Sonnet #154

Nature remembers every cut, every stone
The city is a forest that we forget to see
We see the building past the trees, not the trees
But we never left her when we built our homes
There is no division between city and country
The trees on the streets rise up, the possums
and insects hum. The cats run wild, hunt for some
beetle or songbird or mouse, who sneak into our pantry.
The trees of the city, the grasses and hedges
The flowers that bloom and the migratory birds
We see only parking lots, not their edges
We see only roadways, unknown we are herded
Climb past the fences, walk where development alleges
But never start, and thistles break through the ruins, hard

Sonnet #153

For every season of the birds there is a song
Because to sing is to remember time
We hand our story down with music, rhyme.
Time that changes everything, we do all wrong
When we betray the music of our memories
That taught us how to live. The song of children
Is the song of learning, we tell them
How to know the letters, how to tell no lies
Then, the dancing season comes, the quarrels
The quest to be a strong woman or man,
The love that burns all flowers, burns all morals
The third season, we're the singers where we stand
Humming while we work, giving songs for sorrows,
Masters of the art of how to woman and man
Until the dirges come, the last season, winter, narrows.

With apologies to Shelley and Vonnegut

I met a sailor from an antique shore
He told me this... "Out in the cold shallows
Where the pollution persists, a poor-
Ly built tower lies tumbled and hollow
Upon some rust and rocks, a slogan there
Where once a giant name, writ-large
Decrepit, now, if it ever was more and better,
A seawashed gaudy gold-gilt plastic visage
Hideous and haughty, 'I am Trump, the winner
And the best president for the economy
Where oil wells pumped, and dollars shimmered,
Look upon my amazing properties and praise me!
I was the best president; everyone says so!"'
The lonely sea has swallowed all. So it goes.

Sonnet #152

oh hard bitter rue, what became of you?

dishwater green, and dun-colored yellow blooms

aromatic oils to kill your neighbors for elbow room

left a rash when anyone tried to walk near you

eventually little golden pimples emerged as infections

they turned black and pulsated, living, growing

Until the little eggshell cracks, exposing

The servants of the rue, upon close inspection

The tiny things cleared out the foliage, made room

For new growth, and ate away other infections

The bigger, the prettier, striped golden white and blue

Ate skins when they cracked to make new skins

Chrysalis, and patience for the fruit of the rue:

Swallowtails soaring like velvet paintings that flew

Sonnet #151

They will use the nuclear bombs again,
I know it's hard to hear this, but you must
Because the future is no place for just the just
The fact that men can dream of it is enough sin
To know they mark history by slaughtering
To know the war can be won by wiping out
Genocide with a phone call, no drill sergaent's shouts
And history will remember who, the world trembling
The feeling of being big, being strong, from a sneeze
That sinks a billion destinies, a little spark and fizzle.
The bombs will fall. I promise you this. The wheeze
of dying men who dream of glory see the puzzle
of geography as a territory to bring to knees
They will. I promise they will. I shout until muzzled.

Sonnet #150

So, Golgotha wakes for us, and we must stand
Upon the hill of skulls? That's fine by me
No one ever promised peace for an eternity
Let us stand together, see the temple, see the land
Feel the stab inside of us, the powerlessness
Aye, they wanted Barnabas, the rapist, grifter, thief
They rather keep their devil than change against grief
We will all bow down to Rome, to Pilate, to Barnabas
Let the world keep their sinners among sinners
We stand on the hill, above, brace with pain
Let the world shout their misery, pretend as winners
We will hold our souls, and wash away all stains
Be gentle on Golgotha, let them dance regrets and burns
Let the hurt reveal the strength of us like keening trains

Sonnet #149

What came first, the gender or the pronoun?

When Adam had his rib removed, was there 

anything to call him until the flesh became clear?

He, alone, requires no third, no second, no sound.

Without those two, must there be a first?

What point is sense of self without another?

Is God's voice in our hearts enough for

the measurement of a pronoun? What's worse:

The idea that the self cannot exist without

Another person to bounce off of it,

Or that the self exists when nature's out

and I am in, and I am not a part of it?

And, if we accept that Eve's our rib, shout

at her, and pronouns break communion, doesn't it?

Sonnet #148

Cancelled due to illness, shut the doors
Close the windows, go to bed, We're sick
and tired of all the cleaning, mopping floors
Washing dishes, trimming trees, let's stick
The laundry in the baskets for a day
Let's call the repairwoman tomorrow
Let's be sick and lie in bed and pay
our bills tomorrow, and sleep in sorrow
Let the pain wash over us, let it pass
Drink no coffee, feel the headache split
the skull, embrace the tremors, harass
each other about who must deal with it
Cancelled due to illness, invent a sickness,
Anyone will do, and hide all day in blankets

Sonnet #147

In dreams, I was an angel that flew above

the crowd, when a powerful preacher lied

to an illiterate woman, preached hate, I pried

his tongue from his mouth, and drove

the preacher away from manhood, now a dog;

Chased dogs away from the wriggling flesh,

Invisible by will, I hid it in a creche

Of a high closet, wrapped in old towels, a fog

descended on my flight of invisibility

I soared above the world all night, stealing tongues

of men who spoke of hate, voted in irritability

Say they own half the diocese, say they won

the world, once, and keep it in perpetuity.

Take away tongues; change them into dogs that run.

Sonnet #146

Let us add to the seven deadly sins:
Ungratefulness is high on the new list
For it burns a resentment that spins
The heart into a hatred behind a friendly kiss
Also, let us add call waiting, because
It is very disrespectful to hold the line
And so impersonally engineer the laws
of customer service as weaponized time
Envy and jealousy, I think, are combined
Because people confuse them, these days,
And gossiping to harm: instead, let's entwine
All three of those together. Let's say
There are deadlier sins than this, burns and kills
But every generation has new ways to harm through will

Sonnet #145

Placelessness is a country I know too well
The airport waiting areas, the bus stops, the roads
The giant interchanges where highways cajole and goad
The benches where I rest, insomniac at my hotel
The gardens are meticulous, here, pruned
Into perfect geometries of blueprint drawings
The dumpsters fill and empty by unknown beings
The blowing trash has neither origin nor wound
We are all the drifters of this walk until we die
Until then, smile, be clean, polite and quick
The staff will yawn, the manager will not lie
The locals will be color and the food will be thick
The displacement of the self is the shell
That sanitizes us into a bravado of well

Sonnet #144

The things that no one tells you about kites:
There is no skill so great it overcomes no wind,
The best time to set one up is in the twilight
When transitions come and clouds unwind
When it's up, the tail is prettier than wings
The way the bobbing, dancing tail weaves
And caresses, to angels, this is everything
Pull, release, pull, release, to climb above the eaves
The ornery places of the sky are where the angels pass
To snag one on the line like a fish of heaven
Consider carefully how to catch what comes to pass
Where would one keep the angel? A jar? A battery? Bread unleavened?
When night comes, the steady tug is how we know
The ribbon tail cuts shimmery through moonlit clouds' glow

Sonnet #143

Turn the song in the club way up way up
Until the chests vibrate with the noise
And every dancer moves without a choice
Dance or die, move or burst, throw back cups
And throw off pretentious intentions just dance
Until the beads of sweat merge into a stream
And conscious thoughts dilute into a dream
We live in this moment, throw off all postures and stances
Be animals, be vegetables, be Zen Buddhist statues
Be mineral reactions, be factions of sound
Made flesh into an army of a mass truth
About the space between the sky and ground
Conquer the self, conquer the song, conquer the you
And when the song ends, be lost and bound

Sonnet #142

We are the infrastructure, the infrastructure is we

The pipes and wires of cities spreading out

Rebuilt, remade, replaced as needed, do you see

The way we built this organism, how it shouts

A wave of sound, a character, a living energy

From far enough away, the city is an organism

We are just the workers in the cells, our liberty

Is the illusion we repeat while smeared in chrism

Of the unity of us: petroleum, coffee, beer, tv

The narrow places where our imagination is

allowed to be, never push the cities back, never free

Even in the country, we're sending energy to cities

Even in the country, we're on the grid, on the economy

The world is networked urban cells we call community

Sonnet #141

The twilight hours call me to shoes
And, never alone, the dog thrills to join
Anything we can do together, she chooses
To do with gusto, even a humble purloin
of moments strolling about aimless, at peace
We walk together, then, the moon creeps in
The purple sky descends to lamplit streets
And as the dark is falling, we keep on
Starlight, does she even see it? Does she wish?
She bounds head down sniffing grass, no stars.
She makes her marks around. I guide her leash
and set the pace so we avoid the blinding cars.
This walk, we see two world of one, two sublimities.
So close in bonds of love, but no perspectival proximity

Sonnet #140

Imagine two worlds running in two halls of creation

One, we call earth, and the other, we'll call Narnia

For lack of a better name, Well, the souls' stationed

On Earth end their term and pass to where armies of

lions massed against the white queen. The fallen 

in battle, the brave and heroic, are born again here

And after their time among the humans, the calling

of the Narnian world, they go, forever here and there

A back and forth of souls, passing through time

And myth is just the memory of other lives

And the stories that we tell are lessons of Narnia

The battles we seek are the redemption cries

Souls passing back and forth, like training for a

third world, not yet made, all the little sins grieved

clean, that we may pass this twin purgatories cleaved

Sonnet #139

What do you do when a hundred lemons ripen?
The tree is prolific, and the fruit lasts only so long
The moment, now, when patience turns to song
When months of effort, from the flowers open
to when the sunlight bursts from golden peels
And all of that soaked up energy, effort, hope
All of that reaching root and leaf expanding scope
To make a single crop, one hundred lemons, kneel
to take the bottom ones and reach to take the high,
The buckets full, the wealth is here, the bounty
Remember they don't last so long, rotting is nigh
eat many, preserve yours in salt, then call the county
To share the summer sun distilled to lemon pie,
No dragons rest upon a hoard of rotting bounty.

