The only advice I have to offer

If you can't stop the weather,
grow gills and breathe the rain
If you can't climb the mountain
stay low and learn to love the plains

If your heart is keeping locked up
the secrets you wish you knew
then shrink up small, darkly made,
and become a secret, too

Nothing else is out there.
This is all you get
So grow gills and plains and hidden parts,
and make the most of it

no one wins

Cold water slips and pools
into small drops of jewels
on my skin
and I see bright renewals:
a thousand broken rules
where they've been.

Here Truth, not taught in schools,
and Fate, however cruel,
make me grin.
Small rivalries and duels
are left to lesser fools.
No one wins.

Stopping-- by theater on a snowy evening

Snow drops down between buildings,
sheltered from winds
guarded by the bulk of the city

and illuminated by
streetlights and the pink marquee

People hesitate at doors,
then push out

rushing to start cars
and scrape ice--

to get warm


But we stop
to let the snow
fall onto our coats
onto our hair

frozen, a moment,
in the cold

Then our bodies shake in the wind
we walk quickly,
we get warm

all that's left of snow is
dampness in our hair.

Office Bird

A little bird, not mine

a pet kept, not at home but brought to work
to keep company

he flits at my elbow
making noise and nuisance
feathers flying

It's trying
on my patience and easy
to make threats

"Soup," I say.
"Bird soup."

He only blinks and tries to bite
my pen, moving
across paper on a decaying
roll-top desk

until I remember

His wings are clipped
he cannot fly
cannot move as birds are born to do

I let him have his noise.

Generation Gap

You never call--
the bounce and frission
off satallites seems too odd,
you've said

odd that our voices wouldn't
meet in the middle
they way they do when carried
over and under land
by wire


It worries me
when ten digits appear,
glowing and vibrating in my pocket
announcing you want
my attention

my hellos are cautious
your voices is strong
and for
some reason, this night,
you just wanted to know

where I am

Hot on wax and skin

Crusing the blue
between earth and moon

Icarus

fell

Sunstroke stopped him as
he strove to match (not match, but overtake)
his father

a murderer, who's only goal was
freedom for his only son

And with the sun low in the sky,
hot on wax

Icarus fell.

Daedalus flew.

Defining-- Decisive, Critically Important

Change the world, change of heart, change of clothes--

in 25 lines or less.



It's an experiment, here it goes.