Eco

The field is full of clover flowering
To feed the bees that with their buzzing sing
Across the grasses trading water held
By them for nitrogen the clovers bring

The soil -- a fertilizer from roots swelled
Out to protect bacteria who've dwelled
There in their homes they're paying for by trade --
The field is flourishing from what's expelled.

The hive arrives to what they have surveyed
To take the nectar and the pollen, paid
By pollinating all the clovers, red
And white above the field of trefoil jade.

In nature all increase is made widespread
By trade, and every species thus is wed
By root and flower, water, wind, and wing --
And from this networked system all are fed.

To Wash in the Light

I hate to watch as people will not learn,
To watch as people bathe in ignorance,
Ignore the putrid stench and in turn spurn
The jasmine joy I offer as a rinse.

Does knowledge, beauty, insight bring them pain?
Are they afraid their prejudices will
Soon fall away? Will they let others reign
Because they will not climb the slightest hill?

And yet I understand my love's unique,
That love of knowledge, wisdom, beauty are
Not found in most. Rare is the one who'll seek --
More common are those who would quench his star.

I shine the light -- it's you who will not see.
You want to learn? You'll have to come to me.

Conversing With Asperger's

I cannot turn off background sounds
I cannot help but hear
The chatter that is out of bounds
To every normal ear

To hear you I must first ignore
The fact that you are there
Pretend the rest out on the floor
Speak words I want to wear

I promise that I'm listening
To every word you speak
I look away to hear you sing
And warble from your beak

Don't turn away I'm interested
I want to hear each word
I promise you that I am fed
I eat just like a bird

A bird you know appears to peck
And barely seems to eat
But food fills double to its neck
Your words they are my wheat

Crazy Words

"I love you." Words he said to her he thought
Were meaningless. He said that he loved chocolate,
But was she chocolate? He said he loved walks
In nature. Was she walks in nature? Paths
Presented themselves to him, both toward
And equally away -- they circumscribed.
"I love you but I cannot say I like you."
Could he love chocolate and not like it either?
To say such syllables would be insane --
But when he told her that about herself,
She said that it made perfect sense to her.

The Wrench

You went down to the coal mines every day
To give my mother her dream house and van,
To give us luxuries we never saw,
And college to your sons, as was your plan.

While putting in a bolt to hold the ceiling --
Your job was to protect the little clench
Of miners from a fall -- you did not see
The curtain slip between the bolt and wrench.

A canopy meant to protect you from small rocks
But blinded you to danger from a draft
That blew the curtain put there to protect
The  miners from gas buildup in the shaft.

The turning wrench wrapped well around your wrist
The curtain, jerked you off of your machine
And snapped your wrist so you would pull your hand
From off your arm, left in that bloody screen.

But even now, with but one arm, you go
Down to the coal mines every day -- a tool
Is where your hand once was, but you
Kept mom in house and van, and us in school.

Outhouse

The gray boards of the outhouse creaked beneath
The weight of my grandmother as she stood
There on its roof, the leaves around a wreath
Of yellow, red, and orange and green and wood.

Her seven children stared between the spaces
The limbs and leaves had left; her shadow twins
Slid silently among the dappled dead
Upon the forest floor, paid for her sins.

The tears dripped down her turkey chin. Her husband
Was begging her to climb back down. And then,
She leaped, a belly-flop into the dirt
And leaves. Her husband helped her to her feet.

The pressures pushed and preyed out of proportion,
Yet failed to make my father an abortion.

A Call to Poetry

What good is verse to one who won't believe
In Muses or the God who gave them birth,
When none believe in prophesy or saints
Or heroes, geniuses, lives of great worth?

Perhaps the lack of worthy subjects stains
Our poetry so no one wants to read
The doggerel we write. Who can delight
When envy, blame, and hate is all we feed?

You can't lift up by tearing down, no bridge
Is dynamited to connect the shores --
Thus we can't bridge ourselves to virtue's lands
Insisting all are syphilitic whores.