Exclusive Excerpt of FORTRESS AT THE END OF TIME at Barnes and Noble SF Blog

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Sonnet #138

I don't think anyone knows what actually happened

We like to analyze and talk, and talk and talk

But we were not there, and even where we walked

the streets of history, our ego renders us blindered

So much of what we sense never breaks the veil

of conscious thought, and so little of that breaks

the parchment of memory. History is written by flakes

of snow upon a plain that blow a pattern on a windowsill

The pattern is invented by the human will for sense

But we see the faces, there, we see the picture of the world

And forget that all we see is a fog of snowflakes, dispensed

By weather we can't even measure, feel a wind hurled

Memory is a story that accumulates into a history

From this mythic place we gather futures out of worries.

Sonnet #137

Here are fourteen ways of seeing the color blue
First, the sky is blue and vast, the backdrop of imagination;
Second, the Caribbean sea is like the sky's distillation;
Third, the sky pushed into diamonds, lapis lazuli's hue;
Fourth, there's pretty eyes; Fifth there's the poisoned ones
Whose skin fills up with quicksilver's deadly shade;
The babies born blue, their slow beating heart's fade;
The dead that turn blue when the coldness comes;
The note of blue in the sad cafe, decadence and invention
But mostly decadence; the blue of the plates; the blue
that comes from depressiom; the blue of the intentions
of voters broken in cities; the blue line of order and truth;
The blue in the face of holding breath against truncheons;
Blue's the color of sky above streetlights, all blue, all blue.

Sonnet #136

The cat insists on writing a poem this time

I ask her what she'd like to say, and she pushes

At my hands to drive them off from all rhymes

All keystrokes, just affection, purring thrushes

in her throat, the gentle knead of air, a flicking tail

She lives in a moment of imminent need

There's no remorse among the cats for when they fail

The only memory is instinct and muscle and breed

and what tiny training we managed to instill

Between the chases for lizards in the garden 

And the way she finds the things that smell 

like herself for her to lie and dream down in

If a cat's life can be a poem, if she could speak

Live for now, right now, is the only song she keeps

GoodReads Giveaway is Happening

Go over to GoodRead, if you got one, and put your name in the hat.

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Sonnets resume in 5...4...3...

Sonnet #135

When life gives me lemons, I bless them
And I slice them open, examine them close
I pluck out what seeds I easily see, and then
I pour salt into the wound -- lots of salt for those
beautiful, puckering fruit. I pack them in bay
because the laurel is the victor's crown that comes
from struggle, I pack them in cinnamon, a bay
of the tropics, to remember the burn, The peppercorns
The hardest, blackest peppercorns, to some
A breaker of teeth, but the wealth of the merchants
comes from the way the hard shell holds when we roam
The allspice, too, and some fingers of rosemary's scent
To call upon the mother of us all, who weeps
with pink peppercorns when flowers plucked early, sleep

Sonnet #134

There is a song in the garden we do not hear

Of cells dividing and pollen landing like drums

Of the rustle of the weevil and the dew dropping tears

The drum and drum and rippling drum of all that becomes

The vibrations of the earth, the tiniest juggles 

Are moving, cells dividing, ripping through cells

And minute hungry creatures chew and struggle

The songbirds whose huge shouts echo like bells

The whistling wind cut to ribbons in the grass

The click of the anole scales and claws upon the stones

The weight of the sun, the weight of the rain, the frass

that tumbles from the dying squash vine's broken bones

There is a song we cannot hear -- We know there's music

Because we see the beauty of the dancing world majestic

Sonnet #133

We claim that we defeated Nazis
But have you been to Germany's cities?
Once there were vibrant Jewish communities
Now not even their ghosts are permitted a proxy
Like scraping a parchment clean to scriven brand new
Where are the Jews that used to walk there?
The demographic destiny is very clear
Across the former Reich there are so few
What tiny DNA is left will drown in the flood of Aryans
The rest relocate to Palestine, make war, remember war
And all those empty neighborhoods, buried in
The flood, the legacy of hatred, the absent floors
Where empty space is filled without much thought beyond memorials
It is easy to say never again when it worked.

Sonnet #132

Rise up, rise up, oh annual rye grass field
The weather's turned colder, and rains have come
The ground belongs to winter weeds and stones
that slowly melt where water kisses and rusts all steel
Rise up, rise up, oh winter weeds, hold the earth
before the snow and ice and wind, we did not plant
a thing, and here you are, ready to stand
America is held in place by roots whose worth
Will always be discounted by the kings
They think there is no profit in the pigweed dirt
They see just weeds and weeds and things
That will never make a seed that's any worth
But in this hum of forgotten ones, let us sing
All that is America is made by your death and rebirth

Sonnet #131

The thing that drives me nuts is not the winner, but

The things that come from mouths of supporters

The bluster and lies that baffles reporters

I've yet to hear coherent, plotted out policy, thoughts

Just tumble around a few oddities, like a country back

Win our country back, bring our jobs back, but

But, but, how, exactly? There is no plan, just

Bluster and anger and wringing tiny hands, Track

Any truth of the matter, you'll see, the lies they tell

That will not be lost to history. We planted seeds

in a garden we would never see, but we need

To know the price we ask of history. The bell

we wrung can't be unwrung. The white supremacy

The circling wagons of failed ideologies lacking in policies.

Sonnet #130

Hey, don't let those assholes get you down,
The arc of history is famous for its bend to justice
It's too slow for the living, I know, it's nice
to think, though, that when historians make known...

Sorry, we aren't supposed to be doing any martyring
But the way things work, injustice comes, still
The lies of history, the broken, angry and the shrill
Will shout the ancestral sins, shout a selfish terroring
That separates us, but when the soil and seas rise
There will be no difference between the fleshes
So the arc of history, the anonymity of death and lies
Will all bellow away into the wind, until just threshes
of wheat tumbling down, the migration of birds in all skies
The innocent babies born free of hatred, yet precocious

Sonnet #129

We plant the seeds before the storm to save
A little water in the bill, but more than this
We seek to reduce the water we use to brave
the future where water will be extremely missed
Every drop of water that we tap and drink
Had a place in watersheds and aquifers and ice
Instead we pull it all straight up the sink
And redirect the water into the cities of size
That water was supposed to go somewhere
That water was supposed to be something
Instead, we push our houses out  everywhere
We pull the water up from from everything
I have so little ways to make this better
We plant the seeds before it rains; trust in weather

Sonnet #128

Who will we become today? Another day is here

And every minute of the day is the building of the self

Are we the person in a clean house, with bookshelves

and exercise and all the big goals gently steered?

Are we the ones who give up and worry and break?

Do our brains lie fallow in a haunted field of failure

Do our minds reach up and grip the cosmic spires?

Are we prayers today? Are we givers? Do we just take?

Every morning is another chance to build a habit

Every morning is another chance to feed old dooms

Today I cleaned the kitchen, again, held no sabbath

I think today I will drink coffee in the living room

until long after noon, and watch the dog and cat at it

Worry old pains in my bones with the rain and gloom

Sonnet #127

We were supposed to be through with the uncivil war
Where men would draw steel to oppress other men
And state legislatures could decide enemies and friends
Where they draw their own lines. It chills me more
Than horror films to watch the descendants win
The war without a single shot. Just vote and shout
And shout and vote and build lies upon natural doubts
Until the mythic south will rise with all the oldest sins
The race war lingers under police batons, redlining
And what is worse? The Christian curses of crusade
And witch hunt and shame the women in bandaging
The south will rise again and break the power of the fed
The south will rise again and vote away the global rising
Swallow all the lies of power, what to do is what They said.

