‘Something for Nothing’
I want to see / if it is possible / to be a nobody / from nowhere. / Creating something / out of nothing …
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‘Mission Statement’
‘To scratch the page,/ to pick the scab, / to mix and match the phrases, / enter the lab and whip up potions, / address the sky with curses, praises, / annoy the authorities, cause commotions …’
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Poems
‘Earth Mother Lullaby’
Wrinkle-skinned earth mothers from / another decade, a far more interesting decade they profess, / nest live orchids in tangled-up hair, / black-cotton gloves rising past thin wrists ...
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‘Sunlight & Coffee’
I want to run and embrace/ this tulip-yellow light. But/ where? Where do I stand and/ meet it all? Face to face with/ beauty bigger than myself, I / quail ...
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‘GODS OF THE NIGHT: 15 Woodland Thoughts’
Here in the quiet provinces,/ Wars pass via headlines, worrying us/ Solid citizens even from this distance with/ their loud report./ We in the quiet country have the luxury of/ Worry, second cousin to fear ...
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Poems
‘10,000 Thunderstorms’
If I'm to be an insomniac, a fine thunderstorm is a welcome thing. To entertain. To relish and divert from mournful or misbegotten thought. I ponder getting up. Going to my front porch, storm-sitting perch.
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Poems
‘The Flavor of Grief’
I have been getting familiar lately with the flavor of grief. It comes on me with no warning. While driving up-river, to shelter-in-Nature. At 68 mph, passing a too-slow, white Chevy truck.
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Poems
‘Window No. 1’
One of my earliest, notable windows was in the basement bedroom I shared with brother Rick. It opened to the left, sliding open with a satisfying 'chonk!' Revealing the level grass of our backyard.
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A Dozen Ways to Look at Chicago, Illinois
I've always been intrigued by human beings whose lives are lived just below and sometimes at the level of the clouds. They surround us by the thousands, the tens of thousands. In blue rooms, staring at TVs in their skyboxes. Doing Downward Facing Dog, 2,000 feet above the sidewalk.
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‘My Paragraph & I’
'I want my paragraph to strut, carved cane in hand, the Left Bank, like a proper boulevardier. I want my paragraph to wow you. leave you wanting more. To, if possible, make you gasp. To make you—prose willing—cry. And then, to laugh. And then to laugh at your crying ...'
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‘Body of Evidence’
'I'd no excuse not to grok the fact, or traffic in illusions of not growing old. Or denial of encroaching senescence. Or flipping the bird at Mister Death. It would halt nothing of my body's fade, of our decay. I was, perhaps, whistling past my future graveyard.'
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‘Nous Celeron’
'Don’t you, Nous Céleron,/wish to lay down your arms?/Enter the Ohio’s cool darkness,/or the Chinodahichetha!/Sounding out each syllable/as a Wyandotte/might utter them .../
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‘The Pledge’
We must imagine/a better country, after/the orange man in/the white house. Tote/our losses & our/wounds. Revelations/about our neighbor’s/secret selves. The sign,/the flag, rippling in/the wind. That says—/'Off with your head’ ….
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