Poem Written the Evening Before a Spent Satellite is Scheduled to Hit the Earth

The giant red clown-nose
of the rising sun
leaves the hills behind
as the century begins
with a botched punchline.

We drive past a crowd
of animal rights activists
chanting and waving placards
outside the rubber chicken factory.

The internet warns us of
a giant custard cream pie
hurtling through space on
a collision course with earth.
Or maybe it's a meteor.
The scientists are uncertain
and, in fact, seem more than
a little intoxicated. 

God sheepishly staggers back to the bar,
asks if he can use the phone,
says, "I can't believe I did this, but
I locked my keys in the car again..."

Nightmares of a Giant Hand Clutching a Shoe (Polyphylla Decemlineata)

A light sleeper, she awoke to the thud 
of a heavy bug hitting the floor

to land on its back, all legs wildly churning.
What makes such an insect lose its grip?
Now that I think about it, how did it ever

cling to the ceiling in the first place?
She didn’t bother to ask, but let loose a wild shriek, 
flipped the bedside garbage bin to trap 
the creature underneath, careful not to squash it,
being even more afraid of squirting out its insides 
than of being bitten, or even just brushed by
a flailing leg, a madly waving antenna. 
She shuddered just to imagine that tickle on your skin,
and summoned me to dispose of the intruder. 
 I think it hissed at me, she said. 
June beetles tend to do that when threatened, 
I said, explaining that the sound 
comes not from its mouth but from air forced 
from its body by its vibrating wings. 
They’re harmless, though. Isn’t that 

fascinating? I asked her. 

Kill it, she said. 

A few days later, she shook me awake 

in the middle of the night. Look, she bawled. 

There’s another one. 

Another appeared the following night, 

and two more over the weekend. 

The cat must be bringing them in, she decided; 

she’d shut all the windows, and the beasts 

were too huge to slip in through the cracks of the old house.

I patiently deported each one, carrying them

across the street to release into the neighbor’s hydrangeas. 

The ones that had died in captivity, I took 
into the basement, put them in jars on a shelf 
where you wouldn't see them. 

By the end of the summer I had collected enough

to create my own suit of beetle armor. 

I glued the striped shells all over my jacket, 

then eyed the ceiling, wondering if, 

since I was now part bug, 

I might be able to cling upside down from it. 

I cracked my knuckles, flexed my fingers, 

and stretched my hands toward the wall...

And it worked! 
I scrabbled up to the ceiling 

and scurried happily around the light fixture.

Unlike the sulky Mr. Samsa, I was delighted

by my transformation. However, 
no sooner had I begun to enjoy 
my upside-down existence

than I felt myself losing my grip 
and I fell, landing on my back on the floor, 

legs wildly churning as I tried to right myself. 

The light was shut out by the garbage can
she slammed down over me.

I scrabbled at the metal sides but the can 

was too heavy to lift. I cried out for her

but all she heard was a hissing, 

like air forced from beneath the striped shells 
of a scared scarab's wings. 

Low Country Boil (Frogmore Stew)

"To rescue the banal is every lyric poet's ambition" -Charles Simic

Advice for young poets, novice prospectors: 
when you're sifting through the litterbox,
you shouldn't be surprised if you find 
something other than gold.

I skipped another high school reunion this summer,
and I finally understood what they say about time 
seeming to speed up as you get older: 
the last ten years felt a fraction as long 
as the decade preceding them.
It would have been interesting to rehaunt my old 
swampy hunting grounds. When I think of all the years 
I spent wallowing in that greasy creek,
or kneeling on its slimy banks, hoping to snag something 
other than stunted crayfish and rusted Schlitz cans, 
when I think of all the time I wasted 
thinking I could, indeed, rescue the banal 
from where it festered in the mud, in the funk...

Maybe I just didn't have what it took, maybe this
just wasn't what I was meant to do, to be. Though
to be honest, I haven't come up with anything better yet.
Here I am, rattling toward middle age and still
cobbling things together, whacking nails 
into planks of knotty pine too waterlogged 
for the fire, still chucking stems and rinds 
and bits of gristle into the pot,
into this half-baked mess of my life
set on permanent simmer, always just shy
of coming to a full boil. Here I am, 
still supergluing the cracked sporks 
and laying them out alongside 
the duct-taped Styrofoam cups.
I fill the cups with murky cocktails 
stirred together from the dregs 
of every dusty bottle behind the bar. 

