such a beautiful Christmas tree
nearly twenty feet tall
in the neighbors front yard,
been watching it for years;
he's not using it anyway.
our ceiling at home reaches seven,
i only need some off the top.
i'll buy neighbor kids beer
have them cut the top at night
and deny involvement

forget the above. I remembered Gregory
Corso's beat generation poem about
learning to drive and
mowing friends down:
humor from another generation.
unkind doesn't work now
when we need to go easy,
we surly do.
we need kindness, even in humor.



.

practically Christmas
a few days to go
they say it will rain
how can they know?
staying home i'll sing in my head
White Christmas...
"may your days be merry and bright"
at night go to bed



.

shortest day of the year
can you feel it?



.

five days before christmas
a mexican food lunch
loosen up




.

i awaken and look at the news
then i'm sorry i did, for what i read;
for what is said saddens me.
where is the love and the dreams?

softness, it seems, is waylaid by power
and grandeur of prominence.
shall we avoid the sweet scent of flowers?
give mankind gentle notions again.



.

America has computers.
Pick an issue and a day;
in 24 hours know exactly
what the people say.



.

a lazy gray day watching droplets;
well, first sensing them until
i looked beyond thin curtains
to see silver sprinkles puddle up.

visible from my easy chair,
pearls splatter and shatter softly.
will pour later is the consensus
of weather forecast providers.

i sip coffee to heed what is
given by professionals or,
as in days of old, will dauntlessly
draw my own conclusions.



.

2016 super moon, bright white
and larger; nearest until 2034.
got up at 2:00 and saw it a minute;
went back to bed. slept through most of it.





.

you can yell at the dog
he'll feel bad
and not remember
why you're yelling at him.



.

two horses
in the small corral
stand in extreme opposite corners,
though horses like company.

these two must have been
together long enough;
each knows
what the other has to say.



.

waiting in rome

the function of bureaucracy
is to make you wait
to show who is boss
to keep you little people down,
in place, engaged

there is a seat, take it
it will be a while
take a number
grasp the ticket
no one will look at it
but it gives you
something to hold on to



.

nothing doing

from fifty yards away, black and white,
serene on the banks of a placid pond.
i watched for fifteen minutes
fifteen geese taking life easy

they sat or stood in the sun,
a few briefly walked a tight circle,
then sat again. content with time off
from what they do when they're busy


.

october wind and warm/
still, pancakes for breakfast were just right/
u sure?/
wait...there aren't two voices in a poem./
tell Shakespeare/
his were different/
and yours is the same?/
well, not the same...You know i made your part up, don't you?

by request -
hey, tomc
okay, hey
it's national poetry day

i'll wait for intergalactic poetry day
and the new planet they found,
where life has just begun
a mega-gazillion miles away/

so after a giga-zillion years
it's not spinning on it's axis/
there it's still ten in the morning - day one/
what fun. spinning takes practice.

went to Oregon
bought marijuana in a store.
smoked a joint. it took three days.
didn't finish it all.
best i felt in years.
$9, it was fine.
couldn't bring any back to Ohio.
come on, America.
the young can bang heads playing football;
we old want to sit in a chair, relax
and feel good.


.

fog in the morning,
we used to say thick as pea soup.
now, perhaps it's broccoli du jour
jesus crimney - i mean it



.

rain louder than the train

harvest moon so soon it seems,
though it's been a year;
this night i stayed in bed, didn't open the curtain to look.

Then a brilliant flash at three
and i counted the seconds eight, nine, ten, eleven...rumble.
again a flash - i counted to nine that time.
nine miles away.

i imagine the storm diminished
as i slept gain
until rolling thunder when i woke at six.
left to right, across the sky.
and the rain was louder than the train...two trains around seven.
pouring hard on and off this morning.

This night i slept well,
wrapped in good thoughts and dream.
how about you...how'd it seem?



.

that place without time

where i go in dreams
is all...it seems/

boundless, sweet love



.

went to the grocery store
bought a ham sandwich they make there.
carried it home where she she cut it in two.
i asked which half was mine.

while cleaning up the last of the mustard
that she blew all over the floor
she zeroed in when she said,
"take the half that doesn't have a bite out of it."

there wasn't any mustard on it either.


.

old friends are special;
if you can deal with old coots.







.