Sonnet #126

A leaf falls in loneliness, that I know,

But it lands into the communion of souls

All lost leaves, all melting green into wormholes

Where the cosmic forces will reap and sow

There is a city in the soil, a galaxy of aliens

Every crevice in a stone is a suburb of the world

A leaf falls in loneliness, but then it drapes uncurled

upon the billions. Each footstep strike is salient

to the crushed houses and reconstruction where roots

Rebuild and insects crush and fungal pathways push

the highways of the underworld back from the boot

There is a convoy of life in every drop of river rush

There are spores of hope for every bit of soot

We are never alone in the room, never a dead hush

Sonnet #124

There is no wisdom greater than stay alive

Until the time it hurts too much, and burdens

The ones we love. But more than staying alive

There is also living. Leaving the house, around the bend

Into the city and into the forest, where people and flowers

Rise to bloom. I've sat in my bedroom too long

Killed monsters that don't exist to feel power

that isn't real, and it's time to set aside the song

of the poet, to stand and sweat and hurt and ache

To face the risk of looking foolish. Be more than vegetal

Be more than authorial, be more than just the fake

stand-ins for life made by artists like me. Enter all

crowded places, wander all hills, learn the lessons of meat

Learn the lessons artists cannot teach, of genuine heartbeats

Sonnet #123

...end everything I know about the after-

life I learned from living. How the sun

will rise each day regardless; How the matter

is neither created nor destroyed; One

cosmos always moving, always using

all the bits, discarded bits, where black holes

pull them in and someday the exploding

Parts will scatter all the ashes of the soul

How giant trees collapse but life won't stop

It just renews, where fungal growth and insect

eating insects pull the life all out of rot

Until the soil is rich and saplings rise from it

I see how all the tribes, we build upon what's built

Until the bits of souls, our human mudsill silt 

Sonnet #122

We will not speak to strangers about the dead

We will not abandon the bodies of the dead

We will not permit the dead to bury the dead

Flowers bloom, cut short and browning on the dead

tombs and cemetaries, the grass is mown for the dead

That grass may never set seed to die above the dead

An eternity of grass, cemetery lily centuries for the dead

In gardens where the living ones whisper to the dead

And bring gifts to those beyond all gifts: the dead

will never taste your charities, they are the dead

And all gifts brought are for the living, not the dead

Bodies transform into a new way of not being the dead

But unlock the living cells that devour cells opened to the dead;

the resurrection is just so very small, there is no death, no dead

Sonnet #121

Nothing's more Christian than the devil's shirt
Dancing in the moonlight like fools after candy
Mocking the devils that fume and stamp as dandies
Laughing away the fear and the dark, and what's worse
To the devil: We take all his toys, thrash them about
Cheap plastic nonsense that's abandoned to discounts
Beggar children earn better than devils; steal the horse
of the devil: tell stories fear and temptations, teach young
that evil is a posture, and can be taken off like a mask
And when the costume is empty, it has no power, no tongue
It only moves when people fill it, no devils exist, don't ask
for their black books, and when the devil is hung,
It was the man beneath the mask that did the tasks
Fear men, fear not the devils: Hell is a Christian song.

Sonnet #120

We say we want the truth, but we also 

say that history is written by the victors

And I know I'm not alone in a little gloss sewn

into the edges of my tellings. So, to lectors

At the podium, what's the memory we speak?

Do we aim for unvarnished truth, glazing eyes

of undergraduates, and all strained, stern, bleak

The story without a destiny, without a prize

Just molecules smashing painfully against the walls

And memory is only what happened, how nothing rises

no path converges long, or do we speak a little tall

About the things we think the ancestors advise us

About the way to walk the tale we're meant to keep

Call back, again to myths that whisper in our sleep?

Sonnet #119

To live at all we must become the brave,
We have to overcome the shame at nakedness
And let the doctors see beyond the skins
To keep our teeth, we face the drills and lathes
Expand our jaw beyond the point of pain
Let all our secrets lie exposed before the truth
That's carried in our blood and bones and tooth
Of how we live our daily bread and little stains
All that builds into erosion of the organ meats
All that scrapes upon the cartilage and bone
To live pain free, we must feel pain, defeat
We must close our eyes and gather all stones
Gather all the ghosts before us who walked in streets
Paved in pain by survivors. For them, be brave, alone

Sonnet #118

Sleep, if you can, sleep more, if you can

Sleep as if no one is watching over you

Waiting for you to finish all you need to do

Waiting, tapping feet, watching clockhands

Sleep, if you can, when no one is looking

Hiding in dark closets, bathroom stalls

Try not to snore, it will give you away

And draw unwanted attention to the resting

While you are trying to sneak the siren's call

Sleep when someone else is driving the car

Sleep on buses, sleep on benches, wherever fall

is wherever found a little rest. The devils come and mar

the rest with all the thousand little cuts of fearful

half-memories, tiny pinching fingers, whisper howls

Sonnet #117

The painting of the glaciers and icebergs,

impressive in their size, by Frederick Church

Who burned coal to the arctic, saw the watery lurch

of all the frozen, filthy castles, dramaturge

naturalists will exclaim the glory in prose

to preserve what we lost when soon this painting

will recall a time when glaciers hanging

above the slopes of Alaska smothered all roads

A mystery to the young, all that accumulated ice;

The species that lived there in a frozen desert,

The people that died to find the cap of all nights.

Wilderness, remember how to live in this part

When the ghosts of polar bears swim and fight

among drowned castles, without stories, without art

Sonnet #116

When the first fruits come on our perennial trees

The ones we planted years ago, watered, fed,

The ones we researched, cultivated, as well-bred,

When the first fruits come, there's only three

We see them green upon the branches, small

One will be thinned, so that one is gone

It will make the other two larger when done

Two will be eaten by the caterpillars and fall

A rotten mess upon the root, too late we saw

Too late to save. The third and final we absolve

of all sins, pour hope upon the roots and draw

the birds away with seed across the yard, revolve

around her daily, observe the color, feel the weight

We'll pick her unripe, overeager, and curse this fate

Sonnet #115

Imagine if we could reset to a point in life

We could go back and try again to build

the future we desire before we die, keep the wife

we lost, try the careers we wanted, climb new hills

then go back again. I think at first we'd see

The opportunity as a selfish one, a reset

To redo the places where we could not be

what we wanted, eventually we'd get it:

Which children from which line get to exist?

Which people did we help, and who's love burned?

And when we reset whose kiss will be the last kiss?

Eventually, we'd see the reset as a violence, a cosmic spurn

We could go back and climb again with younger bones

but the world we love can't stand on faithless stones

Sonnet #114

I live in a Hispanic district in a blue city
in a traditionally red state. Early voting
began today. 93 degrees, everyone sweaty
Lines long, long, volunteers doting
on the mysterious absence of enough
check-in computers, all these empty machines
not enough computers. It was rough,
but nothing, really, just a long hot line
Like an amusement park roller-coaster,
No guns, no dogs, no hucksters shouting rhymes
Just everyone politely complaining together
(Which is the Great American Pastime)
The revolution has come, we're fighting the power
Stick a thumb in the pain, just by standing some hours

Sonnet #113

What has three hands, a face, and a pulse
And power over lives as if a God, but nothing
resembling a heart, nothing resembling
A soul, a sense of decency, a power that's false?

What never looks back, never feels bad
for what has happened before, just pushing
onward, always pushing, forgetting
all that came before, never happy, never sad?

Study it all you like and see what comes of it
The mystery lies in how we fail to mend
The truth of ourselves into a single daylight
To balance what we really need against the end
The clockwork lie that we must push and fight
Against the ticking, ticking; Just accept, ascend.

Sonnet #112

I guess I should write a poem, now
I have a moment in between chores
All morning, I was in the garden, mow
the lawn and prune back, mop the floor
There were dishes, bathrooms, dirty clothes
All the things that let us know we are alive
Is found in the mess we leave in piles and rows
Trailed like breadcrumbs in our wake, we strive
To keep the mess picked up, we make lists and throw
ourselves upon the list, we never quite arrive
At perfection, always one more thing, sisyphian stones
Built up and up we climb, and exhausted, write a poem

Sonnet #111

Experts will say he only portrays a third
of what the party wants and needs, the racist ones
the true believers in crazy theories. How come
we have to not throw out the appeasing two-thirds
over what one third stands and negotiates and delivers?
At what percentage point of racist, sexist madness
do we call those who appease a tribe of badness?
To negotiate with madmen, racists, true believers
in the wickedness of science, in race wars
A third of them still demand segregation,
A third demand to be appeased with Christianity
as an official state religion, the meanest version
where gay kids kill themselves. What sanity
is this? If a third of the club cast such aspersions?

