Hekla

Nature mimics the fridge when old volcanoes stench just like when I forget to clear the egg drawer. Sulfurous and salty, pungent clouds until you reach forward, expecting a shell but the texture takes over. Bumps that ooze brown, taut slime shakes like a geriatrics’ dessert table except instead of tapioca bubbles we have unlimited possibilities for creation through hot molten core that comes down hot, slow, fast, think, smooth, rough, away and toward.

Thomas knew the screaming, how sound travels during an ice storm up and into ear canals at warm human temperatures.

Bill wrote it all down-published in his prime but Ishmael turned it around – the mariner became the next big thing, not bemoaning but joking about his hot headedness as the two portals down to Purgatory, ironic since residents swore that at night the voices yelled hot, spewing forth cries, hawking up their glowing phlegm as a warning. Humans may understand the why of these pressure cookers work now but the magic remains when eyes look deep from the precipice to a reposed underworld.

Realism

We all grow into the mistakes we made years ago, saying how we were meant for more, bigger, better things when really our own minds and problems keep holding us back, further away from where we would like to be.

So I watch out my window as the rottweiler takes his morning walk even though
the rain is hard, his owner wears a navy slicker that helps moisture stay out and his hands free to clean up while my window is dirty and my mind shrinks back when rotary phones ring because I am too lazy to modernize.

Five Trunked Tree

Day care center with an alley bound play pen, a chain link fence holding in the children, covered sides by a Chinese restaurant and a dollar store.
Leveled fields of former prosperity with tags on top of tags.
Steel, wire and tubing.
A winter home made from abandoned scraps: parts of a roof, structure, support beams.
It sits next to the city crematorium.
A still life of spokes, boxcars and wheels behind the eclipsing water tower until the new condos spark light from behind their thick, red brick walls while a fiberglass shark waits in line at a taquería.
Spaghetti ramps over the canal while a new turnout of secret after dinner messages are being led out the door.
The last thing I see before I fall asleep is the half inflated football on top of the bus stop canopy at Halsted and Archer.

Midwestern Roots

I've learned of myself,
through fields of old snow
dotted praries
three legged dogs that leap at hawks,
pale taupe wings over my windshield
dashing for themselves.
What it was,
the realization,
the eye-opening term
was how great this all is.
How the darkness swallows my headlights,
the support of a bridge glistens rows
and rows, three eyes high
as the smell of hay and soy rise higher.
But these forgotten places are below the radar,
forgotten with good purpose
because I never should have discovered them
even if they helped me.

Of a Curious Sort

A greenness
that can only
be a
starry-eyed, yellow-bellied, blue-soled acquaintance.
Followed by the murmurous quiet
belayed intrusions
New English girls with
flaming crowns and
affectionate indications
gently glancing
the left stage of a mort
who tied herself to the
current of the sea
wrapped in screens
and incandescent candy foils.

The Philosopher Takes a Drink of Three Dollar Wine and Laughs at Me

A gem
of
borrowed inspiration
from
an overwritten, overquoted
piece of melodrama that
is often overlooked.
I'll remember to use that,
in another poem.