Rising to the Occasion (2)

No matter how quickly 
They were set down, 
Poems ought always to be

Read slowly— 
Too many 
People have wasted 

Too much 
Of their breath 
Already. 

Lemons Are a Dime a Dozen

Lacking a flashy brand- 
New first line to start 
Their vehicles, most 
Poets traffic in selling you 

On the merits of waiting 
For a killer last, killing 
Time in the meanwhile 
By knocking off lots, 

Lots of lackluster gimcrack,
Secondhand cars. 

Alienating the Self

Admit it— 
hard not to 

believe, harder still 
to acknowledge 

a complete stranger. 

Waking the Dead

You don’t have to 
Sleep on it—not 

As hard as it sounds— 
Silence is the only sound 

They understand. 

Inner City Clearance Sales

trigger happy neighborhoods
where cops pick up/off kids at will— 

smashed store fronts strip 
mauled bodies busted

corporate person- 
hoods clean up again. 

Nutcracker

small poem, 

try harder

again. 

Two Pro Found Statements

1. 

Give credit where 
Credit is due. 

2. 

The world owes you 
Nothing 

You can bank on 
That, too. 

Trying to Make Sense out of Nothing

What is it that makes people write poems? 
It’s nothing you can see or smell, nothing 
You can taste or touch or hear— 

Hidden in the formless recesses of nowhere, 
Whatever it is, it takes all our senses aback 
If and when we coax it out of there. 

Springboard

of stream watching

the green wet 
willows dipping in 
to shallow water deep 
enough you think you are 
seeing things down there where 
the branches you look at look 

to be springing roots! 

Wounded in the Process

no- 

thing too 
in 

significant— 

.

how 

. 

even this small 

sliver 


working it- 
self out, 

heals.