Flashes

We are here
to get it right
one last time

Release this bird
into the sky—
let it fly

You’re just a husk:
a vessel at best
for God

An afternoon
of gazing at faces
in the sky

For conversation
he recites
the noise in his brain

The closest we come
to utopia may be
a great night in a dance hall

The sky
through the wires
so blue

*

A middle-aged man
on a bus after work
reads the biography of a tycoon

Twirt! Twirt!
chirps the traffic
cross-signal

A gang of cops board the bus
and make passengers show
proof of payment

*

Weather
like a hovering
pregnancy

On her black shoes
white-winged
hearts

Kerouac to an audience: “You’re not listening!”
(If you were you’d be cheering!
For human hope and salvation!)


*

They live
as if there is
nothing sacred

The look
of someone
genuinely gentle

How often
we forget
we’re breathing

Everyone here
is equally
present

The air
is thick
with souls

Who got sucked
down another
bad path

I just need
to breathe
among you

*

A sip
of water and a breath
of air

Summer afternoon:
long shaking shadow of a tree,
breeze on a glowing lawn

Trying to
remember a bad
dream

He stalked
out of the office
in a gale of expletives

Every damned place we’ve lived
was made without a thought
for our lives

*

Watching Las Vegas
from an airplane at night:
a forest of lights

Nice nipples
on that
mannequin

Latin trumpet blare:
raucous, raw
and sad

The kee-TOK kee-TOK
kee-TOK syncopation
of a pingpong ball in play

*

A bird
like a bee—
tiny whirling blur

Summer’s start:
each day less
snow on the mountain

Heaven
in the scent
of wild strawberries

A face
muscular
from smiling

Long eucalyptus leaves
shivering
in cold wind

Made up face
gazing
at a magazine

Mechanical wind
from an underground
train

Shopping mall:
alone
among products

An integrity down to
what you do
with your eyes

Happiness is
a full-time, all-the-time, lifetime
job

*

Almost always
the answer
is you

That child
can go in so
many directions

These rotten old
husks of houses
—like toothaches

On the dunes
two human silhouettes
against an orange sky

*

A wide-winged hawk
gliding
on the wind

Salt clouds
in churned
sea water

A morning spent
gazing
at captive animals

Slim young mom
with metallic
nasal voice

Youngsters
streaking by
on skateboards

I asked myself
does grass
mind being walked on?

Swirling clouds
of slim silver
anchovies

A child’s
apocalyptic
tantrum

Some freak daisy
lies down
with the lions

After the meeting
I felt like I had
a hangover

*

Christmas: crushed
candy cane on the floor
of a bus

Cold burning
dry ice shriek
of police sirens

His white head droops
like a broken bloom
when he remembers what he said

An old apple tree
rotting on the frozen lawn
of an old mansion

Vision is revealed
to us gradually,
in glints and flashes

Days when
not one face
holds any gentleness

Willowy delicate
girl with heaving
pregnant belly

*

City:
not a tree
in sight

We all fall
like leaves
soon

A bird circles
over low rows
of white waves

Our lives
speed by—
enjoy the ride!

A blue fish
with a face
of a puppy

Gate after
gate after
gate

*

Stranded
in the middle
of the street

I killed a fly
when I waved it
outside

We all wore plastic
identification tags
at our waists and necks

Humiliating your reality
with an ideality
dreamed in art

The calm beyond
that first flash of flesh,
the hum behind the noise

*

Dead flesh on your plate
inconveniencing you
with its bones

A cat
a rose
of an animal

Every one at the party
acting
like a television set

Breathing
with flittering birds
over a trickling stream

This sad business,
he thought,
and parked the car

Gossips jitter right
out of him;
he’s like a glass of ice

*

The Great Human Party!
(his eyes smiled)
You Are Invited!

Only those whose
lives are lies
laugh like that

From finished product
to work-in-progress
in a crash of a flash

Stern faces
waiting for a train
to take them to work

A mother-to-be
self-importantly
wielding her pregnancy

A guy
who closed his eyes
among us and breathed

*

The sad
planet of his
head

Black cat
huddled like a
shadow on the floor

A car
a rolling
bubble

Lush white
bird on a wet
black branch

Breathing with the
awareness of being
surrounded by gases

Poor people
turned into billboards
by free clothing

Her brilliant
healthy snow white
moon tan

Trees snowing white
petals on the green
park lawn

*

Ellipses
in parentheses:
"me"

Youth: an anxious constant
preparing for something
that doesn't exactly arrive

A gull
combing the wind
with its wings

His face
before he was born
is the sky

Their old ways,
their distances
measured in days

The train’s steel wheels
scrape steel rails
like screaming skeletons

Just another person
going through her day
buying more milk and toilet paper

A cat
purring like
a teapot

To through
yoga know
cosmic consciousness

All the old truths apply:
Stand up straight!
Suck in your gut!

A jetplane chasing
the sinking red sun
across a massive continent

Message of soul:
life is sad
but that's all right

A cat
vigilant
with its ears

A graveyard
bathed in early
morning sunlight

The breathing tide
of a distant
highway

More complications
= more possible
soul

*

Sprawl of a city
at night: flowering
field of light

Almost getting a
hard-on from greasy bikini
beer ads in the liquor store

Evening sky:
grey death
with a wisp of rose

City:
the sadness of
a million lives

The tide sliding
on the floor of the shore,
reaching the weeds at the sand's end

The goal the need the dream:
to recognize that sad aching nerve
at the soul of everything

*

A cat
like a drop
of ink on a stoop

The wind wanes:
a STOP sign
stops shaking

A lonely woman's
pregnant belly:
sad progress of the world

Ah,
life:
berries

The chingle chingle chingle
of keys
in a jogger’s pocket

Whisky:
proof that life
is tragic

The blurred wall
of another train
passing your passing train

The incomprehensible
architecture of a lighted
superhighway at night

A television newscaster’s
mywholelifeisalie
voice

A little white sprinting red
tongue panting dog with
splashing tassle tail

The sour powdery
smell of an old
person

Sushi:
food
jewelry

Here the clocks
have gears:
are mechanical

The sting of the
sun on your skin
by the sea

The newly built
buildings block
the mountains

People’s hateful appraisals
of other people’s
clothes

Roses like an election:
hollering red faces splayed
in different directions

Thinking
through scraps of a
beer-bombed brain

The wet hiss
of rubber wheels
on asphalt

The hollering
sex of a
flower

Wind
like a wall
of water

Mafia wives
chained
in gold

The cat sits
like a fact
on the couch

Shlapping
around in the rain
in sandals

He grins through
a jagged fence
of tombstone teeth

A twilit
sky of
flaming foil

Air Force:
fill the sky with
grinding noise

I stood
and stared
at a star

These thoughts are
just a hum
behind my eyes

A loose power wire
wags in the wind
at head height

His eyes
like a leering
lion’s

A thermal-suited
dude on the beach
thumbing a digital device


.