Sonnet #110

There's just one book, apparently, we need

The only one to read and study, about humanity

It's a good book, and I enjoy it, when I read

this book, I feel connected to some kind of infinity

But, the connection I feel is just as strong

When I stand in a forest and hear the birds

The crickets and rustling leaves, a peace song

played with the gentlest breath of cosmic words

That construct galaxies, fortify the stars, black holes,

And blow a little breeze through autumn leaves

There's other books I know where I feel the souls

All those histories and mysteries burning and free

So, there is just one book, for some of us to read

But don't pretend to me it's the only one I need

Sonnet #109

Sometimes in the woods, while walking, I picture

Life the way it was a few days back, just a few

When naked, born into the woods, one with nature

Our weak hands, weak legs, we had to make do

No schools and grocery stores, no job but fill

Whatever doesn't make us sick, we eat

Whatever we can reach and snatch we kill

And everything feels the same to us, all meat

All trees and spiny thorns out there, all struggle

in the dark to live, imagine what it took to build

a single piece of land into an orchard, learn to juggle

all the different seasons so we never starve, our guilds

preserving all we know so others will not suffer

We are specialized creatures, now, communities that buffer

Sonnet #108

Make sacrifices to the spirit, if you like
But, the body will demand a sacrifice
And claim the sacrifice, and when it strikes
It will be sudden, another day, then twice
a thing is lost, three times, all in an explosion
Getting older means watching what we think
what is our self is stripped away like an erosion
and sudden sacrifices come, big and small, we sink
Below the tides of what is truly us, what never leaves
Fight it if you wish, shout at doctors, weep and howl
There is no way to bring back the dead, the free
Will never fly home, the bones don't heal proud,
We are bent, and all our great plans are taken away
Our loved ones, our vanities, all sacrificed to stay

Sonnet #107

I planted seeds of Jujube, I kept exactly one

I grew her in a pot a while, The spiny spires rose

It demanded little care, just placement in the sun

When she became too big, I chopped down dead cenizos

She's in a desert spot, rarely watered, never fed

I merely mulch the base of her and pray for rain

Which rarely comes. By all rights she should be dead

A foreign, spindly trunk, a tough thorny palm of pain

Of beautiful yellow flowers twice a season for the bees

Of grape-sized little dumplings green, at first

Tart and sweet, when ripened into a deep mahogany

No named cultivar, just a wild seedling, worst

of all the fruits to grow, but tenacious and strong

I pluck the drying fruits for tea and sing a grateful song.

Sonnet #106

The storytellers are to blame for all
The failures in this world of pain and shame
For politicians only do the voters' calls
And justice is defined by tribal lines that name
Responsibilities of the heroic one, how heroes must
Defeat the wicked sinfulness of this trajectory
of life unto death. Fiction is a sinful trust
For conflict and sin are children of a territory
Also shared by myths and fear of death
And shame and guilt and voyeuristic gossip --
Is it any wonder there is injustice in this place
When every story's hero must embrace the tip
of misery to become a great soul, we need to face
the demons, then, to be interesting, all our stories
Must include them, all our best imagined histories

Sonnet #105

Lay the burdens down upon the grass

Where ants may pick upon them from below

And eventually the rain will unmask

The wilted pieces of the load away from stones

Bury stones of burden without memorials

Except the scrape where dirt was pulled away

Eventually the weeds will get territorial

And leave no other marker on the grave

These burdens, now, the stones of them

Will sink through soil in time to join with lime

The weight and press of all the stones, the hem

of crust at edges of the rock, the lines of time

Will merge with all the burdens buried by us all

And we will wake from up the grass, renewed, full.

Sonnet #104

I'm pro-life, but I'm serious when I say that

I want to end the death penalty, end all war

I want to embrace all refugees, suffering so that

A man in a castle can be fat with power;

I want to end the drilling, end strip mining

I want to recycle, preserve the wild places

Against encroachment, No more polluting

No more decaying plastics, Intelligent races

Never live in fear of the knife and hook

Even the mindmute suffer nothing industrial

And the universe is to be explored, look up! Look!

We should be spreading life to the extra-terrestrial!

I don't think the label works with choice and women

Best make a system that's pro-life, not punish one sin.

Sonnet #103

Try to imagine the very first square,
I mean the perfect one that could build
A perfect room, a set of cabinets, a chair
Who is the man who brought this out of skill
alone? To build with a hand a perfect tool
Is the beginning of building a human world
We are not the only creatures that use tools
We are the only ones who use tools to build
more tools, that we use again to build tools
And all of them began with a skilled hand
A perfect eye, a narrow piece of stone true
on each side in neat, careful clips, a man
Holding up what he imagined, thinking more
of tools, of futures, of building houses and cellars

Sonnet #102

Physical space is relative for ghosts, I fear
They do not seem to wander far from home
For they come back to haunt us every year
But if they are incorporeal, they should roam
For the planet on which we walk is spinning
And it spins around the sun, which spins
Around the arm of the Milky Way galaxy
Which hurls away from the place we all begin
So ghosts, they are tied not to a place,
but to a relativity, a proximity to energy
The microbiotic life that carries the trace
Of the host they knew. We carry the memory
In relationship to what we touch, to what we know
Unless most ghosts are in the void, above, below

Sonnet #101

How greedy when we pray to God to ask

for more than what we have. Is this not

enough? We are alive, there are flowers, bask

in the beauty of sunsets, the hugeness of what

we see and the smallness, the way drops

of water shimmer on the edge of the sink

the way cats pounce on feathers, crops

coming in, here is the clean water, drink

it all in, the stars shivering heat, decay

into more stars, the vast size of heavens

Where we know we will someday journey

The vast size of smallness, the bread leavined

inside of all souls, the rise that fills us up

And when we pass, the passing of heart's cup

Sonnet #100

Because I could not stop for life, it stopped
for me. Wait in doctor's offices for doctors,
nurses, fees. The body breaks, the will flopped
Life, the way I knew it, warped all projectors
Broke every wheel, changed the way I thought
I ought to feel about what I knew was real
So, life will stop. It will always stop.
All the things we think we must congeals
Into a list of tasks we never finish
The river of time bends, the boat we ride
Strikes rocks where all the rushing fish
Leap over, and we have to wait for tide
Or gather friends and heft the hull across
It's slow, and tedious, but life stops -- life stops.

Sonnet #99

The ones who send to war declare the need to win
And how it great outweighs the need for peace
Projecting strength, protecting home, preservation
of the way we choose to live. The drums of war wreath
the tombstones of the honored dead. Let me not
betray the beauty of their sacrifice, our martyred heroes
When I criticize the machine that had lives bought:

To what purpose were they killed? Our children go
to kill some other children, and we both shout infidel
always hated -- Why go to war? What use to throw
the grenade to shout our wants ahead with shrapnel
And we have to honor heroes to pretend we didn't know
The pointlessness of buried boys, crashed planes, red seas
All paid because we didn't have any better ideas

Sonnet #98

They meant well, the men who killed the world

They didn't want children to starve to death

They didn't want darkness to frighten poor girls

Walking home late. The fast food killed health

But bought time for women who worked so hard

The oil was good, the car brought wealth

Buy a big house out where the schools reward

The kids who escape the pull of the streets

They meant well, these men, They built their hoarde

pumping good wells, grow so much food, winter heat

Pump so much oil, good jobs in the coal yard and oil fields 

for family men. This way our nation'll never be beat

Of course they scowl once the cost weighs down the wheel

They scoff at folks who tell them off. They'll never yield.

Sonnet #97

Measure a life, and count up the cleaning

How many days do we spend at the scrub?

The wealthy may pay for another for preening

the rest of us wash our own toilets and tubs

Obituaries rarely capture the days

They describe the moments of highest glory

The peaks achieved, the children who pray

We only measure successes, that's our story

Quotidian things, the dishes, the mop

Mowing the grass, and wiping the table

We measure the garden by flowers and crops

But there is the slow growth towards being able

Measure one perfect forgettable day, uninspired

We worked, there was music, then we were tired.

Sonnet #96

They cut flutes from stems of papaya leaves

The children do it with a knife, they cut

the yellow stalk, slice a line and heave

their breath down through the hole, but

the song is not melodious, a thin and sharp

sound, like a deformed owl, a tiny loon

The old folk say a flimsy, worthless carp

of a man, a man without sand, just boom

They call him the papaya flute man, hollow

A bellowing strange, a fool's buffoon.

Cut the man from the stem of his fellows

Cut away the green of him, slice his grain

Blow him out, and hear a horn of toy raids

Remember these baubles are not born but made

Sonnet #95

Oh, so contrary, the Gulf Fritillary, marries

and mates on the passionflower vine, but

As soon as the deed, they're empty, they scurry

Away, no passion to keep beyond the rut

They fall like autumn when mating is done

All those long hours feeding, preparing

All to transform for a week in the sun

Desperately seeking the passion while soaring

The passionvine rambles and settles and sticks

It pays no mind to caterpillars nibbling

Ignores all weather, grows long and thick

These impossible blooms, lumenescent siblings

Of martyrs, give me art not of pupation but the vine

The grumpy, stubborn, sticking art made in entwine

Sonnet #94

It happens so fast, the creatures sneak in
They make their home in convenient places
They hunt and eat and chew the shoelaces
The drywall, the cardboard, the wires and shims
Everywhere they creep they make a home
To camp until they have to go away
Everywhere they slip they try to stay
No one wants the chase and fear and roam
Find a corner, find a hole, find a homey stone
Find the paths that keep you safe and warm
Find the food that makes you well, and atone
For all the times the fear has come, charm
the neighbors if you can, but know the bone
will gnaw, the cats will come, the rain, the storm.

