Qu'est-ce que la vie?
Qui est l'homme?
Pourquoi est-ce que j'écris
En français? Pardon.

Irish Anger

if you let this particular
kind of vegetable rot,
you get this particular
kind of feeling in
your gut.

À la Fin des rencontres

Ta peau est la lune,
Tes cheveux la nuit,
Tes yeux l'amertume
Que ta bouche adoucit.

Godson

No matter what I do or say
The sun keeps rising everyday
And setting once it's crossed the sky.
Then who am I? Then who am I?

Appel au Psychologue

Toujours la nuit,
Enfoncé au lit,
Je ne vois rien de beau
Mais un noir et laid couteau!
Et je ne sais quoi faire d'autre
Sauf faire coup de fil à la votre.

Two Poems about Government

1
Wherever humans congregate
We scald our fates
To demonstrate
That God is good
Where Man is great.

2
So spoke the leader
To the posture-puffed files
And everyone in them
Applauded with smiles.
And the leader regressed
To his private-plush den,
And inking his pen
This he confessed:
The people will do
What the people will do,
I am the mouth that feeds the zoo.
I embody common fervor
Undulating into murmur.

Holy frijole I haven't a friend
And I feel like this whole great big world will end.
Nobody knows me, and I guess it's my style,
I haven't shared a feeling in a while.

Rafting

How long does this pain last?

Well I've only been downstream
A few miles further from here.
You can see it empties into
A larger body of water
Thereabouts that third bend.
Hard to say what comes of it after that,
Cataracts maybe.

Can't be. It's the ocean no doubt.
I'll beat on upstream a little to the source,
See if I can't track the course from up there.

Up
stream? Suit yourself stranger

A Honest Tradesman

I reside by the blue steep hills,
By the swamps of Catalee,
Where the parrot's shriek
Astounds the meek
And resounds to the bank of the sea.

Travelers on their way
To Skye or Innisfree
Implore advice
For a vouchsafe night,
Which I give them for a fee.

The fee they can always afford;
The product consistently sound:
I ferry them o'er
To a cave by the shore
And bury them underground.

So what sort of liar am I,
Who holds up his end of the deal?
Asleep in their bunks
They've no need for gold chunks,
So do not say, sir, that I steal.

A Travail

Je vois des gens autour de moi
Prenant part à leur emploi,
Je ne veux, je ne peux pas
Continuer mon boulot.

Travailler, c'est nécessaire,
Si je voudrais garder mon chair,
Mais pour avoir des pensées claires
Il faut cesser mon boulot.

Je suis point ouvrier commun
Au centre de ma propre âme,
Mais comme le corps exige son pain!
Il faut rester chez mon boulot.

Mt. Wilson

On the skirts of Saint Gabriel's range I peek
At the rises who lift beyond, not so steep
As t'inspire fear
In him the hiker drawing near.

Rugs of chlorophyllic ties
Drape the white rocks as they rise
To drink from smoggen bluish skies
To drink and dance I do surmise.

In woods on hills, I like to think,
That sky would trouble me a drink
And rocks and trees would whistle with
My humblest and most heart-wrought gift.

The mountains rise and fall within
A panorama, that's how thin.
Wretch'd, the life which weans itself
From Gabriel's enchanted shelf.

What the Post-It Heard

"I gape a yawn
and grin a SunGod grin,
a Roor in hand
I'm read to begin."

En Virginie

Le soleil qui brille me manque, me manque
Dès que je suis arrivé.
Chez moi maintenant, il n'a pas de temps
De ses rayons me paie.

Et moi, dans un mois, je reviendrai
Aux terres ensoleilées sur mer,
À Californie, l'état d'or,
Où vit encore mon père.

Thomas Hardy

I read Thomas Hardy in a day
The Mayor of Casterbridge.
His daughter was the choicest bride,
He was what Faulkner's Oedipus would be.
Nowadays courtesy's dead.

Jackson Hole

The Grand Teton leans above Jackson Hole
Like you lean above me on one elbow as I lay,
You are more and less imposing.
Crumble on the glacial bed.

John

All that would have been becomes, John.
Your expectations are presently realized
Or vanish.
Each emotional paradox undoes itself,
Your desires and despairs negate themselves.
What
Did you expect...

Some economist you are John,
To so insult the sale-
Value of devotion.

Daylight Savings

I lent an hour to my clock
At two o' clock on Saturday.
For such a ledger loving watch
I want it back with interest paid.

I bummed an hour from a clock
I hadn't told the time from yet.
I didn't say I'd pay him back,
He told me "You I won't forget."

Free Will

What's this free will business about?
Free will within the wills of others?
Free will like a river, or a leaf?
Free will like a free radical?
Or Godlike?
Immortal freewill

What's News

The psycho-killer slew nine men
Before the cops caught up to him.
Before the cops could lock him up,
He slew himself. Just their luck.

Innisfreemyself

I have faith in things as of yet never seen,
Things growing in a faraway ground of green,
Things promising me to sprout the heart's delight,
(Or I'm promising myself the grass is greener thing is right).

I'm seeing things in the clearest vision,
Apples for plucking, fish for frying, cow's milk,
The time is come, I make final my decision,
God, bless my roaming, Your humble ilk.

The Pothead

The world of men craves plagues and crimes, Geezh!
My remedy tends toward timid ends, hashish.

To She

Miss, could you maybe
Put my heart back
In its rib-rack?

It beats better
In my chest
Than quivering to warm your breast.

À Mlle.

Peut-être
Peux-tu remettre
Le coeur à son espace?

Ça ira mieux
Que de le laisser
Nu, parmi une place.

Warrant!
I'll mark thee Winter,
Hast plunged the grass
And ground within a snowy trough

As if a
Bitter nip
Were not enough.

The Snowball in Hell

Why do birds flock
To the tree in the sunlight?
Why does the skylark
Sing in the morning?
What makes all might
To be insufficient?
What turns drizzle
Into pouring?

Why do birds flock to the tree?
Oh Lord, why me?

Creation

in the morning
we become
Creators---
after dreaming inspirations
erupted from the dampest,
insanest
closets of
what might otherwise
be called the
mind