Long Npr Poems

All this long week
of early spring head colds
our National Public Radio informants
and performers,
speakers and listeners,
have been about the business of raising capital investments
preferably in their corporate direction,
to support further public broadcasting
for the benefit of our...

Read More

I am struggling
to avoid that "I told you so"
mean
and self-congratulatory voice.

I do feel under-appreciated
but I don't feel any happiness
about the Virus
as vindicator of my beliefs
about the political and economic power
of public health and safety platforms,
which...

Read More

My favorite radio show
is Wait...Wait, Don't Tell Me!
on NPR near you.

But, it has bothered me,
over the years,
a snagging voice in sign-off background,
threatening the host will see me again next week,
as if that was the answer...

Read More

“Liber Novus”


Life is read
it bleeds continually
we simply need to stop
and breathe forgive

ourselves for tripping
over misspent thought
too caught up and enraptured 
in the chapters we imagine

we always dream
best beginnings
and tidy arduous ends
unicorns in black matter

Life is...

Read More

“Soul Cry”



Yeezy you da best
Not ice cold soulless 
You gotta big heart
Wanna be next U.S. Pres'
You now swingin' with da rest
with your delusional pal 
That Humpty Dumpty 
gonna have a big fall
One messy cracked 
bad...

Read More

I'm returning home
from a bag it yourself grocery,
and listening to an African-American novelist
respond to questions,
actual open-ended real NPR questions,
like old school inquisitive journalists once asked
before the polarizing days and nights
of fake right/wrong answer questions
and their...

Read More

 This should be read as though sung as a Country Western song

I searched the junk food aisle 

And the basin of a bowl (looked real, real hard there)

I learned that the whiskey bottle beer...

Read More

I am reading Wendell Berry stories
again,
still,
today.

And notice
over these past several weeks
he unfolds two bipolar themes.

Berry is,
was,
a cooperative Southern neighborhood farmer
of organic hospitality.
His protagonists grow on multigenerational farms
as Berry grows into writing while farming,
thereby farming readers
co-investing...

Read More

On a sunny morning in September 1984
My mom’s best friend Linda drove to the grocery store
With her four-year-old daughter Becky in tow
Listening to the radio, Becky amused herself in the back seat, looking out the...

Read More

My friend and I were talking about the weather and how it relates to his business. He said, "This time of year, my life is all about leaves".  I said, "That would make a...

Read More

Asked an NPR journalist
of U.S. soldiers
damaged in Afghanistan
direct fire
for one hundred everydays,

"Was it worth it?"

"I can't answer that question."

She asks more hesitantly again
of another veteran,

"Was it worth it to you?"

A good soldier,
"I can answer that...

Read More

Das Don doth debilitate democracy
driving a collateral wedge
deliberately dividing differences
collaborating, collapsing, and collaring
disparity amidst ever
increasing homogenization

extant within contiguous United States
across world wide web for that matter
attested by increased
spike among multiracial
amalgamated enclaves, individuals mixing,
where preponderance of...

Read More

Who were you today, 
at your best moments?

Grouchy hermit
already missing quality dream times
and rhythms
when chimes greet pre-light's crust frosty dawn,
to get Yang, then Yin, up and out of our sangha,
ready to enter their own daytime...

Read More

Dear Lady,

I heard you say that you still trust President Trump
to do almost as good a job as he says he is doing,
despite all the lies,
because "they all do that",
just say whatever the audience of...

Read More

the god particle concedes to a universal mass
as predictably, it announces its presence
taking the holy sacrament from under its glass
beliefs from before so consigned obsolescence

we now think we know - no...really, we do
how the universe...

Read More

for Malala Yousafzai

A mere demigod won't do
to feel the fear that
a young woman, a little girl
can put into a righteous man

Horrific are the thinly educated
some holy book might have related
if thought of by the deity...

Read More

The Dilettante Diaries: "In Stasis, Black Iris"



Oriental Lily's 
Stamen bleeds 
blush ochre dust
like icing sugar
duelling tongues
sweet captive 
musk

over stagnant 
white pure perfume
Stains soft feather fingerprints 
sweet bruises across warm velvet skin 
imprints a new story
a...

Read More

I was listening to NPR yesterday
on my way to small green group ministries,
when I heard post-millennial Republicans
favor apartheid
while the contemporary urban-green Democrat
favors laziness.

I don't know if this includes intellectual laziness,
lack of rigor,
and laziness about ecotherapeutic...

Read More

…thirteen miners…
…only one survived… 
…still clinging to life...  
...with a history of violations...
It wasn’t West Virginia. 
It was I.
And I’m taking the day off. 
I know it won’t rhyme, 
But I’ve been pummeled.
Run through...

Read More

To Philip Lavine (1928-2015 USA) 


I saw the announcement.
The one of your passing.
It’s just that it came to me
among all other messages,
one that said you had left for
other lands,
but I did not stop
to look at...

Read More

pale pink is the pre-dawn sky
"pink sky in mourning..."
today will be a pre-proceeding
- for some it will be the same
for some it will purvey monumental,
tsunamic, quaking, flashing innocence
as a muffled buzzing and pounding followed
by eerie...

Read More

one short score and five ago
it wasn't so - that streams
flowed in airless wires

that Dolby heard symphonic
on hand phones was absurd

that art could be a part of everyone's day
meals smartly delivered - have it your...

Read More

in her people’s wisdom,
The author said,
"No Native language has
a cognate for “human” as
separate from other beings."
The NPR interviewer sighed and
became excited by the unity
of all things and the serenity
implied in this foreign paradigm.

I’ve read enough...

Read More

dismissively lined as "dented and painted"
protesting violence and raping of women 
those self-appointed, oh holy and sainted
can we turn another cheek and forgive them?

to relate to another with an iron-bar
to relate to another with utter...

Read More

These old bodies,
Clutched
Like paper bags
Full of food,
Soaking wet
In a steady rain,
The bottom falling out,

Sent
Into the parking lot
Leaning
On
The wobbling heels,
The wheels of shopping carts.

You see,
The doctor’s office had been moved
To the shopping center
Next to Kroger
For optimal...

Read More