Two poems:

LOVE SPOON

Now I imperil your ear
with a tiny aluminum spoon I picked up
at the Korean pharmacy for $4.98.

Not quite the sterling tool my mother
suitcased to America, lost
now in some sofa.

Nor is mine the worn scent of her lap,
padded with the small pillow
of a twice-birthed gut.

In truth, only this seriousness
in wielding a deadly means
with such delicate sweeps
remains—
..................sweet cat-
licks inside the ear, that
ethereal kissing.

White ear wax is greasy,
I surgically scrape.
Ours is dry and crumbly.
As once my mother sat down
with a lamp and a half-dozen
children from the neighborhood.

How else are we different?
you ask, unable
to see me.

But, alas, I come up
empty—palming
no secret kernel
from this body
I am learning
to love as deep
as perhaps only a mother
dares to reach.

No matter.
Smiling, eyes
still closed,
....................you roll
as if to offer another
pot of gold.

SAND CAMOUFLAGE ELEGY

Never mistake uncertainty for dawn
Or dusk as your life in reverse

The soul, sand-whipped at noontime, hides
from the self's sharper shadows

Unsuppered as any hot ghost in a bombed-out window

Step through night, dazed, yes
now

while your marrow is still sweet
from the earth's smoldering core

Mere life—a trick of time & light
stretching retinas like a mask

Somewhere there is a great invisible castle
with stories like this for its invisible bricks

Fused by tears, bile, puss & shit—

Last week at his funeral, we all sucked
in & out a vaguely differentiated hymn
as if the Lord's littlest lambs

This is religion: we all
slide back down the shadows
of birth in our hand-sewn uniforms

It matters only
that in the final moments
you kissed the grenade
back

& never why
or where....

"There
No

Right here, yes,
still rawest
when I glow..."

Emergency

GI Joseph Smith on North Korea, the Taliban, and Poon Tang; Sring Theory; Fat

from Real Karaoke People:

Year of the Dog

Seasons of Hair

more....