Leap day

Leaping laggards,
we lag the leapers
leaping, we

A suburban street scene

This stack of bricks
sticks out a lonely branch
but it can’t stanch
the sadness trickled by
a sickle moon
for the rushed raccoon crushed
to the pavement

Don't think

See that tree
looking angry with broad
and black arms
low and at the ready
to barge in?
It’s there, but put out your
cigarette
and don't think about it.
What I tell

you not to, you know you’ll
do, so think
instead of the black-white
woodpeckers
who hang at bird feeders
upside down
and who sound like squeak toys.
Now don't think
about them, how they might

scar happy
trees with arms raised to blue
and a sense
of distance. While your heel
scuffs the butt
out on the walk, you won’t
be thinking
about the angry tree
before you.

Two-timing you, but for a good cause

I've begun blogging at another site, but that doesn't mean my heart isn't in this relationship any more. I'll still be versifying life here, but I'm doing some more prosaic work over at the blog for NICODA (the New International Center for Diverse Artists). NICODA is organizing an arts festival entitled "How We Are Connected" to take place this fall in Queens. I could tell you more about it, but why not go read the full story on their blog? Here's a snippet. You can click the title to read the full post.

How We Are Connected: The revelations of art and science

... Using the Genographic Project as inspiration, “How We Are Connected” (HWAC), an arts festival organized by the New International Center of Diverse Artists (NICODA) is trying to uncover similar connections, but from a cultural perspective. The HWAC project integrates theatre, dance, music, and multi-media from a broad range of artists, all responding to the deep inter-connectedness put forward by the science at the heart of the Genographic Project.

Not only does HWAC provide insight into the ways the modern and ancient forces of migration, both voluntary and forced, have contributed to the mixing of cultures and the interchange of different forms of expressions, but it also allows us to trace back the paths of development for each of those art forms and see how they’ve influenced each other as they matured together. ...

Inspired by true events

I’ve read the news, and its red
with painted lip prints, and the stain
of stranger thumbprints. They’re not
mine. Neither of them. They belong,
lip and thumb, paint and stranger,
singularly to those others who don’t
read or write such things. They may
bleed, them, but the blood isn’t red,
or crimson, or cardinal, or scarlet.
Pick a shade of red, and it isn’t that,
at least not until it’s too, too late
to stanch. The bully’s standard is to take
it all, all of it except the fall crisp that led
into this strangely warmer winter. I took it,
and I saved it in my bones to prepare,
but the cold didn’t come. Not like we
were used to. I’m told the bully wears
what he takes with a dashing style. See it,
that royal blue that outfits him? The flowing
robes? The gold. I’ve been robbed. We have
been. Not of things, but of a view. A view
with no room for us in its downside-up
very periscope-unlike perspective.
There’s no upside to the up-down
and just around the corner trips
I take. To the grocer. To the bar. To
the five and dime. It’s fattened up
to a dollar. And the slimming newsprint
costs more than what I get
without the paper. I don’t
get it, not the print, not the paper, not
the red lip prints, not the thumbprints
left by strangers, not the news
I’ve read and I’m reading.

Neologist

The accentric in me wants
to pronounce it
unclude
and to show you

Black Stork

Happy Birthday Jill

Oh, how at ten-o-six
pee-em o’clock, three tens
and a pack of five years
ago, a bounteous-
ly boughed world, filled with so
much love, beauty and grace-
fulness got more gracious
still, and its lively gifts
more exceptionally
exquisite with her birth.

Fun with fruit

What's wanting

So, why won’t you,
(as if my asking’s enough) go,
when you’re wont to,
(at least it’s what you say, or show)
and I want you
(yes, I’ve left off the “to,” I know)
too?

My bubble

My bubble doesn’t trouble
me. It’s clear as smutty blue glass.
It keeps me cool, and I’m doubly
safe inside its gelatin grasp.
Out there is where dry misfits slip
by unaware. Whetly I watch
them, and most fittingly my lips
I press against its oily splotched
membrane. What they dare to
do or not isn’t troubling either.
I’ve got this bubble to
maintain, and the air’s not free here.