believe

if you don't smile
you don't believe
in flowers.

party notice

headline in the paper,
read it over a guys shoulder.
43 million viewers watched Ken Burns
throw a baseball out at a game.

this is an opportunity.
if readership stays the same
i will have had 43 million
hits on my blog

in 21 thousand, five hundred
years, seven months
and three days.
that’s a Wednesday.

i’ll have to have
to have
the party that Friday.
BYOB




now in 21 thousand years
if i forget who Ken Burns is
remind me
remind me

test of endurance

cut my beard off - way.
left mustache mine,
trimmed like Hugh O’brien
as Wyatt Earp.

driving down the lane,
the city rescue truck
large as a wingless flying box car
pulls out in front of me
going 23 in a 35.
i exhaled slowly.

behind me, swoops to my bumper,
the milky white, lights on, Battle Star Galactica.
a sporty, bushy - bonde Klingon at the helm.
chewing either a wad of renegade rhino
or gum.
close as she was
i could hear her poppin’.

passing the golf course
the earthly remains of Euell Gibbons
in a large black late-model boat of a car
pulls out in front of everyone
going slow –w –w –l - y
obviously looking for flowers to eat.

thus i learned
why the marshal in the old west wanted everyone
to check their hardware,
instead of riding through town
packin’ loaded six-guns.

September Eleven

sold our tv
years ago,
a few days after
we had seen enough.

got up late that morning.
as i entered the living room
m. had the TV on -
terrible news.

a newscaster on the street in Manhattan
a plane had hit . . .
that instant behind him we saw the second plane
soar into the tower

September Eleven
i recall the terrible day
planes excluded from the sky
after the event in Manhattan

i went outside to look
because there was one plane
unaccounted for
coming our way

and it was there, nearly overhead,
over Lake Erie,
the only thing in the sky.
halfway between Cleveland and Detroit.

i saw the large commercial jet turn.
that never happened before, never.
the only plane in the sky
and it looped completely,

made a circle
over the lake
and then headed back East
toward Pennsylvania.