Sonnet #93

I call on churches to redefine the family unit

We must not stoically embrace possessions of history

Where men ruled their household like kings of a factory

And obedience could be enforced by rule of state

Where people who are different cannot be safe

There is no safety. Where order works if everyone

Happens to be a kind and generous person

There is no order. Too many evacuees made waif

Too many runaways and castaways off the main

Stems of society, looking to build their own peace

Don't look away from their call to retain

The good of this world against the police

That tell them there is no place to live, to hide

For anyone trying to build their own tribe

Sonnet #92

We have such faith in microwaves that

nothing bad slips through the screen

That we must trust to bind the things that

we cannot smell or taste or see, lean

the hand over the handle, tap the toe

We trust the ones that made the machine

Not to fail and sip out whiffs and glow

of microwavity to pollute the kitchen

We don't even know their names, the makers

The ones who walk the lines and test

The ones who write the standards

The ones who doublecheck. Faith in the best

of man, faith in honesty and happy works

Faith the popcorn package swells to burst

Sonnet #91

Glass is a liquid that appears so solid,
But to the trees outside the window who
are so old and gently wake and sleep, it
looks like a flood among the eaves, although
The rippling never seems to end, the droop
that descends and descends, weight collapsing
into weight, glass is living, glass is a goop
Translucent, so slowly it congeals, our draping
cloths and blinds conceal it, if we took a picture
every day for three hundred years, we'd see
The tide falling down, the thinning, the sure
certainty of melting into the ground in the
quick flipping of the animation. Our windows are
Simply the perspective of solidity, our frame
To all the whole solid universe:quaking plain

Sonnet #90

You want to colonize the stars? Me, too, but
First let's figure out how not to ruin the stars
How to find a thing that's beautiful, and shut
the door, fly on, leave beauty to beauty, we are
Really bad at beauty. We push our domiciles
against the edge of waterfalls, shore front
mountain top, Shenandoah Valley style
houses, all excavating beauty, shunt
the view a little around a gated wall
We will see the rings of Jupiter become
A private palisade, Europa's hidden waterfalls
Will be fenced off, rerouted, for a wealthy someone
The beauty of this universe is tumbling free
We ought to build our homes somewhere clean, ugly

Sonnet #89

Remember this: They will all die, the men

who tell you what to think and how to live

They're rarely young, these men, they will spend

Only a few more summers in the fields, overthrived

They will collapse in the weight of so much certainty

And where they fall, the flowers will grow tall

A quiet man will mow the grass, there will be hurting

But, what will remain of these proud men is all

about them that was good, not the preening

Not the proud and angry stubborn way that ought

they say to be what you need to do is bleeding

out into the wind, an empty set of words bought

At such great price, consideration of their peers

Rudder tongues against waves, vainly steered

Sonnet #88

Never get involved in what other people do
This is the lesson of today: See them chasing
See them running or racing, let them go
Walk past the beggar, walk past the debasing
Walk past everything that's wrong and curse
the self quietly; better guilt than physical
pain, better to feel awful inside, to feel worse
Than anyone ever felt about how you called
away from what you saw. You could get killed
You could get bit, beaten, broken, destroyed
Lockjaw, rabies, lawsuits, Get arrested, distilled
into a coma self, all the dangers in every shadow
Helping is dangerous. Doing is dangerous. Didn't you know?

Sonnet #87

Dog's don't need to be told to fear the stranger
It's bred into their bones from centuries of work
Leaning at the edge of light, sniffing out for danger
Once upon a time, communities were small and dark
Everyone would know everybody, the dogs would know
When the new came in from roads, the growl
at throats, the bark and warning snaps, the show
How if worse came, the bite the snarl the howl
Geese were like this, too. They guarded Rome
They honked and bit the raiders off the walls
Our cities are so big, now. It's easier to be alone
the bigger the city is. There is no anonymity
in little towns, where all the dogs know who's who
To be alone is to fear the stranger, to think the city
after dark is full of spiders, young lions running through
It's easy to be afraid in big cities, to howl and bite
Once here, animal fear is hard to stop, make right.

Sonnet #86

I turn around for a minute, and it's all so messy
What happened here? Discarded clothes and dishes
Paper in heaps and disorganized heaps. Three wishes
First, that all the insects in the wall would by fussy
About their living spaces, try to help out with the cleaning
Second, that the house, itself was a living thing that
could regenerate like flesh, a breathing insulate
And blood inside the walls, a heartbeat pulsing
to comfort me when i sleep like a womb; Third,
when the rain comes, it pours through the house
It passes through layers of soap, washes like words
passing through the air, a steamy mist that delouses
drowns the mouses, cleans the dishes, eases hard-
ness of maintaining, lounge in the steam, with your spouse

Sonnet #85

The thing no one says about growing up
Your back will hurt for sixty years, your feet
will be sore, you'll feel it when you wake up
The things demanded from the body, the concrete
Under the boots for eight long hours on the job
The way even typing long enough to live on it
Means the back and wrists will falter and dislodge
And, the less you're paid, the more it hurts to do it
The more you wonder is the feeling in the morning
worth it? We're not allowed to be lazy, to call in
We're not allowed to heal our agonies, stand and wring
the muscles loose and get back to it, Work through pain
Anyone who says there's something wrong about this
Deserves to hurt, get called names: Hippie. Communist.

Sonnet #84

Carpentry, and construction, in general,
I find, to be a quest for tools put down
I'm sure I had them in my hand, they're around
Perhaps I will buy a second, unintentional
Or a third, and find the other two tools
In the bottom of the box. And buying new:
I'm sure there's a certain thing I need to build it true
But when I stop and look around, I feel a fool
For once again I have misplaced the thing
I just had it in my hand, and now there's dust
all over the place, maybe get more lighting
Maybe it's fallen down among the trash and rust
I probably need a different tool, if I'm understanding
If I could find that video again? It's all lost

Sonnet #83

The furniture our fathers made to last
Has mostly been relegated to back rooms
If we even keep them, maybe passed
Along from one back closet to a dorm
The furniture we show is made overseas
It is designed by a man or woman who will not
have any joining work, they'll oversee
From video screens and computers, shot
in just the way it takes to know no names
I bought a bookshelf kit from a store
So large no one bothered to offer any help
It cost less than meals I've eaten while dull, bored
The furniture our fathers made does not fit
Plus, we're tired of looking at it, repairing it.

Sonnet #82

This is how a story kills a man:

Inside a story, size and strength can kill

The nervous fighter with giant hands

Arrogant, proud, where the armies lie still

Remember the story? The stone and sling?

Goliath, the giant, of a wild race of men

The shepherd boy who would be king?

It plays in the mind, like a song, often

When we look up to percieve Goliath again

A big man, trembling,  uncapable of violence

We do not know him. We only fear him

Because the stories have drawn out the fences

Of who he must be: A giant from another world.

We don't know him, his dreams, his beloved girl.

Sonnet #81

"You're in the way"   said the bullet

"This is my path"     "Sorry," said the wound

"Why did you get       in my way?" "I don't

know. I was just          standing here, if you believe it"

"I don't. Now there's      all this blood. It's your

fault." "I'm sorry,"      said the wound. "I

Never meant to      hurt you." "I'm dented! My

head hurts. It's all      bent out of shape!" "Poor

You. Poor, poor you'      said the wound. "Bones

inside me cut you up. I      apologize for that, too."

"You should be sorry! I'm      ruined! I'm a stone

Now. I used to be a bullet.      I was flying through!"

"I've never flown. I am only      a little wound.

I have made such a bloody mess of things, ruined you."

Sonnet #80

Let's all go on a hero's journey: Map it out

in advance, where your mentor will be

Where will you face the inner demon's pout

and whistle? When do you expect all to be

lost? Plan for a scenic location, a vacation

on a mountainside, a long walk up unburdening

all the baggage along the path, placations

symbolically selected, something old, something

new, something borrowed, a sky so blue

Look up into the mirror of the self, that deep,

deep blue, and picture all the universal truths

emanating from all the galaxies so vast that creep

Around the unbelievably empty everything

Upon arrival, tip the waiter, Go to yelp for reviewing

Sonnet #79

We have the gall to repeat this refrain: "Waste not;
Want not" as if we still believe it means a thing to us
We have three collections every week, no muss
must be permitted to accumulate, old clothes donate
to the homeless and drug recoveries. Food waste all over
and that's not the worst of it. We preach a management mantra
Of laying off and letting go and abandoning all the
people we work with, the people we know; new lovers
New friends, new makeovers, new, new, new
We only want the best employees, the best pets
Leave the failures at shelters, the ones with whom we grew
Waste not, want not? No, evaluate what you want to get
Identify who you are inside, let no one else through
Cast away every shell, abandon all houses, never fret.

Sonnet #78

When the time comes to fight against my country

I suspect I won't do it. I'd gather my family --

I'd run. My loyalty to country as a community

Is not worth the blood of children; what polity

deserves the blood of wife and children?

My loyalty is to them. State agents may judge

That I had best go back and fight, but I am

A middle-aged man, never fired a gun, trudged

through no training of organized violence, 

If we wake in the dark in terrible fear,

If we tremble to stumble past force or resistance

If I must wonder if I will see them again, their stares:

What will they eat, will they be stolen in the night?

