I use this page to post a variety of pieces, both those just out of the sluice, and older pieces that feel fresh to me at the moment. I generally keep them up for a month, or a few at the most.

Look for new poems (and more) at the start of each month.

Samara Samsara   (from Mammal, new in February)

Mammalian Dilemma   (from Mammal, new in February)

Sun Sonnet   (from Mammal, new in February)

Poem for Andy Clausen on His 80th Birthday   (new in January)

Sonnet for Steve Who Is Ageless   (new in January)

Overcome   (new in October)

.

~ ~ ~

.

.

This fine February of 2024, I’m featuring a few teaser poems from my recently collection Mammal, which was published by Roof Books in October. Like ’em? Click on Mammal for more info, including who to purchase a copy of your very own. You’ll find three mammalian pieces below. Here’s the first.

.

SAMARA SAMSARA

.

leaves the tit for oblivion, off into
whatever it is, don’t fuck with me
I know your words are fatuous,
how free she feels, unbound
and flowing like life—is it a moment,
is it eternity—breathes all the air
as it breathes her, nothingness mama,
forever ash and seed, winged womb,
matriarch—you sing a well-wrung tithe
that rings us as the elm rings itself,
staying a moment, then leaving, staying, then
we all ask at once: how can we live with vicissitude,
how can we plunge into dark, how can we be
while sliding away, how can we be at all?
Don’t tell me what I am. You’re wrong.

.

.

(back to top)

.

Here’s Teaser Poem #2 from Mammal.

.

MAMMALIAN DILEMMA

.

A wondrous bungle reaps the royal rump:
a beaming lump of ectoplasm sings
the praises of a newborn ring of gunk
that spawns a new regime, a culture e’en.
O give us spleen enough to hump the Dog
of Night that holds us down in Lizard Town,
mewling and praying in our goat-hair suits to take
another gobble of the randy cake.
Sweet rake, you know not whence your genes protrude
into the arching day, nor how to ride
the psi-ing wave, nor which bright spark to rude
in perfect rhythm on the blooming world—
and yet I love you more than worms aspire,
just as my love makes our disease more dire.

.

(back to top)

.

And a third a final piece from Mammal, right here for you on the Fresh Words page.

.

SUN SONNET

.

A naked tree can tell us everything:
chained to the earth, grappling with sky,
we flaunt our imperfections in the rain
as budding eyes. Craven and verklempt,
it’s all we can to writhe, stolidly, fatefully
arching vesicles toward luscious liquid,
saturated air, toward instant light.
And in the wind, twisting, clattering arms,
we find the flexibility of heart
to wind us for the true imbroglio,
the quickening. Oh yes, you know you know:
what roots you have, not disparate, reclaim
the mortal trunk we have and have again,
pulled upward, out, beyond our living ken.

.

.

(back to top)

.

.

I must be getting up there. Evidence: I found myself writing poems for two different old friends on the occasion of their 80th birthdays. Or maybe I just know old people. Anyway, here’s one for Andy Clausen.

.

POEM FOR ANDY CLAUSEN ON HIS 80TH BIRTHDAY

.

O you lion, you crash a sprung gate
with kairotic eye, glimmer monger,
mongrel cloud, you trip a raucous roar
that parses monks. Lift, inchoate lake,
and kindly shatter us again amidst
the foundscape of your senses so we may
build our cells from magma in the dawn.
We’ll never know what fire burns your short hairs,
alley cat, muse shredder, but we can hope
that you will singe us with your unrepentant shine
and sing the world over the next horizon
to a whorled expanse of murmurating wings.
Make us dance, shimi shimi, make us fling.

.

.

(back to top)

.

Another birthday boy this fall was Steve Arntson, a Bay Area poet and road warrior who is also Steven Cosgrove, classical pianist, and who is generally just Steve, ready to rant beauty at the drop of a hat.

.

SONNET FOR STEVE WHO IS AGELESS (I MEAN EIGHTY)

.

My dear Steve A & C of vast repute ~
what business do you have calling yourself
obtuse? Does summoning denseness somehow root
the you that tantalizes gravity
with every turn? What biz, I ask, O elf
of geographic splay, intransigent newt
of air: O merchant of the breeze, you see
wind grazing slopes and hawk it to the brute
melee we call humanity, night-thick
and wounded in our beds while you traverse
the transcendental universe in verse
and key, a sheer and road-blessed lunatic
driving and driven to outrace the entropy
and grace us with your scape and symphony.

.

(back to top)

.

A piece from the August On26 generative writing session. This one needed more work than “ghost”, which appears below. It might, in fact, still need work, but I’m inclined to share it anyway. Some kinda grumpy sonnet or another.

.

OVERCOME

.

Can you hear me above the winds of this century
as shucks of sugar cane lash at your ears?
Can you see me through the haze of production
stamping meadows into mountains of junk?
Can you touch me through the deadening sludge
of media melding the mesmerized mind?
Can you smell my sweat through the stench of the sickbed
where civilization lies picking at sores?
Can you taste my flesh as you tenderly kiss me
amidst the bombardment of sensory scree?
Can we actualize our human potential
in this stampede of rampant humanity?
What days we have, what hours to breathe
as we tend these small flames in the wild.

.

.

(back to top)

.

.

(back to top)

.

.

.

(back to top)

.

.

.

(back to top)

.

.

.

(back to top)

.

.

.

(back to top)

.

.

.

(back to top)

.

.

.

.

(back to top)

(back to top)

(back to top)

(back to top)