Running on emptiness
my Zen is a thin Zen
a bargain Zen
I have nothing to do with it
I turn over my sandwich
it will not last to supper
Cheerful poems
Cheerful poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
Making room
holiday eating
in the midst of the dead
a finger down his throat
brought him to life again
Morning river
the word ouch from a boat
in answer to the light
Managerial
morning at the office
dinner at the office
out back to take some air
and the moon in a bag
Tango
touch me well
till I dance without
any legs
a piece of clockwork
where a man’s age
is shown
we end in the dirt
and I like it madam
you know me
Doggone
I must take leave of myself
and go out on the land
dog like a poem
I could not contain
laughing in the midst
of a most serious mist
Notes for a postmodern sea shanty
the sea was a great horror
though of the same
mind as any
to be altered
it did not know how
to retire and live
a private life
ready for the evening
it matters
that the sea delivered
the best-spoken people
for a song
Ice king
bitter cold weather again
and me with a silver head
and a stone in my mouth
no porridge
no pork
nobody I love
but a hundred stories
and how absurd to be king
for half an hour
Parliament of fools
a parliament with a pen is
a parliament of paper
an ow comes out of each owe
how to think with no ink
Rat Snake
We were just talking about you crooked tunnel
the way you funnel your long freight up the walnut tree serpent
& glide out along one diminishing limb until you reach the roof
drop into the gutter & loop into a squirrel hole above the kitchen
We’d just found one of your old skins snagged on a thorn
I don’t think he’s coming back for it I joked
And my neighbor glances up into the tree & says
Well there he is now
And there you were son of a bitch
still & heavy as a tongue with bad news
waiting for a signal neither of us caught
to set you back into motion into path into limbless dragon
flicking your soft Y of flame
Livestock
Enormous oak
the daylight moon in its branches
a goat at its foot
Holstein with a heart
in the middle of her forehead
loves the salt lick
Horses in the shade
of a weeping willow
a cascade of piss
New Year round
first sunrise of the year
the orange bellies of the clouds
are blurry with snow
a gray squirrel in estrus trailed
by two slow-motion suitors
in the wind
above the ridge a raven
croaks & somersaults
my first piss of the New Year
I’m especially careful
distant rumble
of a military jet
it’s still the same world
windows rattle with the snoring
of a late-night reveler
I clear the cookies
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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