I’ve been banging my sore fingers
on this keyboard more than forty
years now and can still hardly carry a
tomb or remember many standards
and was never good with theory or
practice and one sour slip can send me
spiraling away from melody
for millennia and maybe
history or the twisted strands
that compile me or is this just mask and
pantomime I bleed to move on
now and clear friends of the past know
I will smile at the songs we shared and
no there never was an accordion
Tag: fingers
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More errors squashed found squashed
then more of more of the same and by this
point in the story you’re looking
for the restroom while nodding politely
but this little fire you’ve changed theflint kept her fueled and ready but hope to
of course the yoke left a deep mark
the fingers then got confused wrong
words stumble out needing mendingand you no longer yearn for that
historic restaurant where once
your teeth ground through a heavy sky butit has air conditioning and is not
affiliated with many poor choices
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Why can’t I just say it
plain why are there so many
modifiers on this bright
morning of single digits the
dog imitates a restless seaat various locales as she
wishes while darkness sparkles and
each is questioned and crumbles
my fingers slowly covered inspots will lunch be any good is
it too early to give up and
have a smoke too late to burn mystuff and start again too late blinded
by the icicle’s gleaming drop
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It’s just the little lighthouse keeper who
notices and tries to raise some kind kind
of alarm but with arms weak from bad and
bad sleep, cheap food, gives up & decides to
stroll those sentimental streets where gangs ofrival lawyers perform intricate
dances to win the most flavorsome of
clients though all the clouds here smell of sweat,
ketchup, and fermented fish but thesedays while dining we encounter
foul stained fingers in our pies as
markets grow cold and distant in the dawnI didn’t understand his last email
but did you see those girls who just walked by
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Sonnet
in what may have been a park weeds
without flowers climb white clouds cling
to the mountain an open wound
that won’t stop oozing broken mouths
growl in rusted junk chain-link yardsthe town gets smaller with every
breath though they never think to bite
the hands that keep them in cages
while kids throw stones at a hornet’s
nest dream of pills and lotterywins and the dog no longer feels
the chain that choked his younger daysand those who ran away still see
themselves mirrored in cracked black stone
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Sonnet
skimmed emails we deleted too quickly
may have mentioned the forest of bright spears
and ships ready to launch, but once we saw the
reports on the quarterly report from
Ichthyosaur & Associates we
had no doubt what they were up to with those
color-shifting lobbyists and gift baskets
reeking of brine and though they wrote of missed
opportunities no one missed the flotsam
flecked with blood, tossed by ceaseless waves that could
break on our belovèd beans just learning
to climb towards those heavy clouds pierced by sun—he stopped, mumbled something roses fingers
dawn and walked away from the empty chairs
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Sonnet
with what time is left listen to
air conditioners drop drop drop
on the used tea bag of summer
while the waves of heat hit you on
uneven shards of sidewalk—though
later perhaps you’ll find some sweet
solitude and dream some drip could
bring a forgotten bloom or rare
herb back but the brink keeps creeping
and that green shade so far away—
so retreat to concrete above
the noise but not the heat and make
a quiet in which your fingers
if nothing else may sprout some leaves
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before the day when the day if
but today
let a song slip through your fingers
find that last breath
barreling toward some release but
the sand in your
shorts the ice cream begins to melt
for a second
you forget that this is the way
the world moves and
that’s not
quite it either there was a kind
kind of light maybe
it falls and smalls and
smaller the world
spins people go
to parks interviews
you hear a voice
but the words garbled
maybe with a
little work but
that’s how it all
starts again freed
from one hole
you fall in another
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a nest feathered with fingers sticky from pulling out your eyes
(First published in Under the Basho.)
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before sleep
little storms in my jawbone
squirrels in my fingerson which the secret fall
falls onwillows and other
memories sold
the fairy tale homea trail of stars
to shelter fresh
organs made of glasswho needs all this change for the
better bury me in styrofoamthe song crickets compose ever new light blue stars
other animals 