No damn, fool "country" is worth child, parent, wife.

Sonnet #77

I remember when I could fit everything I own
Inside a tiny car, piled high in boxes, folded
I took the clothes out and piled them, holed up
Into crevices so I could see out windows.

My sister's house was running late her things
Were accumulated, she spread them out
House by house, a scattering of her doubts
And good intentions, love expressed by storing

A road trip then, the greatest hits of belonging,
A huge truck and a series of hellos and goodbyes
A long empty road and wind pushing prodding
A huge push of energy to empty in one try
Arrangement into new places and more arranging
And then, quiet. Phone calls. Other house emptying.

Sonnet #76

Could we, should we, do it all again
The peripatetic life of wandering, gathering
I see us in our cities as rebuilt cave men
We never stop moving always moving and moving
Accumulating caravans of possessions
Redistributed all over, cast away, gifted off
Chasing the herds of others and successions
Vacationing by breaking with space, casting off
Wealth defined by the cleanness of open space
By the power wealth gives to let possessions go
Cavemen forever in our gloomy cool places
Gather into larger and larger caves, as things go
And travel always, be ready to travel, ready to move
Unsettle yourself, resettle, scatter, adapt, relove

Sonnet #75

The things we do for money are the things

we do for love; If it were just me, I'd never

Bother with a career, Just make my life better

With low-stress stuff, low-pay is fine for flings

But think about the burden on families

Think about the way they look at you at parties

Were you even invited? You're in your thirties

And they don't really want to talk, the sly

Way they try to escape because you don't do

Anything. You don't make anything, art or money

You don't have missions. If you have kids, do

They have enough to eat, or are you at least funny

Make do, Work hard, steal if you have to

Swallow the morals you're born with for money

Sonnet #74

Get higher, all settled peoples, get higher

Climb up the sides of mountains, floods are here

Push up into the hills and build dikes stronger

Than the waves to come, the sewers bear

The first creeping reach, the roads are next

And soon the lightposts fall, the bricks will drift

The tides have called a vote to annex

Rise up, not against nature, but into the shift

God promised he would never flood us out

But we never made that covenant with Him

And now, we have brought the waterspouts

Who will build our ark's? Not God, Never Him

Praying to strike the oil, for something better

For abundance, that's what summoned water.

Obligation to Link to New Novel Info

Howdy all,

Herein lies a link to a new book by me, with a beautiful cover with art from Jamie Jones and design by Christina Foltzer:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/exclusive-cover-reveal-fortress-end-time-joe-m-mcdermott/

It's coming in mid-January from Tor.com, and I am very pleased and excited to see this process move forward.

Interested reviewers are encouraged to reach out to Tor.com's marketing team about an early look.

Thanks all!

Sonnet #73

There are dinosaurs in grocery stores, unseen,

We do not know what kills us when we're buying things

We take them home, they rest in back seats, hiding

as we walk up walkways, sneaking into the scene

The edges of the scene, the corners of our eyes

They sing a little, subaudibly, but audible enough

They hunt so quietly, we do not know how tough

We have to be to protect ourselves, who lives who dies

Depends on how careful we are, bad luck floating

in the air, stalking in the shadows around corners

Around the bend, looming over us, teeth gloating

where we fail to see. Old impulses calling to warn 

And calling to be torn. The prey of death desiring

Finds death easy. Slow suicide is easy. Go to the store.

Sonnet #72

Like leaves tumbling, like early falling leaves,
Like something is wrong and the leaves march
too soon, little brown and orange specks, sieve
the late summer breeze, and... Wait, Monarchs!

The butterflies are here. The beautiful ones!
They travel south in herds like fields of ghosts
Like flowers become the flesh, they fly on
Indomitable in their fragility, Fearless most
of all against the roads where wind spins
them up and over and into all the cars driving

If we only walked more, if we planted flowering things
If we only didn't rush so much in our striving
Children dance to the butterflies, joyfully reaching
Let them land on a palm, let them taste skin, then flying

Sonnet #71

To watch a painter is to watch paint dry
The act of making is dull, methodical
It takes a long time before the canvas tries
to come together. Observe the periodical
How the machines run sheets and bind
How videos of photo shoots are boring
Four hours of subtle shifts in frames of mind
Three days at a computer screen poring
Over prints and shades. The writer strapped
to a machine, typing, retyping, retyping
There's nothing quite so dull. In fact,
The make of art might as well be plumbing
Observe confused the wriggling arms beneath
The cabinets, our impatience with your polite seethe

Sonnet #70

There are three cities in every city

First, there is the one we see with eyes

The canyon towers, the roads and highrises

the rolling hills of houses and industry

Second, the city beneath the city where pipes

and wires and grids expand like roots

And what we see above is just the shoots

of minute growth against the deepening stripes

Third, the city pushes off a city every day

Where dumpster trucks build heaps among the ruins

And one could build a city from the wasted clay

and steel and bone that's cast about, the chewings

Of the canyons, the stewings of the day

The castaway town, the tent cities, the shadows brewing

Sonnet #69

When people come to visit I must tell them

Welcome to the jungle house. So much grows

In every little corner, there's a plant that knows

Where all the sun is, and spreads to fill in

Three papayas fruit along the walkway

Spread their arms, duck underneath to pass

To where the sweet potato vines smother grass

Beside a lemon tree at our front door. I say

that I could harvest something every day

What use is grass and weekly chores of lawn

When fruit trees work so hard for little pay

And flowers call the butterflies in swarms?

Welcome to the jungle house, where we laze

We planted forests, let it work, avoid the uniform

Sonnet #68

It used to be you couldn't raise a kid

Without a stick to beat them with, hard

If you weren't leaving bruises, solid hit

across the backside, they should be scarred

By brutal beatings, when they were really

really bad, they should point to the marks

And tell the story of how love futilely

tried to beat some sense into their hearts

Life was supposedly harder back then

So everyone had to be ready to fight

Diseases swept through and wars took the men

And industry chewed up the children in coal light

As if that hasn't changed, we pretend we do not harm

As if life is so much easier, we pretend we're safer, warm

Sonnet #67

They start them young on chocolate sugar bombs
And lots of fortified desserts disguised
As vitamin vectors. But it's all wrong
The investors tell themselves lies, hypnotized
Once addicted, diseases creep in the veins
We have to prescribe the medication
Otherwise we could get sued for failing
to properly treat the different infections
As we age, more pills, more bad food, wailing,
gnashing of teeth, a life lived between pain
and numb, feeling miserable and sorry for
ourselves, which means more self-disdain
More comfort food, more pills, therapy, more
Investors buy the stocks and own the game
Own the junk food, and the cures of all the pain

Sonnet #66

To make the best fruit, the apples and pears

Must have their young branches weighed down

The branches shoot up too straight, can't bear

To turn their tips away from precious sun

But they must, or else the fruit will be thin

It will hang at odd angles, fall off, rot

When moisture can't be blown away by wind

In those tight clumps against the stalk, the roots

Will feed the tree, and only leaves will grow

Tall, brittle branches, little fruit, so bend

The young shoots down, hold them low

Until they harden there. Hardship sends

the branches freedom to create, pruning applies

It is the cut and twisting that births the apples

Sonnet #65

Sacrifice, sap root and stem to burn,
Trees and cornstalks know the price of water
They exhale the dew, and know they earn
Water from the clouds and also slaughter

The tallest of the trees will feel the storm
The rumbling gods of water will take their due
The hillocks of the field, the clustered corn
To pay the price for rain, who will die? Who

will take the heat and burn and blast? Lightning
strikes, hail will fall, ice and snow will mound and crack
the weak. Pay the price for rain. No need for fighting
The gods of thunder take the tallest in the stack

The empty places in the fields where payment took
The holes in forests where kings trembled and shook

Sonnet #64

We pass so many apple trees we think

We must stop and ask why they aren't picked

Huge, old trees, branches sighing to the brink

So many apples, red and vibrant, thick

Do people even know they're safe to eat?

