Never say anything about the weather

If you don’t want the gods to spit freezing rain in your face.

The Center Cannot Hold

Never write There is        no real winter --
what gods persist.       will smite you with
their slick facsimile:        now a gluey rain

that by night will turn        bitter,
coat your budding world        bit by reaching bit
in frigid and         pedestrian pain ...

Pathetic fallacy.        Poetic shit.
Seasonal affective        disorder, happy switch
click. Boring, the usual        despair. Don’t explain.

At the polls again,         splintered
from neighbors        by invisible 
walls thrown up in       back rooms, contain

this thick sinking.        Just use it to fill in
all the proper dots.        Circle it into those button slits
in the white fabric        of human shame.

It’s poetry month

Time to blow the dust off the gray cells and dive into “poetry” again.

Trigger warning: it ain’t gonna be pretty this year. I’m grumpy.

I’m fearful, tired, downtrodden, pessimistic. I’m fighting against the tide.

Things Fall Apart

We’ve had no real winter. It’s a sign. Perhaps the earth
is cooking now with a billion evil passions,
each human cauldron sending its burning deep
into tree roots. The optimism I’ve tried

to whip up against these boiling passions
is melting now with the ice caps, flooding
under gnarled tree roots -- optimism breeds
fools, patsies, losers. That, at least, is what

the old ghosts tell me, icy breath melting 
the back of my neck. My ancestors are agitated.
Fools, they whisper, losers, craving the classical
dictators, the ruly frenzy of righteous mobs, iron fists

on the backs of hopeful necks. The dead patriarchs 
refuse to rest quiet; they won’t lie down again without 
a fight, the iron fist, an organized frenzy to end
in a cataclysm of epic proportions. 

I try to quiet their apocalyptic voices, each a
cauldron boiling the lava of fear and hatred
into a storm of cataclysmic proportions --
we’ve had no real winter. It’s a sign.

… and Thirty.

The First Line is the Deepest  
         -- KIM ADDONIZIO

I have been one acquainted with the spatula, 
the slotted, scuffed, Teflon-coated spatula 

that lifts a solitary hamburger from pan to plate, 
acquainted with the vibrator known as the Pocket Rocket 

and the dildo that goes by Tex,   
and I have gone out, a drunken bitch, 

in order to ruin   
what love I was given,   

and also I have measured out   
my life in little pills—Zoloft, 

Restoril, Celexa,   
Xanax.   

I have. For I am a poet. And it is my job, my duty 
to know wherein lies the beauty 

of this degraded body, 
or maybe   

it's the degradation in the beautiful body,   
the ugly me 

groping back to my desk to piss 
on perfection, to lay my kiss 

of mortal confusion   
upon the mouth of infinite wisdom. 

My kiss says razors and pain, my kiss says   
America is charged with the madness   

of God. Sundays, too, 
the soldiers get up early, and put on their fatigues in the blue- 

black day. Black milk. Black gold. Texas tea. 
Into the valley of Halliburton rides the infantry— 

Why does one month have to be the cruelest, 
can't they all be equally cruel? I have seen the best 

gamers of your generation, joysticking their M1 tanks through 
the sewage-filled streets. Whose 

world this is I think I know.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51987/the-first-line-is-the-deepest

The First Line is the Most Depressed

I wandered lonely as a cloud, mouthing
all the platitudes, not ever saying aloud

the angry half thoughts collecting in my blood.
Thus we sat together at one summer’s end, good

friends (at least on paper), and I said "Here
I am, an old man in a dry month," and you reared

up on your hind legs, yelling, "Stop all the clocks,"
and then, "cut off the phone!" I was shocked,

I tell you, and left, and then went down to the ship,
thought I'd blow this town, light out for the territories, shit

happens and then you die, & etc. Ah, rose, harsh
rose, sorrow is my own yard in spring, all marshy

and full of weeds. Better to depart. So call the roller
of big cigars, that mustachioed old baller

with the John Deere cap who shouts "The land
was ours before we were the land's!" And the band

played on. Oh, yes, my Life had stood -- a
Loaded Gun -- long before any of this madness could

fuck me into submission. And I celebrated myself,
and sang to myself, crooning "I've been away from you

a long time," and "I can't sleep at night," all the blues
fit to print. But now the thrill is gone, and memory, too.

That's what happens to a dream deferred -- it goes down
at sea in a leaky boat and you're fucking lucky if you drown.

Suggested soundtrack: John Lee Hooker.

Twenty Nine

Fire and Ice  
         -- ROBERT FROST

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44263/fire-and-ice
Those Who Favor Fire

Bob, I agree --
this world will surely end
in rampant wildfires.

Already, we're burning 
ourselves up
in secret, 

searing blue coals 
smoldering 
in our guts.

Where we depart
is in the matter 
of ice;

hatred burns as hot
as any of love's 
bonfires.

What's cold and frozen,
my friend, 
is indifference, 

spiritual Antarctica,

and that's no place
for the world's
herds of dragons,

hoarding righteous flames 
in big bellies,
guarding mountains

of gold.

Suggested soundtrack: Wilco radio.

