Bug Collection

A glass jar sits in the window--
paring knife air holes punched in the lid,
holes of thin triangles.
Gray-brown twigs, too young for white lichen,
brown buds hiding green new leaves
protrude past drying grass, yellowing,
coiled across the bottom,
sprouting throughout the jar
for the creatures captured in the yard.
Some are missing,
eaten.
The praying mantis now lies dead
among the husks of fireflies,
white pepper-winged moths
and their black and brown banded woolly bear larvae.
A walking stick, perched along a twig,
lies as still as the tiny branch it evolved to imitate.
One wonders which is which
without looking closer.
The only life left is a millipede, waves of legs
along its two-inch body, black and shiny,
not noticing the cyanide it secretes into the air.

Clothed in Forests of Words

All poems are on death--this dark art
Invites us into the forests--islands
Of trees that spread shadows on the trails
We tread on our short trips across
And through--beginning and end threaded--
Woven in brown and green--warp
And woof--I wonder where these woods will end--

We dress ourselves in dreary clothes
And wonder why the darkness wafts over
Our lives--dark clothes losing us
In the dark forests--fear surrounds us--
Why must we live in such morbid fear--
We are unable to see that in the absence of greatness--
Pettiness prevails--what poor lives
We have learned for too long to live--and to die--

All poems are on love--and live longer
Lives than the lovers--living their deaths
And showing that love creates the same showers
Of death-blood as wars and droughts--
The trees these poems are fashioned from trickle
With the blood of those hung from their high limbs--
Dressed--I hang highest in these trees--

To Find God

I had to cleanse myself of all religion
Before God could, would finally come to me--
He shined in through my eyes as beauty, love
And peace--the holy opened, set me free.

For God is one, yet not just one, He lives
By being many, too--as a true healthy
Body is made of many kinds of cells--
No one investment ever makes you wealthy.

To live in healthy holiness we must
Go out to fight all of the cancer cells
That threaten this hold world as it grows,
Sending branches up roots deeper than wells.

A single path is not a choice, one branch
Is not a tree. Cancer kills the body--
If we want a healthy and holy world
We need plurality in unity.

The strongest loves grow between different,
Unlike things. God is not narcissistic--
He does not want us all to be the same--
For in Him, and us, cancer makes one sick.

And so, I cleansed myself of all religion
So God could finally make his way to me,
And shine in through my eyes as beauty, love,
And peace, wholly open to be set free.

Back on the Road

 I must get out of here, away from all
The boredom, mediocrity it represents,
The boredom, mediocrity it is.

Shall I follow Kerouac on the road,
Sixty years too late?
In time for all my conflicts,
The nihilistic fight

Blows taken 'til we learn
If what they say is right is wrong
Then what they say is wrong is wrong as well

Let's go back on the road,
Go back to learn about ourselves,
Before we learned that wrong was right,
Before we gave up on the right
Before we found that we were dead
Soon after birth--and never learned to live

What will you choose to be your sure escape
From the realities of hate
Where creativity is scorned,
Intelligence despised

We must be trampled so they may feel good
Made mindless mediocrities
So they may feel secure,
Done with our sanction from our guilt
For being good

Let's go back on the road
To find ourselves
To save ourselves
From all the moral cowards they have med
With our permission
Because it was ourselves