Thomas Aquinas

If a clever saint could say

That he saw things that made

All his writings as straw,

Then are these words just

A consolation for us

Who haven’t yet glimpsed

The stuff of heavenly vision?

Well, I say let them burn like straw

Until our blessed sight leaks in,

And let our hints of orange

Grow so wild with fervent love

That even the face of God

Begins to glimmer in its glow.

Casual Delights

The sun lightly roasts my back

Like the curves of an Arabic coffee bean

That I sip down into my soul

As conversations crack open and unfurl

The plush fragrance of friendship.

Mother's Day

אֵ֛יךְ נָפַ֥לְתָּ מִשָּׁמַ֖יִם הֵילֵ֣ל בֶּן־שָׁ֑חַר

Carla was out running errands,

Debbie was out for lunch,

And the kids were bored.

They were inside

Thinking about the forbidden

Door. The door on the closet ceiling

That led to the upstairs attic.

The idea caught on.

There was unexplored space,

An unknowable

Thing that beckoned finding out.

So up they went,

Up into the realm of thrills,

Up among the immortals,

Up to where they found

Cobwebs and old Christmas wreathes.

Then the floor broke out in heaven,

And they fell.

At first clinging to rafters

By their armpits,

And then falling,

Falling,

And

Hitting the hard floor of the guest bedroom.

Like fallen angels

Littered on earth among pieces of paradise,

We were laid low in the midst

Of white insulation,

The padding from above,

Numbered among the rebels,

The accuser in our hearts,

The sons of dawn,

Culpably defined for the rest

Of our lives

By our mothers.

It feels good to know
that praise is not words, but being;
yet I love to write!

The forest out back

Twitches in the rain like a

Scarcely quickened corpse.

Berlin, 1884

A few little kids

Formed a club and had a

Treasure hunt.

They had colored

Maps that detailed the lumps

And runs of rivers and mountains,

An “X” on a pile of gold,

On rubber,

On ivory,

And even on some diamonds.

The lines they drew

Cut through the paper and

Pierced the black

Soil underneath.

And the cuts still bleed, and run

Over the oceans and

Down our hands. Yes,

Down our hands.

"Eco-Friendly"

A group of ash borers decked with

Emerald suits have disembarked

The trees that line a strip of green

Alongside Busch Corporate Center

In Worthington, Ohio.

Their initial deposit of larvae

Quickly left gaps in the wood

Market, and paper crazed hatchlings

Hollowed out even more space for

Business until a total girdling of the

Competition was complete.

Finally, after two years of insider

Trading and excessive forays into sensual

Matters, the beetle’s blatant materialism

Could be seen from the street, with stocks

Of stripped bark gluttonously discarded

At the foot of bare trees, which,

As if under attack from invasive

Cremationists, had been reduced

To something beyond mere

Ash.

Breakfast Bully

The cool swagger

Of a pea-sized spider on the

Window sill makes me wonder

If it knows that we’re still

Scared.

The Pest

A klutzy caterpillar slipped and

Fell onto the scarcely moving arm

Of a nameless creek that braced itself in

A coulee clad with leprous sycamores,

Sugar maples, and a dying buckeye tree

Being worn out with orange.

The bug was white, tubed, perforated

With black spots, its wormy flesh a straightjacket

For insanely small and silent squirms and

Writhes that flung shivers across the

Stream’s dampening skin.

Its panicked movements mimicked

The scribbling of an arthritic

Grandparent’s signature on a birthday card,

When something so big can only be shown

By a few shaken letters, a few ripples

Traversing a great white plain

Of blankness

Without the aid of capable hands,

Arms, or legs.

I pity the insect, but not the pest,

For its groans are not heard or felt, but seen,

And its gentle whittling of water

Betrays the fact that it is dying 
To grow limbs, or better yet,

To cocoon and fly away.

Dear God

Be our iconoclast,

Shatter our pornographic mind.

Take that stick,

And break

Those empty piñatas of naked bodies.