These apples never sprayed on backyard trees

Never bothered by the weather, back from streets

Where pedestrians can't reach what they see

There's so much fruit, fifty feet of fruit

Waiting for anyone to notice, to come and take

These beautiful ones, hidden away in yards where roots

grow deep but no one comes to appreciate

The artistry that she makes, these forgotten trees

This messy nuisance of so many apples, waiting, free

Sonnet #63

All you need is love, a house that's warm,
A job that's good enough to keep the lights
From flickering, a way to fight without harm
A way to get to hospitals turning left and right
Through all those roads and bridges. Food helps
But if you can't make it, you can fake it fine
with microwaves and styrofoam. Make whelps
Of cat or dog or child, and walk the cultural line
In your community. All you need is love
And enough money to get away this summer
Somewhere cool, the coast, anywhere to dispose of
The pent up tension that builds in hot midsummer
All you need is love, a retirement plan that works
All you need is love, and to share your available perks

Sonnet #62

We killed the buffalo and carrier pigeon
We made a desert where cornstalks thicken
And feed is grown for cattle, chickens
Where once the prairie swayed like religion
The death of the Monarch is witnessed in space
After the corn, the empty fields are a wasteland
The feedlots pack deep and people beat the grassland
To make the beef, to devour eggs from one bird race

The buffalo breeds true with cattle, it's a cow
We just don't see it, the meat red, milk white
All the great nations of the plains will tell you how
They watched the whole world thrive without
A single tractor, where millions lived to follow

We couldn't bear to lose control, our blight

Sonnet #61

Headlines from a better world than this:
There's a conspiracy in place to make sure kids
All feel like heroes of a hidden place
That can, only once a year, be visited
The king of cats has called a moratorium
on the slaughtering of sparrows in the spring
Five neat tricks to resurrect before crematoriums
You'll never believe the songs that we will sing
By the end of this newspaper, let's begin with page one
The rabbits have formed a council to get the vote
They will soon outnumber us, democratically, run
for office on an anti-Hawk measure, or be smote
The debts have all been washed away in a generous flood
The government has been renewed, no shed blood

Sonnet #60

The world is known through sense and wit

For wits must make the sense of worlds

When all the fragments of the real swirl

into our neurology, there's so much data to it

Most of what we must believe is true

Is part of stories about who we are

Where we are going, why it must bear

remembered ways of being, somehow new,

Tell the best of stories about the truth

Tell the most amazing stories to each other

Talk of a universal love, a vibrating tooth

at the birth of the universe, how brothers

and sisters walk in peace to go to voting booths

And seek the sacred symbols from fathers and mothers

Sonnet #59

Before there was the highway there were trains

That cut a bloody path across the continent

Conestoga wagons like ships across the plains

Trailed campfires, carcasses, and gravemark indents

Before the wagon was the precious pony ridden

Ride out into the black and naked mountains

Where before the horse was only moccasins

Naked feet, and cougar paws -- dinosaur remains

Before there were the dinosaurs, the rivers ran

Amphibious creatures crawled and jumped aground

Before the frogs and mudskippers, no man

had ever come this way before, no other sound

Drive your highways if you must to meet him

But no highway keeps the centuries -- wheels spin

Sonnet #58

The greatest mystery of pomegranates

When is the fruit come ripe for picking?

For months they hang like planets

Red and crowned and thickening, thickening

Blooms remembered, they were fairy dresses

Red for the queen, yellow for the sun

After the party, the ripeness of caresses

The swelling weight pulls branches down

Is she done? Is she ever going to be done?

Can I be so bold as to pluck a sweet fruit?

Wait until autumn, she says, my fruit will come

When my leaves give up their last refute

I know, once cracked, she's kin to fairy toads

The way the eggs all bunch, and burst at goad

Sonnet #57

Lost dogs, lost dogs, they don't know how to go on
For what's use of dogs alone upon the boulevard
Perhaps upon a time they were wolves in packs, strong
Imagine their surprise to be alone, to stand it hard

I knew a woman once so lost in debt and pain
She stepped into a sidewalk, raised a thumb and left
She said it was her calling to travel and abstain
From all the futures all her debt was built to heft

Abandoned ones, they are too heartbroken to why discern
They walk the streets and forests to return what's lost
Aged five years in five months, her skin was burned
Leave out a bowl of clean, safe water, and the cost

of it all was counted against all abandonments
Walk tough from the houses, set loose all the hounds

Sonnet #56

We will all die; before we do, let's eat
and act like we belong together at
the table in the restaurant, we seem to've sat
among a crowd of strangers, while the seat
was kept unsat upon for only us, so dine
on every morsel that arrives from the back
And drink all the wine 'til we've emptied the rack
We will all die; before we do, recline
into the moonlight, capture meanbeams, laughing
at the hideous faces that look down from on high
The squinting of stars, the clouds chafing
Wait for the sunrise at least once on a beach, sigh
waves, dance to their sigh, stay awake, baffling
all reason, together tonight, for we will all die.

Sonnet #55

I imagine brains are malleable things that grow

Into whatever shape we make of them, like muscles

twist and swell if exercised, and hearts clear through

or clench, depending on how we live. We wrestle

in knots where what we do is who we are

Eventually; what we feel is the way we know.

A thousand years from now, the deer will stare

into the television screens. They took our town

The sturdy doors, the walls and fences warped

Their hooves and backs into a bent up shape

They breed to barricades, training fawns, and sharp

The preening antlers rise above the frame of ape

The boundaries we build ourselves will hold

Any brain to come behind to share our mold

Sonnet #54

...and how I suffer, Lord? You say I do
not know the meaning of the term
My belly full, my bed so soft, I go
to doctors when I'm hurt.
                                         I squirm
inside my jaw, my neurons twist, my heart
beats black and feels like void, but no
I do not suffer. It is passing, merely part
Of what we mean to make our soul Your boat
And contemplate the mysteries You make
Of what we're told to want in life
And what we're told that it will take
And how these twins are liars, laughing strife
And so, I do not think I feel much pain
It's only summer storms, some mud, wet stains

Sonnet #53

For days it rained, the dragon flower pushed
out from the vine, a swelling dress of feathers
Fire tinged the edges, red and yellow, better
watch it grow, the bloom will burst all rushed.
It only sings an evening, bursting tresses
Scenting out a perfume for the night moths
The long tongues of petal, stamen, wroth
at us for daring dragon blooms with our caresses
The fleeting beauty of the dragon, one night
It sinks and rots away and swells the egg

The mayflies come in spring and fly three nights
They spent so much of life trapped dirt and beg
To swim into the sky to chase the light
And fall a burned out husk, a shell, a peg

Sonnet #52

How strange it must be to be a citrus tree
So far from the mountains of Korea and China
Where they say the species came to be
The trees don't hold to a mecca or medina
They don't pass stories down, face east
And remember the hills, the community,
There are no immigrant stories, no beasts
That haunt their mythologies, just seeds
That know enough to grow, they grip the ground
And wherever they land, they lack familiars
The song of the flower, the roots spreading mounds
All known companions sought, unfound, no conciliars
No single prophet risen to speak of mountains
lost trees awake in orchard rows like muted islands

Sonnet #51

The Word of God is silence, can you hear it?

It is the hum of blood, a windless day, a buzz

below the threshold of the ear, because

all the movement and the heat, how we sit

on the back porch, listen as the late summer

sun that's beating down the trees and bodies

All of it's a shivering echo of a threnody

Sung when every piece of star was smaller

Than the eyes that search out for the source;

After that word spoken, what need for prophets

There are flowers in the fields, blood laughters, 

songs in twilight among all gardens, and what of it?

Can't silence also have a volume rising hoarse

these ripples of a silent shout, strain to hear it?

Sonnet #50

In the morning, I look myself in the mirror,

Brush the night grime from my teeth and gums,

I lean in close enough to see my eyes clearer,

without my glasses on. As close as I come,

As blind as I am, I could smell his breath

if he had any. Feel grateful for each gray hair

I came to my graying honestly, no wealth

came to me, but my health is fine, my stare

into my own eyes reminds me I am not

dead, I am not pretty, I am an echo of the mighty

whose birthright was to stand, but I am not

mighty. I am father's face, my mother's eyes

Let me see this man I am, let me call him out

Each morning accept myself enough, a daily rout 

Sonnet #49

I only have so many f***s to give,
So hurry up and gather what you may
I'm completely out, as well, of s***s to give
There's flying f***s  backordered, but they will stay
in shipment for some time. My f***s come slow,
And in the mean time, these my final f***s
On shelves, in jars, and places you well know,
fair few are left so come and gather quickly
From these, my f***s remaining; I insist
You do not linger browsing thickly
When every moment is an opportunity lost
To gather up my f***s, as many as you can stow
Make your selections of my f***s, and f***ing go

Sonnet #48

The vine is a parasite of light
It climbs across above and over all
It places weight on victims blocking sight
Carry me brother i am sore sprawled
The tendrils thicken turn and quicken
Brother I thank you now my serpent tongues
Hold fast and tight and squeeze my stalk thickens
By your aid, we are better together, our bones
Belong as one, and all the glory that I build
Is upon this giant's shoulder, by no intent
My leaves and roots do what they will
I am so thirsty, brother, until seed is spent
Stout oak, swift hackberry, proud pecan trees
Patiently waiting for the rot of limb and leaves

Sonnet #47

The first that lives forever will be not me

or you, or any one of homo sapien

We try things out in rodents, monkeys

There will be immortal capuchin

Ten thousand years from now the dog

Will pass down, in families, bleary-eyed

Forgetful creature, living in a fog

of smells familiar, memories all keyed

unto the dawn of time, no truth spun

Which memory is real, a bowl of food

A bowl of water, a field in which to run

Friends, all vaguely known, a boy that's good

Ten thousand years, or more, the rat

The dog, the monkeys and apes, the cat

Sonnet #46

I never wonder where the rain will fall

When the clouds gather, there is rain

There's space between one drop; the stain

of water on the ground will splash to all.