Still I dip my spoon, slurping up the slop,
wondering what the chances are of coming across
a jewel slipped from its fitting, some stray gold nugget
dropped by some molar-splitting miracle 
into the broth.

Visual Poem found at the bus stop

MULTI-TASKING PHARMACISTS

LOST LITTLE QUILT

BALLOONS WITH OLIVE ROOTBEER

Roaster

Your stiff body is tipped into the chute
and carried swiftly along on the conveyor belt.
Your shiny flesh crackles,

parasols catching your dripping fat

which turns their paper skins translucent
just before they burst into flame.

There are precious x's stitched in gold 
across both of your eyes.
Every hair smolders, a field of smoking wicks,
and then you crumble.

And then comes the waiting room, 
the decompression chamber, the firing range.
Your new body, less substantial but more durable,
gets put through its paces:

every time you get punched in the stomach 
you sprout a set of wings, and every time 
you get a blow job, those same wings

get sucked right back into your body again. 

Afterwards, you balance, exhausted,

on the thin icy blue balls of heaven

in an endless, airless hallway 

where you pray for a fire to warm your hands.

But there's no oxygen here to allow anything to burn.

You look down at all those devils sizzling down there

and say to them Look, kids, you don't know

the first thing about suffering.

Beside you, the saints shiver in their bathrobes,

wondering how much trouble they'd really be in

if they shot down a cherub or two and plucked

their feathers to stuff downy comforters 
for themselves so they can finally get some shut-eye.

You weep yourself to sleep, or maybe just slip into 
a frostbitten delirium, and some old guy wraps 
his beard around you like a scarf and tells you 
that when an angel cries, the tears sear the earth, 
carving channels through the rock 
 and seeping down to the molten core

of the planet, where they cause

a series of explosions that send magma

shooting up to the surface in a spray 
of sizzling droplets. Look, he says,

and when you wake up, it’s true,
that very thing he said would happen, is,

and you lean over and burn your lips on the burning,
bubbling fountain of molten flame.

Filled with new heat, blood burning through your veins,
you cram your hooves into golden sandals, tuck your tail up

under your robes, cram your halo on
over your horns, then turn and kiss
the virgin on the cloud beside you goodbye,

slipping her a bit of scalding tongue 
before spreading your hairy wings 
and swooping down...

Partisan Musth

They trumpet and rage and gnash their teeth, 
and wildly thrash their trunks,

these once peaceable behemoths, 
now busy hurling their bulks about 
like wrecking balls crashing through the tent pole forests,

threatening to pull the big top down with their tusks. 
In the past, mad pachyderms were shot at once,

decreed too dangerous to perform their tasks.

But now we cower before these fake Ganeshas 
who tower over us. We are afraid of being trod upon; 
we, their mousy steeds, their Mooshikas,

who have carried them this far, only to be crushed

in a fit of pique incomprehensible

to creatures more emotionally stable, more sensible.

We should consider doing what they do in India,

where elephants are still considered useful,

and tie them up and let them starve 
for several days until the fever passes.

Next election, consider risking the kicks 
and stand behind the asses.

Rod McKuen

With the sound of rustling paper, 
the waves curl into ever tighter scrolls.
It’s a good thing I don’t live by the sea;

I’d no doubt become one of those

beachcomber poets,

writing paeans to harbor seals and lighthouses,
pondering the twisted mysteries of driftwood

and the teeming wonder of tide pools,
the ocean’s incessant hiss pulverizing my words
into a flat expanse of bland, featureless glass.
No, I only visit the ocean every couple of years,

and only for a day or two, just long enough
for the novelty to wear off, long enough
to let the wind ruffle my hair and scour

my lungs with salt, just long enough

to be grateful to live somewhere shady and quiet,

somewhere that doesn’t stink of fish.

Cobble Beach

On a tip from the waitress at the cute little

fancier-than-we’re used-to restaurant on the bay,

when we’re done eating the cheapest thing on the menu

and watching the trawlers chug out to sea, my mother and I

speed out to Yaquina Head, eager to see the tide pools

and the things that might be creeping about in their depths. 

A guard booth stands beside the winding road 
that leads to the beach, but this late in the day
no one is stationed there. A sign states 
that the entrance fee to the park should be placed 
in an envelope and slipped through a slit

in the door:“We operate on the honor system.”

