly, saudade--

feeling nothing so sharp but longing and

let it be my last word, that I love you,

that you are lost.

poem a harglefagofh

PACKING A BOOK BOUND FOR POCATELLO

Packing a book bound for Pocatello;
it's been years since I was there. When,
after eighteen hours on the road, I
found the cheapest motel in its winding
avenues, passing a group of kids playing
baseball in the park at 10 pm, all their parents
watching from the stands while a block over
the pink neon outline of a woman flashes
flashes. And I slept on top of the covers,
waiting to fall alseep, half-watching a show
where a cougar dances among a throng of
younger men, her legs flash like headlights
coming through the narrow crack of the blinds,
and their faces animal-hungry for the chance
to return, to be back next week.
I was on my back,
wondering if my car was safe.

poem a day or so

THE WORLD'S SMALLEST MAN

The world’s smallest man has a face like Don Knotts--

all big teeth and bulging eyes, a weak chin and

the kind of cheeks children draw on animals –

his neck looks impossibly long beneath such a face,

his arms too seem long, but they must be to do what his height cannot.

His skin everywhere looks tight, knuckles showing their joints

like each one is a ring he wears and cannot remove; yes, I am

small now, it says, but I remember what it was to be smaller,

smaller than I am now,

smaller than I may ever be again.

poem an almost twice today

GOD! GOOD!

Each of us carrying off the other

like a thief in the belly of the night

and in the morning we find the thing

we stole and had stolen was the same

so like mirrors reflecting themselves

we grow darker as each reflection compounds

and by stealing we have made the thing

more solid still.

Perhaps alone we may have called it

into being but only together could

such a thing survive.

poem a today

MOOREEFFOC

Dickens called it mooreeffoc,
when the mask of the world slips
and its true face is glimpsed between
those frantic, fluttering fingers, and
we have all struggled in reflections;
so what is the word for calling true
that which cannot be? for seeing mooreeffoc
and saying coffee room?