But why have poetry when there's injustice?
Frivolities just take us off the path.
But, honestly, your anger is pathetic
Compared to great Achilles' awesome wrath.

And who of you would follow justice down
To Hades and insist on justice true
To itself such as Oedipus proclaimed
And punish when the one who sinned is you?

So do not say that poetry has not
A place today -- the serious alone
Find home in verse, find lessons to be learned --
The rest of you are cowards made of stone.

Open

My heart opens --
A book, a rose,
The beak of a baby bird
In an old, bent apple tree --
Until I know, now
Its warmth is not wasted
On your door, cracked open.

My Life

I sit at my computer, finding comfort in my chair.
Sometimes I lie or sit with book or clipboard, writing. Who
Can understand why I must write, why I must live this way?
My thoughts, ideas are hail storms punching holes in all that you

Have never wished to question. I can understand why you
Feel apprehensive, why you worry when such ideas, thoughts,
And goals keep dominating all my time. But did you know
That in it all I think the most of you? My heart is caught.

I Cannot Wait

I cannot wait to see you every morning
I wake beside you. Shall we sit together
In our brown chair so I can hear the music
Ear on your back, of your heartbeat and breathing,
As fingers press into your belly, fleshy
And soft below your breasts? These hands of kindness
Just seek to hold, caress, and make you joyful
And safe from all your paranoias, worries.
I promise I'll take care of you, providing
All that I can -- what else is love and loving?

Ode to My Love

I love each week and weekend that we have
Together. I cannot believe the joy
You bring me with your presence, body, love.
You, lover of my poems, stories, toy

As much as you would with my heart and I
Won't toy with yours. You leave me trembling, I'm
Without control. It's not just every feeling
Your body brings -- such little is a crime

I'd never dare commit. I tremble at
Your lips, your voice -- I have to feel your heart
Fill every space within my home -- my door
Is ever open for you, my life's start.

Walking in the Fog

The fog enfolds in bold suspended drops
The forest of my focus, which I flog
Against -- these barriers to sight, these stops
Of light, insights I'm wearing like a bog.

Such wet weight is my woe -- I cannot know
With blankets binding, blinding -- I can't feel
With sharpness in the damp I feel below,
Above, around me, ground me, make me kneel.

I feel a worm, an eel, a serpent slide
Away across my feet -- a slug, a snail
Spreads slime to climb to try to find a bride --
I cannot see and trip along the trail.

But when you're with me, all this burns away --
The sun enlightens and I want to stay.

The Desert Lion

The lean lion prowls around the desert plain
And lures leopard out upon the desert plain --
The grass greens the stain.

The mane mangled by past battles hangs in ropes
That drag, dangling hair upon the desert plain --
The grass greens the stain.

He feasts, flesh ripped from the carcass that he made,
A vain vulture dead upon the desert plain --
The grass greens the stain.

The weak water trickles to his tongue. He tastes
The cool copper coat his tongue and desert plain --
The grass greens the stain.

The lame lion lurks along the filling lake
The rain wrought out of the ravaged desert plain
The grass greens, the stain.

The cat crawls along the muddy bank and drops.
He can't keep alive -- not where the desert plain
The grass greens -- the stain.

The bright bones are clean -- the lion licks his fur
In short shade -- a spot upon the desert plain
The grass greens, the stain.

Creeping

He has such a tiny old prick
And he looks like he will make you sick
He crawls on your skin
He wants to get in
But you pluck off that nasty brown tick

The Quack

For diabetics there was a man said,
"You really should keep making bread."
Thus John Maynard Keynes
Gave us our full reigns --
"Who cares? In the long run we're dead!"

Aphrodite

There once was a goddess named Venus
A beautiful case of her genus --
Without all her trust
She'd grind you to dust --
But why off of love would you ween us?

The Lilac

The lilac bushes fill the yard with spring --
Sweet lavender fill up the branches' tips
Above the heart leaves -- the odors always bring
May in until the petals touch my lips.

