First day of the World Series, autumn hanging on, each tree seeing who can keep from being a skeleton the longest: This is when my fear of dinosaurs hits the hardest. Imagining myself as oil. The giant veined maple on the way to my son’s school like the stego’s last blooming fern. Soon the Series … Continue reading Blasting The Asteroid
They said I need to change the launch angle and split open the soil between the mound and the plate. That that could be a first step to eliminating lockjaw and cleaning up the wax out in the briar patch. Forget the moral, they announced, There are no contrails left for that And besides, the … Continue reading Barrels
I buy a fire engine just in case and look for signs of beetle kill in every tree that I climb to retreat for a while. There is something sublime about a lone red trash can filled with flames, steam wafting off tailpipes on a cold morning, the town whiskey spigot clogged and backing up … Continue reading Exhaust
Time becomes a butterfly with a broken wing humming in my hands; like it, I have been subdividing myself, dotting my poems with the blood beading on my cuticles, my mind as the land left on its own, riding out the cold. This is our hard stone over downy pillow, the mint on our palms … Continue reading Phrenospasms
This winter I’m trying to find satisfaction in scratching my back on the corner of the fireplace that I can’t repay. A solid outline could solve all my problems but out in the cold first I must learn to be disciplined enough to leave the skin on the bear. I’m calibrating this flaky disgorge; staplers … Continue reading Snow Sticks Around
Fatherhood seeds the reign of vulnerability: Steel-toe boots demand calloused but open palms, and the never-ending inning birthed a gritty bullpen. They’ve tweaked the mound but it’s always been like this. Fortunately, when clouds look like liger cubs, a maple tree can become a barrel, and is our son waiting to learn a launch angle … Continue reading Alliance
Flipping between Leno and Letterman, ironing his shirts in his boxers by the glow of far-away soundstages, periodically walking a few feet from the board to the bed to close my eyes with his hand and tell me there’s a hundred bricks all over my body – Your arms are feeling verrrry heavy and suddenly … Continue reading My Father’s Late Nights