Two related poems:

How a hawk sees his lunch flying over Millie Hill in September

Trees and sticks over

boulders and logs and shrubs

and a tittering chipmunk.

How that same chipmunk recognizes the advancing pall of the hawk and his own impending oblivion, and thereby avoids the clichés that accompany the last moments of many small rodents

Hark, a hawk. I guess I'm through.

Hello Gregor and Hello Charles

and goodbye to you, 

my dear sweet darling.

Where one can find that rascal and fiend Peder Swanson as he is trying to score after rolling drunks outside of C&R Bar:

Down in the hollers

hawking his dollars.

How Astral Weeks feels after a long walk in the Winter and your toes are still damp

Palate-like, a brass pin tongue 

resting in the groove,

taste: dense hysteric wisdom.

Glassy at Dawn

Walter says

his carbine is accurate

to over 300 yards but

I can't believe that old

tin scrapper is straight enough

To hit a turkey at thirty feet

though the road sign on HWY 95

That stretches through pumpkin

fields and cow pies says otherwise.

Ambrose's eyes

shiver when they meet mine

and I'm compelled to wave him

Back toward the canoes

and dust we made our trail

Of  but he can't roll his tongue

or sing in Spanish or skip   ever

Since he bumped his head falling

off the rooftop and I've stopped

Ambrose from

falling many times

since then but mostly into water

As we both have what our Paps

Walter calls trout fever   so

We sweat it out in a boat

on a cool June morning

With ducks and dusk falling

as we bob beside the quay.

Endless Elucidation

Must humanity be perpetual

for expression to be infinite?

Must societies stay small

for our art to be intimate?

If a tree falls on a half-finished canvas

can it be in canon, in conversation?

Are unfinished thoughts really things,

or merely shadows? Shades from different timelines,

only here to signal death, left on the vine, rotten,

but a swelling glass of Blush some place

where cosmic difference is no matter.

We all really want the same things.

To eat and to drink and to not get fucked.

Everyone needs a new reason.

We all want love flowing in and out.

A dead person's words are just

failed assertions of still-being.

Expression is just

another way of saying

The world is not the world without me

of saying I exist, don't you forget it

Green Specialized, in front of Angell Hall

I'll probably never see her again,

the girl that whizzed by on her bicycle--

I didn't even see her face.

But she seemed cool, which is to say

she couldn't say who totally shouldn't

have been voted off American Idol yesterday or

whether Elle's new Fall picks were so great or

when or to who J-Lo's next marriage would be.

It all seemed favorable to me just then,

her water bottle swaying from a bulky

unstylish backpack as she peddled,

holding on with one hand, wobbling a bit,

her sneakers slipping and gliding.

The event eclipsed itself as I waved

as her hair of flax waved back

and she passed, gone,

but that's not so important, as her just seeming

like my type of girl,

on a bike,

watching,

wearing only herself,

perceptive where it counts.

Blue's New Spring

That morning, a lonely jay
flitted between bare branches,
as I sipped black coffee
and admired the new skies and buds.
His feet and beak bounced back
between each spring twig bursting
with the earliest life
anyone had seen that year.

The leafless newness came on quick,
as only a rustle gave the bird to my eyes,
and as often as I saw him fly,
he rested perched in calm, unaware
of how Spring and I extolled his quiet race.

I don't know what it is about blue birds,
whether their feathers or breathy colors,
but something cold, arrested in my chest,
was thawed and replaced with a flame,
as I spotted a blue jay early,
on that Springtime April day.

The Balm of the Soul

Adjourn and welcome,
And welcome to desire,
and welcome to time held still,
and your mother still holding your hand.

Welcome to a dance with your appetites
and between your rationalities,
fitting steps with feral fictions
and bowing to your ego.

Welcome to bizarre vignettes
and compromising situations with
4th grade teachers, best friends' sisters
and a rotund clown from when you were six.

Welcome to irrational desires,
insatiable anxieties and obscene pleasures.
Welcome to wormwooded forests, purple mushroom spots,
side-winding cobras with your uncle's eyes and teeth.

Welcome to emptiness and boldness and foreboding.
Welcome to bare gums and demonic televangelist rants.
Welcome to the benthic.
Welcome to the night. Welcome.

Deviant Still Lifes

Lemon or lime or peach or mango and
lime-green gold or lemon-tinged tango or
old purloined pears, part premium part prune
and a grape-hearted goon and or rasin-brained loon,
but not withstanding, withered perjury performed with
and or (but not but) brilliant backstabbing stature
serving slain sumptuous wit, without maturity
and but tits, filed in forms, formed invections
vetting lawyers learning needless lauded needles
pricking pits, tarry tears and ageless ambers--
dino-fruit concocted stew, serving frequent frivolous
fictions formulated for the 'fore, but before and not aft,
and you all soon should be wondering
where does one get off this raft?

Small Talk

Ever many
dialogues
that slip
out of our mouths,
All the many
wordless words
worthless, worthless
every one,
that we utter
or we mutter
make me shudder
make me shudder
and I cannot
help but give
in answer:
nothing.

13 Ways of Looking at Snow

1.
An observation is a near as one gets
to the basic crunch of snow,
never being inside to feel its pack,
the brittle wetness as a trillion particles
compact into a trillion more.

2.
The distances we feel-- we know,
are cosmoses compared to space--
interposed between the snow.

3.

What keeps one in a body?

From floating away

with the brazen chill of wind

and the nighest bank of snow

brushing beneath our boots?

4.
I might've been a flake,
I might've touched the wind,
I might've, but I'm not.

5.
Between bare ground
and viscous air,
it's all there, growing whiter
and wider and without
a lake and forest to divide it,
I might not see past the snow.