I want to touch your lips, my fingers feel
The roughened smoothness as I seek to seal
Your breath a moment, feel the breath release
Around my finger tip a subtle breeze.

The breeze is bringing in the lilac smell
To permeate the house, to fill it well
And bring the garden past the window sill
To tell us secrets only it can tell.

The nightgown grips your hips in lavender
Silk wrinkles riding up to show your thighs.
Your body beckons as your tongue denies --
I only want our rhythms to recur.

You shut the window, cutting off the breeze
That brings the lilacs deep into our home -- a
 Soft scent that slowly dissipates until
We lose the sweetness, joy of its aroma.

The lilac rustles silently, attracts
The bees made silent by the glass that acts
Transparent as it closes off, retracts
The full experience, now rendered wax.

And who are you who used to love the garden?
And why have you denied us what we loved
When we chose this, our house, to make our life?
Why won't you smell the lilacs next to me?

Who I Owe

This house is mine and, being mine, I must
Insist that it be mine and I not its.
I must insist and cease to grouse -- the dust
Is building in my house, beyond my wits.

These kids are mine and they must fit with me,
Not I with them, though I am duty-bound
By love to care for them and raise them free,
To give them wings, unbind them to the ground.

This wife is mine and I belong to her --
Her happiness my goal I daily fail
To reach, I fear -- I fear she would concur.
Shall I lose all my kingdom for this nail?

The ones I own are nothing I have bought --
They're who I owe, the owners of my ought.

The Evening and the Morning

Beloved death, I call upon you each
Day that I live, pull you toward me, lust
For you with every breath. I'll be your dust
That settles on the lampshade. I will reach
Out to embrace you, everything you teach
Of darkness, shadows spreading on my bust --
I know that you are certain, that we must
Fall ever-forward to your awful breach.

Until that day, I celebrate the day,
Illuminating light-shafts through the clouds,
The hyacinth that burst with purple scent,
The running rabbits, leaping lambs at play,
The swarming, talking, ever-living crowds --
I will enjoy the days that I've been lent.

Wet

The lightning is lighting          the stiff trees standing
Along the lane where          we lost ourselves, struck
By our lust and our strength          that stole through the stolen
Time laid before us, stripped          of the leers in our stares.

Confusion

The constant, cruel cacophony can crush
My nerves at times and overwhelm my days --
I long for days when I'd enjoy the hush
Of forest walks that kept me from the glaze
That cataracts my mind when music, voices,
Such overwhelming sounds come from my choices.

The constant tugging, pulling, neediness
Of everyone exhausts me, makes a haze
Through which all light seems blinding bright -- I bless
Those moments, ever-rarer, when I gaze
Upon a room of nothingness, where none
Is present, making their demands I run.

The constant pettiness that seems to fill
The days of everyone are like a blaze
Of heat, oppressing me. Do what I will,
Yet going through my days brings on a daze,
Where I cannot collect my thoughts, my self --
I feel a toy forgotten on the shelf.

On Learning

I may not care if you should wish to learn,
But please remain in ignorance in silence --
Do not infest the world, don't make it burn,
Don't interfere with your slack-jaw-faced violence.

I don't expect that you'd respect my plea
As you don't show respect and you don't act
Respectfully, though you demand it, free
Of evidence of true desert or tact.

If humans are suspended in between
The angels and the animals, you show
You chose the animals, the low, obscene --
You interfere with all who want to grow.

If virtue needs true knowledge, there's no lack
Of vice in you -- you try to hold us back.

Beauty's Drive

When I first gazed upon your face, I knew
That I must copy you, that I'd repeat
Myself in you, through you, with you -- make true
My image making you. The world would greet
With gladness making more of you -- I saw
This when I saw you walking up to say
"Hello," to me; we'd meet and eat and thaw
To love as we began our dance to play
Our first steps down our marriage hall
And to the time when we'd slow time and birth
Ourselves through you. And now we'll never fall
Into extinction -- we have proved our worth.
When beauty fills a maker's soul, he must
Ensure it's reproduced, transform his lust.