My usually honest mother shocks me 
by gunning the engine

and zooming through without paying.
 
We park beside the lighthouse that stands

silhouetted against the setting sun

like the picture on the cover of some

religious tract or self-help tome.

The air is golden but a burning-cold wind runs its nails

through the Queen Anne’s lace bowing just beyond the guardrails.
The panoramic view of the cove is postcard-perfect.

We tramp down a steep flight of wooden stairs

to the base of the cliffs where a curly-haired college girl

huddles with a paperback, poorly paid to keep watch 
over the pools of  invertebrates exposed 
by the retreating  tide.
The rocks are round and smooth as Spaldeens,
heavy and black and knocking loose beneath our feet.

We slide carefully down to the water’s hem,

the high crags behind us shielding us from the lashing wind.
Yellow plastic signs mark the boundaries beyond which
you’re not permitted to venture.
 
Rocky outcroppings jut from the water just off shore,

clusters of boulders whitewashed with gull droppings,

constantly massaged by the waves’ gentle lapping.

My mother points to one of these tiny islands and says

she thinks she sees a bunch of white seals out there.

I laugh at her, prepare to mock her failing eyesight, 
then realize she’s right; lounging about on the rocks

are a dozen or so seals, whiter than soap or bleached bone,

white as roly-poly little ghosts.

They are too far out. I want them to swim to shore,

want to be able to stand a few steps away from them,

want an encore of the performance at the bird enclosure

at the aquarium earlier that day,

where a common murre waddled right up to me,

cocked its head and looked as if to pierce my shoe 
with its sharp, black beak 

before turning around and diving into the pool,

where it swooped for a long, long time beneath the surface  

like an aquatic bat snapping up sardines.

I don’t need to touch these creatures,

but I feel a strange need to be noticed by them,

as if I don’t fully exist until seen by some wild beast.

My mother’s concern, however well-intentioned,

is not enough, nor smiles from pretty strangers

clutching paperbacks. No, I want that connection

to some animal, something alive but non-human,

something aside from the pulpy lime-green anemones

and purple starfish clinging desperately

to the rocks at my feet. I want to be

acknowledged by these plump Buddhas,

white as ivory, with black eyes and noses,

lounging contentedly on their island,

still as statues as they bask

in the golden glow of enlightenment.

I want them to bestow upon me their blessing.

But we are too far away for them to pay us any mind.

And so, after spying on them for a time,

distant worshipers, we grow bored,

and when the girl tramps out to collect the yellow signs

and chase away the few human stragglers

we clomp up the steps (where signs admonish us

not to take home any cobbles)

and shiver, exposed once more to the cutting wind,

then drive back to the warm motel room,

from the window of which

we can just barely catch,

burning red with the sunset,

a glimpse, a tiny sliver, of the sea.

Pinch Hitter

A kid in a faded Spider-man t-shirt

catches flies popped
by his wiffle-bat wielding father
in the middle of a balding field
behind the muffler repair place.
A robot of welded-together car parts
stands sentinel on the roof, 
tailpipe arm frozen mid-wave.
One warm night the boy and his friends 
scaled the dumpster behind the building 
and from there scrambled onto the roof

(its tarpaper littered with lost Spaldeens and frisbees),

where they proceeded to drape a jacket

and a baseball hat on the robot.

It's still thus adorned, a scarecrow 
overlooking the street. The mechanics 
find it amusing, not least because the boss doesn't,

keeps telling them to climb on up there

and strip it back down to a metal skeleton.

The boy smiles whenever he happens to glance at it,

silhouetted against the late afternoon sun.

His father doesn't notice it at all, lost

in a swirl of grim static emanating from somewhere else.

The only thing connecting the man and the boy
is the trajectory of the ball, an invisible arc

traced through the blinding summer sunlight.
The father doesn't talk, just keeps thwocking
those hollow balls into orbit. 

Thrusting up his glove, the boy makes a tiny, idle wish.

Later that evening, the cicadas' song is interrupted

by a clanking and scraping, as something pulls itself loose

and runs across the field, skirting the ditch full of tires

and spiderwebbed windshields at its far end.

The next morning the boy inadvertently sleeps in,

accustomed to being barked awake and bullied

into his clothes. The house does not smell

like coffee. He creeps

down the carpeted hall to his father's room, stopping

and standing very, very still

when he sees the puddle of rust seeping

from under the door.