6.
Watching a lake freeze
becomes a contemplative
act of expression, a burial,
when the Sun has almost set.

7.
Her cruelest moments were like
snow in the Arctic:
hard-packed and plenteous.

8.
I would rather melt
than have to cross another
desert of snow, omitted from her sight.

9.
Its purity cakes everything;
her pervasive whiteness,
the near-perfect white
only a reflection of the Sun.

10.
It's blank.

11.
My eyes are black in the center,
white along the rim,
with blue in between,
like sooted snow, fresh snow, glacial snow.

12.
Had it been colder that day,
the rain would've been snow,
and she just might've returned that call.

13.
It's getting desperate as
the crystals and connections
get warmer and our bonds
get looser and looser and
poof!
What once was
a vital gliding sliver,
is reduced to a drop
in a pool.

The Bounty

Antoine etched “Federico Muñoz,”

being the original name, as well as “My

Closest Friend in ____” without further syntax,

demonstrating his obduracy anew,

echoing losing feelings from Kiev,

Forgetting those made in Peru.

Gruffly he clutched the carved mast,

holding it between his remaining fingers,

index and left ring lost to a gator—

(Jambalaya Swamps)—and a thumb in Iraq

(knocking about drunk, caught looting a shop).

Lately and again Antoine pined for his hermano

Muñoz, they had parted ways in Tehran,

never really saying goodbye, keeping mum

outwardly, but feeling an anxious, departing pull.

Pirates are no cordial cabin mates, but some mark

quietly their compadres íntimos, as when the Raj

ransomed himself, the two happily sharing his Hindi

Sword, and Muñoz had stolen the wrap of a Sikh;

They marveled then, at each other, at their roguish plundering.

Ultimately, Muñoz converted after too many puffs of keif,

Virtue swept him up, and he left the high sea's life.

With his wealth given all as alms and a new found

Xenophilic religiosity, now called Al-Mu'iz among Islamic

Youths, he abandoned cohort Antoine Ahab,

Zero attempts to contact his mate, instead bowing daily toward Mecca.

This is a double abecedarian--26 lines, A-Z first letter of each line, Z-A for the last.

In Pours the Snow

It pours from clouds, my eyes and temples glaze.
The wind a swell of snow that coats my face,
a logic rife with cold, indifferent,

unfrozen, melting water dripping down.

A rill that wets my lips and chin to fuel

responses, feeding freshly breathing thoughts,

as crowded round my Basin they appear -

to rust its iron-rimmed foundation.

My fervor wrapped in frozen sweat, a warmth

derived from rocky till.  The gravel laid

beneath my feet, ground's counterpoint to snow;

Its endless lack of heat, desire.  The rill

of moisture meets my neck, I shiver,

but smile, hollow space's intercessor.

Psychonautics VI

Let your mind be the epicenter--
a relief of compounded stress
radiating from your consciousness
through the tension of your body.

Relax in the chaos of the quake--
let your psyche be rocked and
feel the dense tautness ebb
out of your limbs and body.

Don't panic, or fight the waves--
they are a release from a reality
that has built up strain within,
just relax and let your psyche rock.

If you feel disoriented, you should--
Remember that you're still in your body.
Never fear your own mind's power
as it coalesces with the Earth's.

These Earthtrips are intense--
they'll transform your anthroform Richter,
but keep in mind they are essential
in avoiding a cataclysmic rifting.

Psychonautics V

Every trip is a gift,
a little dialogue with God,
and you never seem to remember
to ask the questions you'd planned to.
The voice of the universe
cannot help but to drown you out,
nevertheless,
you'll hear something to ponder.

Psychonautics IV

Don't dream like a quiet-eyed mule
Swatting flies with a flicking tail,
Dream like a Rooster with its
Dim, dumb eyes cast skyward,
Dream like a Javelina hoping for that
Handful of poultry hearts,
Dream like the ravenous Wolf rousing
Sleeping geese in hopes one falls scared,
Dream like a feckless hare,
Daring to pass under the garden fence.
Do dream like a quiet-eyed mule
All jejune and swatting flies--
But only if you do it relentlessly,
If you do it desperately, never feigning sleep
Or waiting for a shepherd.
Do it, dammit, as if you'll die
If you don't.

Psychonautics III

Why blast off into adulthood
Just like your parents did?
Try a new fuel mixture
Or a fuselage design that
More resembles your own head.
The Moon is over--
Even Mars is unremarkable.
Perhaps Mercury or Jupiter
Would suit your vocation--
But for me
It's straight into the Sun
Smiling facefirst as the star
Consumes me whole.

Psychonautics II: Sebastian Seung on Mapping the Connectone

Mental experiences--
That's a funny way of saying
Everything I've ever felt or
Smelled or
Thought or
Considered or
Remembered or
Wondered or
Imagined or
Pined for or
Cried over or
Recalled briefly from a dream or
Had seared deeply into my memory or
Prayed to or
Memorized or
Loved,
But, I suppose,
He is
the Neuroscientist.
-----------------------
He can consider the
Creekbed of consciousness--
I'll have my head in the stream.

Psychonautics I

Your brain is just in this weak little bubble
That it's floated in since you could talk,
Refracting and distorting what's really
Going on Out There, amongst the bosons
And waves and strings of matter.
A baffled funhouse-mirror is how you see.
That is your world through
The curvature of your bubble.
Let's pop it.

For Frigates Intercepted by Icebergs

A simple salute, a word to wit,
don't steer North, stay the course,
go down like a Legend in ice.
I'll tell all your wives you were wayward knights,
and your children that you carried the cargo
of a relentless God.