Happy birthday to the best boy/man ever!

This guy loves cheesy cards and making fine cuisine. He’s a kitchen singer, a fish tickler, and a goofball extraordinaire. I am DAMN LUCKY to be hitched to him for life.

And Now for Something Completely Different
or
Eclipse Birthday Poem for Dave

Nature’s celebrating you today, slipping the moon
in front of the sun, as if to somehow highlight your
inner brilliance. Because you shine, darling, blaze
in my imagination whenever I’m asked to “set an

intention” or figure out all I’m grateful for -- like our
friend Petty sort of sings, I got lucky, babe, when
I finally met you, there on the U of A breezeway, 
third time the charm. True confession: I recognized

your light from the first but refused, twice, to let it
in, suffering my own emotional eclipse, craving 
the pain of inauthenticity and rejection, closing my eyes
against unconditional connection. But here you are,

34 years later -- partner, heart, infinite source of
warmth, love, life -- never any moon between us.

but then again…

Up and down the escalator of hope and despair.

the ceremony of innocence

starts with a single clear drop, a wordless
reverberation like a clap of silent thunder 

bodiless, it can’t be conceived or heard except
as a wordless thought among thoughts

that sinks into sod, gushes into hidden springs
breaks concrete with silent menace

that evaporates into April air, to be breathed in and out
by lurking herds of wild and wordless animals

that swells polluted rivers, rushing ever south
through industrial towns stinking with silence

to find the ocean’s many mouths and tongues
ravenous for its wordless blood

and drift out to nowhere, invisible island 
where salt and sun collide in merciless silence

Spring wins

I’ve been down in the dumps, per winter, and now the earth’s movement is waking me. 

everywhere

the earth keeps shifting
inch by inch 

and here 
sun floods 

stubborn roots
loosens dirt

melts 
air and sap

wakes bulbs 
that thrust shoots 

through winter’s 
debris

everywhere 
life 

reasserts itself
despite us

Back on top for the moment

Like the weather, I think I’m a collision of beauty and terror, love and revenge.

The Blood-Dimmed Tide

recedes now into the calm breath
of a living universe, each 

atom expanding and contract-
ing with a heartbeat louder than 

love, more infinite, enduring. 
Here on the mat, molecules fall 

back into place . . . impatience, rage, 
frustration, and grief subside, settle, 

float downriver like yellow leaves 
on their way to eventual

resurrection, a string of word-
less prayers, seeds for future trees.

Grumpy gross snow day

It’s disgusting outside right now.

Mere Anarchy 

With all the ways and means we have to communicate
-- text, Google docs, f2f, IMs, class discussion, email, etc --
why do you ask me the same questions, 6 or 8
times a semester? The answer appears quadriplicate:

on the syllabus, in an email, on the freaking sign up,
in a calendar invite. I’m dizzy just reviewing it, losing
track, spinning, disintegrating, madly bringing up the
schedules, links, documents, assignments, shit!

How many times will you make me clean your electronic 
rooms? It’s right there, I bet, the info you just demanded, 
offered over a week ago, see? Lurking under ads for bionic
AI, pizza, appeals from politicians -- I’m offended

by the implication I don’t know what I’m doing. Can’t
you pay attention? Why should I be your mind and mine?
Meanwhile, my inbox explodes with redundant asks
for the same information I’ve already offloaded 4 times

into the ether. What else is the internet for? I need, like
you, to drain my brain. It’s outdated, overloaded, exploding 
into pixels and lithium fireworks. So don’t ask me to reload.
Read your email for a change. And write your own life.

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.