Of course there's space between the drops

Some places struck, some not, the mist of it

Will miss some minute specks of silt

Along the wall, but when the rain stops

It's hard to tell where one drop fell upon a wall

When the rain comes, we all get wet, all

Even with the umbrellas, galoshes, no props

will keep the cloud of spattering. Even now,

I feel the humid steam upon the windows

Sonnet #45

Because poets never sing of butchering I don't
Know the way to carve a deer safely,
Pull out its guts and organs, break the joints
I don't know how to collect the blood humanely
When the pig is slaughtered, poets don't sing
Of stuffing geese with grain and a funnel
Until the moment the liver is about to cringe
We learn of the garden in poems, of heaven and hell
The only slaughtering in Odysseus was sacrifice
How to feed blood to ghosts. The rest was war
And kingdom management, and curses and vice:
There was an orchard, though, how to plant one, for
a river runs through it, there are little hills for trees
A gentle slope, runnels for dunging and flowers for bees

Sonnet #44

The birds will eat all seeds and fruit
They will because they're hungry, there.
They eat the insects, too. Hunger suits
them, all that energy expended in a hover
We put the nets over the grapes and berries
They dive into the crevices. We hang foil
to shine at them, old CDs, for glaring
light to scare them, put up scarecrow owls...

I cannot blame them, though, their hunger
is the curse that haunts us all, and fear
will drive us all to stones. When younger
they looked to endless blue, drear
emptiness devouring, screaming needs and wants
Grown birds push back the empty sky with cantos

Sonnet #43

Water, water, everywhere, and all of it to drink
The miracles of modern science, water
Is a wonder. Turn the spigot in the sink
Clean water comes, on command, what better
miracle is there in desert plains like this
Cities dig deep wells, send long pipes
We build dams, erect industrial processes
So that water comes, and we can snipe
about the cost, if we want to, but
we must never forget we're griping
a social miracle: it could dry up
It could turn orange and rust as piping
rusts in industrial waste, clogs up like treacle,
Work together, earn these everyday miracles.

Sonnet #42

I don't believe a person can be born again

The trees can. Take a clipping, dip in hormone

Place in soil, soon the roots descend

The leaves push through, the tree, reborn,

Is ready to rise above the fields anew

Anywhere new. Underground the roots

Recognize themself, mine together through

each other, rise one soul, two shoots

You cannot yet take fingers of flesh

Place them in a womb, expect new life

No false watery grave, no ceremonial mesh

No battlefield or epiphanic strife

We remain our old selves, harder, scarred;

With some survival, maybe riper for the churchyard 

Sonnet #41

We do not know the ecosystems at our door

We only know the story that we see, there

Suburbia, a nice, safe place, clean yards, fear

exists here, though. The ants, the cats, the gore

of the hunt: We live in a forest, we just decide 

the trees and shrubs that pull the creatures to us

Our lost pets go wild, our poisons clear wide

swathes of niches ripe for colonization, abide

all you want picking at inches tall of grass

By night, the cats will hunt, the rats will run

The ants will build their fortresses in loosened soil

The birds pass through, the squirrels, possums,

coyotes, deer, all the marginal things will toil

Another meal from sidewalks. They come.

Sonnet #40

A fledgling bird had fallen in the garden
Exhausted in the heat, uncertain wings
Ecstatic flock of grackles shouted things
Hideous encouragement for their child, then
the dog noticed, ran over barking, sniffing
She did not kill, just sniff, "What is that"
What is that?" and I pulled her back at
once, the frightened, weary, bleary fledgling
Raced into the lavender. Keep calling dogs
Away, away, keep calling dogs away, away
Rest a moment, the grackle synagogue
Will wait to lead you home when ready
They have come to help, a hundred strong
From the powerlines, shouting your salvation: Fly

Sonnet #39

We are told the key to life is simply this:
Acquire, acquire, all that you desire
When you are done, throw it in a fire
There's nothing wrong with this, I guess,
What I am saying is that I am supposed
to tell you that you are wrong to oppose
The spiritual, from we that seek to subsist
Who is to say? But are you happy with it?
If you're happy, if you're really happy
Then chase consumption, keep it
We will die someday, best die happy
For me, the weight of ownership
Is the pull to become a ghost, unhappy
An attachment to the accumulated
That's why the fire: burn, dance, abandoning

Sonnet #38

Who looked upon the bitter sand between
the rivers and said, this the place where palaces
of men will rise to scratch the cloudy places?
I think not one but many had this dream
Every brick was an imagining by one
Upon another, all dreaming together
The houses almost made, accept each other
in the shadows of what was decided, done
At night, when buildings' shadows stretch
like cemetery plots below the tombs
the shadows of what could have been come
through, just a little. The people stitch
The spirit of a town out of the ghosts
Of what was almost made and what was lost

Sonnet #37

Of course you consider your voice pedestrian
You hear it everyday, use it for everything
The same words you whisper to your librarian
Make a list under your breath, talk to children
About the chores, have you eaten, how was the day?
Of course, this voice, to you, is tedium
You know it all too well, who is to say
The way you speak can't echo down and echo deep

Here is how we work: There is no play
Where every actress doesn't think she is a fool
Putting on another woman's dress, her make-up
Playing pretend. She feels so odd. She'll be called out
and everyone will think she's a fraud.
                                                             Take up
your courage, and take the stage, anyway.
                                                                    Shout.

Sonnet #36

What else can democratize us like chronic

pain? The ones who feel it know the truth

of tired, aching joints and loosening tooth

The fear that it will get worse, we're sick

All of us, to death, eventually, and pain

is like the string around the finger: remember

remember, the coming of bleak december

It changes our days, the way we seek friends

or deny them, ashamed to admit our fragility

For some it hardens them like knives of death

It is coming, nothing matters, stand hard, sterility.

Others say the hurt reminds us there is no wealth

No peace, nothing, but to ease the pain, and empathy.

These, the two tribes that rise for the commonwealth.

Sonnet #35

A met a zen master, once, who praised
The daily chore of making dishes clean
He did this task by hand, he prayed
while he worked, to the beauty of creation
Be in that moment, where what we ate
What entered our bodies to preserve us
Now is what's left, the dirty pots, the plates
Still carry the textures, the smells, plus
there's the soap, the water hot and cold
The wonder of all those different senses
Engaged, the physical act of making clean
Wiping everything clean, all that is spent
All that is saved, all that is felt but unseen
Every sense engaged, night coming soon
Be in that moment, alone in that room.

Sonnet #34

These are all the reasons that I adore

Sunflowers: First, the plant is quick

post-frost to grow into a towering spire;

Second, the root is burly thick

It digs a mine and punches down

Veracity will rise; Third, the bloom

before it blossoms gazes following the sun

As if to build a mirror to the holiest and swoon

When it faints, complete, a weeping beauty

Seeds the shape of teardrops, surrendering

to duty; Fourth, the rotting comes, grey and sooty

Mold climbs up and through, devouring

Where roots dug low, the worms appear

the stalks remain, as cemetery spears

Sonnet #33

There's a dream that comes at night,

Where demons come to take from me

My imagination holds a feathered light

The monsters cackle, sets it free

They have new faces every time,

Last night it was a Viking God,

A twisted mask of wood and bone

Sometimes they're bears, feral, broad

Other times, they're birds of pecked fruit

But always slipping out with something

Cackling, gloating, dancing, endless hoots

When I wake, I recall only theft, not the thing.

What is stolen? I don't know - as if it's never 

real, a hole in hope, a dreamscape of a sever.

Sonnet #32

We used to write for pleasure, then for glory
We wrote to live forever as achitecure inspires;
As generals and warrior kings only live inside a story
And the poet's name will sing above the hearthfire.

We used to write for money, too, in fact
The little slips of paper in the post
The clear demarcabfuscation via contracts
A little check for beer or baby clothes

We wrote these letters to history and time
We wrote to speak the god inside of all
We wrote all sins to heal them in a rhyme
To rebuild what was possible from falls

Foolish we, for robots hunt as firebirds
Malware, spyware, spiders eat our words

Sonnet #31

Someday I hope to be the man my dog
Believes that I am. The way she looks
At me is what a pilgrim sees in fog
Around a priestly vestment. I took
her from a place where she had friends
She never minded, though; we are blood tribe
A dog will die for a man, a dog will stand
Upon his grave and wait for him to rise

The cat, instead, reminds us we are not
The person that our dog will always see
The cat meows incessantly to spot
The peasant in a giant's skin and feet.

I hope to be the man my dog believes
I also think the cat is true to me.

Sonnet #30

Spider, spider, trapped in my tub,
I do not know what dropped you here,
Where your nimble limbs can't lift you up
The porcelain too smooth, I fear.
In general terms, I do not hate your kind
I value all that lives and eats of vermin
But, the stripes upon your back incline
Me to suspect you're full of poison
I wish we had not met like this
Out in a field, I'd watch you hunt
I'd cheer you on, but here it is
A broom, allow me to be blunt,
A monster in the field is cheered along
Monsters in my bathtub do not live long.