Excerpts From A Conversation With A Houseplant*

Coleus, your green-rimmed, purple leaves are not an optical illusion

You're not even convinced and your argument
is not convincing. I know painters
who took color class in college

That's not a shade of blue, it's really
rather violet. Even I know violet.

Yes, the blueberry girl
from Willy Wonka.

No, that Amazon tribe doesn't recognize
a distinction between blue and
green.

Well, I'm not a shaman, so
I'm not quite sure how...

Yes, the roots talk to them and let
them know the proper combination, but...

I can hear you just fine.

It's late
I'm going back to sleep.

(*Inspired by a weekend with the family)

A Few Changes

I've been taking the time to edit some of these poems in preparation for journal/review submission, so they may change (hopefully for the better) from time to time until I submit them. In the meantime I'd love to get (serious) feedback from anyone who stops by here and takes the time to read anything. If you like something, let me know. If you hate something and have a good critique, send it my way. Consider this "peer review" and you're all my peers.

Thanks for stopping by.

Everything Unmade Into One

"And will never be any more perfection than there is
now."
-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

It was suggested
That all those tiny imprints,
In wafers metallic and thin,
By concentrated light
Would lead us through

The ether holding hands
The world round, in remote
Corners to dawn a new age
Of improved mankind, unhindered
By the laws of flesh and disease

And DNA. A prophet
In some waking dream
A simple equation foresees
The real second coming of man,
Of new form beyond the crippling

Fear. Encased in stacks, row
Upon row, fans buzz
The sound of work, the machines
Work so we can move
Beyond bodies into programs. But when

Was the last time I was entranced
By that glimpse of a forever
Without collapse, just to find
All the things we made
Were seen already to have breath, to live

Outside that single point
So fervently wished forth
Of those unwilling to accept
Of imperfection or the mystery
Found in flaw. The flesh so weak

And apt to tear and stretch
Sending nerves into frenzy, perhaps
But also ecstasy. I need no tomb
Of museum exhibit life if that, indeed,
Is what is sought inside a conscious box.

A Beneficial Marriage

A reasonably romantic mind would wonder how
it is that, while we on the ground bathe
in the soaring words of our generals,
the world caves around, unsaved
by unreason, unloved in rations, digesting
only those bits watered
with feelings and logic. Since when
do unoiled machines work? And how

does that neglector of thought feed
himself? A universe in the hands of
technocrats grinds itself to grey mud while
the pastoral artist's eden starves
in love. A little change could do
you both some good; though I'd hate to
see the split of such a rigid embrace,
that dance of death
where you both look the other way.

(updated 8/24/08)

Mandelbrot, Woods

Pick up that descended leaf mottled
in golden pixels, the traces
left by forked veins. Would the caterpillar see
before his meal
the ragged edges of living green?
Those sugars later turned to dye entice
legs and legs to crawl,
for the perfect bite awaits him while
perfect cast delights me.

What fauna feasts on coiled fern
the way my eyes do? Nestled
in wet shade and spread to sun rays poked
between branch over branch above
the mosaic mirrored in the colored
leaves and holes eaten through, pierced
by sky.

Absent design, shapely accidents
layer themselves in scale; pebbles
aligned with sand to mark
an immeasurable end to land, an infinite
line with definite form
plying the space between water and air, blurring
distinction of branch and vein.

(updated 8/24/08)

Commuter Vampires

The heads found here
Bob with need of sleep
For they can't at night
Knowing what they've done
What they do and what they will
So this is their time,
When they can

Each one who sleeps well
Has plenty of time to rationalize
Their actions in bridge and tunnel
Safe at home with heavy eyes
And neglected children who
Will grow up to sleep away
Their rides the same

With Uncertainty

Last Day in Paris

at 9 a.m. the knock came thundering through the neon
flash; it had been there all night. all four hours of it.

we thought the deadline was loose and had new friends
to spend the dark with drink. how quickly to learn

otherwise and snap up. gather bags, pay and go. this was
no time for hangover. it was far too soon, far too early

for such intoxicating language in a sidestreet supermarché
buying bread and cheese and water. i think it's monday, how

many hours til the flight? god, where do we go now, up
the wind of this hill, these marble flights. does the city

glisten in the morning sun, or be it the alcohol
lulls me like the sirens back to sleep, here nestled with

my backpack on the steps of Sacre Coeur. you watched
the vendor of misspelled haiku postcards while I slept

this headache back to a dull thud. no more of the jarring
aftershocks from the morning knock on the door between my eyes.


(updated 10/29/08)