Twenty Eight

Birds Punctuate the Days
        -- Joyce Clement

apostrophe
the nuthatch inserts itself
between feeder and pole
 
semicolon
two mallards drifting
one dunks for a snail

ellipses
a mourning dove
lifts off
 
asterisk
a red-eyed vireo catches
the crane fly midair
 
comma
a down feather
bobs between waves
 
exclamation point
wren on the railing
takes notice
 
colon
mergansers paddle toward
morning trout swirl
 
em dash
at dusk a wild goose
heading east
 
question mark
the length of silence
after a loon’s call
 
period
one blue egg all summer long
now gone

https://poets.org/glossary/haiku

the new cat shares my despair

the new black cat sits
waiting in the window for
the backyard to wake

for a week he hid
behind the furnace, afraid
of our sure attack

on the basement floor
the cold rose in me. I cried
flesh and bones melting

in February's
glacier. He will never love
us, I said. But at

last he crept out, lured
by a dancing string, by our
relentless use of

his new name, our song
of despair, and arched his back 
to my hand, answered

me with small cries like 
thin bells, rough chirps, complete 
capitulation

and now we are bound
by a wild need for touch
our darkest fears of 

being truly seen
solitary confinement
and abandonment

together we watch 
an old world stream past the glass
variations on 

a theme: winter's siege 
finally cracking, icy
rain's indifference, how 

it falls and falls on
a gray world, melting dirt down
into wormy blood

Suggested soundtrack: Robins.

Twenty Six

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

         --- EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314
the little Bird

watching at the kitchen window
we saw a spring sleek crow land
on the rotting birdhouse
where sparrows yearly build 
their nests

our new cat shivered and
stuttered on the sill
with electricity

as the big black bird 
levered a curved bill 
into the crack
at the back of the house
to shred the nest

spray it over 
the new lawn

the crow cawed and 
cracked massive wings
before plunging
again
into the tender bed

silent
we watched an egg
slip down its gullet
then another

while little brown birds
fluttered and chirped
on the wires
in the cedars
along the fence
helpless

I think I said 
something like
the circle of life 
is brutal
before I

turned away
to finish 
making lunch

Suggested soundtrack: Wagner.

Twenty Five

America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

Hunter S. Thompson
Two Hundred Million Used Car Salesmen

walk into a neighborhood bar. A guy with red hair says, 
"Barkeep, what IPAs you got on tap?" And the man
next to him, big bearded guy in a Yankees cap, sucks
down the last of his Miller Lite, pulls a Ruger from his
pants, and blasts the offending ginger in the head. 
Brain matter splatters the bartender and etc.  

Reporters have to sort out 199,999,999 stories 
before the evening news. A source close to the victim 
says that though he often extolled the virtues of 
Indie microbreweries in a "kind of bray" after midnight, 
he was essentially a good guy, never hurt no one,
so how'd he end up with a cap in his ass after
ordering a Sam Adams at Richard Cranium's Bar?

Meanwhile, police say it has nothing to do with 
race, because all lives matter (even swill-sucking 
hipster liberal lives), and also it is not true that 
the shooter was an off-duty cop who managed 
to slip away in the confusion, but that in fact 
they have no leads at this time and are not taking 
any more questions. 

NRA lobbyists argue it was not the Ruger that killed 
the redhead but the unsub's finger on the plastic 
trigger. One bad apple, that is, and not one of the
millions of decent Americans who should be able to
bear arms without submitting to invasive 
background checks, mental health records, or
ridiculous waiting periods.

A half dozen local high school students 
take to the streets in protest, forgetting homework. 
Some of them break a few shop windows. 
At least, that's what the armed out-of-town anti-
protesters say is the case when they're stopped
by the burning gas station and etc.

A lot more Americans stay home, weighing in online.
They make a lot of Chuck Norris jokes.  A meme 
goes viral: "How many Chuck Norrises does it take to
to screw in a lightbulb? / None. Chuck prefers to
kill in the dark."

Twenty Four

On Children
          --- Kahlil Gibran 

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
     And he said:
     Your children are not your children.
     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
     They come through you but not from you,
     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
     You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that 
              His arrows may go swift and far.
     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

https://poets.org/poem/children-1
Be for Gladness

Ah, my girl, 
my one deep
gladness, 
my beautiful 
bee --

I haven't said 
aloud 
(enough) 
how much I love
the bending, 

or how lucky I am 
to be your 
bow, 

launching you 
from dream
to infinity.

May you fly 
straight,
and far, 
and fast.

Twenty Three

Sad Boy's Sad Boy
        -- CHARLES BERNSTEIN

I ruin my hats and all the mat slides glad 
I hop my girls and all is skip again 
I jump I run you up inside my truck 

The car goes looping out in dark and light 
And yellow hat slides in 
I run my mats and all the girl slides glad 

I hoped you skipped me into luck 
And jump me black, ruin me glad 
I jump I run you up inside my truck 

I jump my slopes and all the dopes slide glad 
I glide my luck and all is slip again 
I jump my hopes and all the rope glides sad 

I skip you jump the way you said 
But I run old and sigh your name 
I ruin my mats and all the girl slides glad 

At least when luck hops it skips back again 
A rune my mats and all the girls slide glad 
I jump I run you up inside my truck 

                     After "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49514/sad-boys-sad-boy
Sad Not Sad Song for Missing Amy

God, I miss you, honey, and your little red car,
the bumper sticker I'd Rather Be Reading Bernstein --
& your joyful laugh. We don't know where you are.

Remember how we'd meet for poetry & coffee
in that ill-fated place across from Linda's? 
God, I miss you, Amy darling, and your little red car.

Life fucked you & you fucked it back, baby, hard.
Made 2 kids, & poetry & bird baths & children's books 
& your joyful laugh. Now we don't know where you are

because you're "dead" but I know in my bones 
you're just transformed, your energy into sun & wind
& wildflowers & God. I miss you, woman, your red cars,

those mornings of poetry & dirt dishing & friendship,
evenings with wine & poetry & above all else your giggle, your
joyful laughter. We may not know where you are now

exactly, except everywhere & inside us &
& in poetry, & memory, & stories, your family & 
God, & red convertibles, & all this missing you, lovely,
& your joyful laugh -- don't know where you are, dear,

but you ARE. You go on. & that's all that matters.