I am ready _

You think this is early,
try it without coffee,

shower in a glacier
stream, drink dew.
Try sleeping till noon with netting above,
no faux here, and no brick.

Haul in a rainbow
on six pound
test

crack the gift, hard,
thump thump,
shake loose his rainbow.

It’s hard to dance

with

eye’s jutting,
hips and legs eons
in the future

–

tjq

Hands and fists of September brown
helicopters stuffed into lunch boxes,
(mine preschool red, yours sand yellow)

At five I am a four star general
(they call me wildman and play with my hair),
You are a rear admiral
(they say: isn’t that accent sweet).

At least the heavy artillery is free
We stare at the sun, then, blinking
The sharp report echoes a silent:

pow pow kaplow.

Our third war is innocent,
these paintings that never dry,
and the two flights down
are somehow like god crying
we children all, call it rain

Cast in both roles, You and I
crack the lock dump,
shake, drop and run
down, who will catch
the last
one

–

tjq

dear Budweiser, my love

last night I had a Miller Lite,
it was like sleeping with the enemy;

only not as much fun.

–

tjq

A number of questions lie here in an autumn heap,
all birch oak mapley.

To the other side, answers sit equal number neat,
organized finer than any spring
snow pile.

As the nights surrender to the days
the questions have all rotted,
the answers chase them down,
scaring up worms, and expectant memories of summer
dresses.

So the questions are feeding,
and the answers are slaking
yet the only growth is fungal;
demanding a response,
which is up, and down?
Safe sprouts (red white brown) as death,

and somehow the whole brontosaurian system
only calls to mind junior high’s
matching lit. exams.

–

tjq

Skirting death, Boreas guffaws,
We had him all lined up.

Humane though we have become
who can resist the poetry of parallel execution?

You hear it before you see it
and you feel it before that.

for Winds, like thoughts, are tricky to lay flat,
cold yet full of hot air.

Good as it felt, the linkages weren’t primed,
the oil, stiff, think grandma’s knees in December

the steel steel wheels squealed:
two legs bad;

and like Pan and his Maenads
we mortals loose again,

condemned to self abuse,
stupid groundhoug.

–

tjq

Pissing her life away,
we wonder out loud,

if two wrongs won’t make a right,
will three or five or ten,
or maybe there’s a point here that we refuse
to acknowledge. This slip sliding, this bag sagging
The subtleties of flying horsemen, piercing swans
canines and cowboys.

Or maybe all this herky-jerky
Is to god as wood

roller coasters, the fourth of june,
rock rolling for crab hunting, and
the defective finger nail that I crushed in our van door,

happy birthday.

–

tjq

If you have an unripe banana,
wrap it in cheese
or dip it in milk,
it will soften.

and

If you have an unripe love,
wrap it in time zones
or dip it in miles,
it will quiver.

None of which changes
the fact that my Banana is green,
that cold heat makes me wince,

and that yesterday my welding goggles,
couldn’t keep you out.

–

tjq

edit 03/21/07 – changed last couplet

He is lost here, and though I see us,
I cannot find him.

This pasty residue,
like molten salt on snow,
melts a dry blood brown,
phagocytes in these whorling streams,
eating our words, veins.

Tasting and testing our bonds,
like wrong way rolling tendons,
his collapse is kneejerk watery and

loose.

Frozen vowels and empty rooms
these are my bounty.

Roiling and coursing,
drawing and raking;

the horror of pain no more.

–

tjq

edit 3/9/07 removed the highway, reordered 2nd stanza
edit 3/13/07 tried to make more readable

I am a duck,
This is my back.

You yell yell yell,
and it’s

water water water.

–

tjq

Whatever you want to call it,
I don’t want to carry it around any more;

It’s yours.

or

Confession

Look, I don’t know what this is,
but I don’t want to carry it around any more.
Please take it,

it is yours.

–

tjq

With Fingers bent around Candied children slaves,
toothless men steal teeth, play dead,
slink up to their hairless women,
hands knotted and gnarled,
but finding bodies rot,

are sloughed off,
and like Britney Mouse,
found sucking to become meat.

The rutted roadway traffic,
slower then flowers to cogs,
neon plastic and
yellow green cobalt
makes her regret the Oops.

A dancing ferret, entrails alive and waiting,
pulls his long ratty legs,
dark and worried, past his licking post,
bald, and yet
clean as the first baby kiss,
like flies and their excrement;

we are wanting,

wanting wanting kiss.

–

tjq

his voice that of an avalanche victim,
buried under years of gunpowder tobacco.

with skin of milk stained charcoal, cancer is the hill above,
metastasizing a microscopic bramble,
the first small plot now two acres
of sea harvesting baskets of emphazeema,

all for us just another way to say
too old to ski down goose

poop dunes

–

tjq

edited 3/6/07, turned it all around