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I loved to make them

Laugh

This older man

John

And a lady whose name I

Don't remember

From the moment I stepped

Into the big green bus that

Parked once a week

In the lot near

Our house

And squeezed my gangly

Teen-aged frame

Down the narrow aisle

Wisecracking

Pulling a joke book from the

Slanted shelf

And laughing for hours at the

Stupid

Inane

They knew where my young

Literary interests idled

And often brought new volumes

Hand-picked

I almost hated it when

Others

Came aboard and

Stole their attention

But I would help

Since I knew topics and titles

Sometimes better than

They

And after this many years

I'm sure

They're both gone

They've gathered the

Keys

As I've slid my stack from the

Narrow desk

Their faces

Voices

Laughter

I can never return

First Snow

Under a pale

Gray canopy

Dawn lingers into the

Afternoon

And meets an early dusk

The flakes appear

Cautious

Undecided

Filling in the achromatic

Landscape

Leaving in us a

Dusting

Of bittersweet affection

A chill wind animates a

Loose shutter

And it barks against the sill

We're here

We're here

We're here

Bottle Collector Guy

Digs through the

Trash

In front of God and

Everyone

We pretend not to notice as he

Gropes and paws

Bags and

Wrappers

Could he be any less discreet?

He doesn't appear to

Care

His reward is the

Cash

For his salvage

Ours is the useless scraps of

Superiority

That Record

All I ever seem to recall is

How it felt

Colors languish

Music embellished by a memory that

Dances

Like my own Pinocchio

The pops and

clicks

Of needle on vinyl are

Buried

With the imperfections of the

Day

It's Good To Be Mistaken

Wrong

Once in awhile

To remember the taste of

Insipid words

Or how it feels to pry out

An apology

To realize I've tried to

Run

Beyond the chain that keeps me

In my yard

To exercise that

Change muscle

To shift that

Paradigm

It's good to learn a different tune

Just

Maybe

Not

This time

When Our Idols Came Out

Of hiding

The first thing we did was

Print magazines

With their names in bold san serif

Field guides to their habits and

Instincts

It had been so long since these

Rodents

Had heard a cat in the house or

The snap of a trap

They ventured forth timidly

At first

But now

So bold

They play in the bedrooms

Leave their trail through the

Halls

They chew on the fabric of modesty and

Sensibility

Their prodigious appetites have

Left stockpiles bereft

But that's okay

We each have our favorites

They look so cute with their

Shiny crowns and

Promises

Full Moon

Do you see me

As you peek over the

Tree line

Your shy

Votive glow

Brushing shadows from my

Forehead

We are siblings

You and I

Each drawn to the night

But conspicuous with

The light we

Borrow

Sometimes

In full reflection

Other times

Retreating to mere

Temporal crescents

Waning behind a

Dark earth

Sleepless

The thoughts that roam my head

Are like the living dead

Stumbling cluttered halls

Careening into walls

Feeding on the fare

Of what I've put up there

All that I've been taught

Becoming food for thought

When zombie appetites

Are sated for the night

And sleep comes to their eyes

It's time for me to rise

Trail Mix

What can be done with this

Melange of motives

The salty

Sweet

The mesquite

I have my favorites

But the unsavory

Tang

Sneaks into everything

Every taste

Every thought

Every deed

On the Fence

The sparrow rests

Aware of

Swelling

Blackening clouds

The Coke can flips from it's post

Perch

Spinning toward a shroud of

Eminent grass

Another gust will warn the

Clinging cricket

Who will leave the

Rail

In favor of the tented

Thicket

Even dust claims

On the wood will

Soon be washed into the

Ground

Nothing

Can stay on the fence when

Facing such a

Storm

Love Sings

And what rare troubadour

Creates the

Harmony

Hope inks

The map with its own

Hand

That brings him across

The sea

Who is this captain

Militant

Who'll burn his ships and

Bridges

Who sees the

Fingerprint of

God

While high atop its

Ridges

'Tis

Faith

Archeology

It's amazing

What can be built out of a few

Artifacts

Everyone needs a place to come home to

Stories to flesh out the

Weathered bones

The comfort of cataloging

Shards

What's the chance of finding meaning

In the cut and fill

The future in the past or

Love among the ruins

What promise keeps our feet

Anchored in the dig

It's a strange way to excavate

Redemption

Meme's the Word

Why you gotta be so meme?

Like meme and apple pie

He's just not that into meme

I've got a meme and I

Know how to use it

Live and let meme

Give meme a chance

No visible memes of support

The million meme march

I'm the meme of the world

You got some meme to say?

Cool memes

Memes be like...

Calgon, take meme away

Universal meme care

All's well that memes well

Your fifteen minutes of meme

One meme to rule them all

There is no “I” in “meme”

Let's put memes on the ground

Memes of endearment

The meme generation

By any memes necessary

I have low meme esteem

I want my meme TV

10,000 memes to master anything

I support rights for memes

Eat organic memes and rice

“One small meme for man...”

This is the meme-ing of life

Somewhere

A mother died

The bomb ripped through the oblique

Wall of foreign policy

Her eulogy

In less than ninety characters

As a matter of fact

Between the ice storm and the

Long-stemmed rose shortage

The same black on gray font

The same margins and spaces

The same twenty-six letters

The ink fades like our page-thin

Solicitude

Never

...give your frog a boat

He won't know how to make it float

He'd stare at it with froggy eyes

Then trade it for a bag of flies

Never give your mouse a car

He'll leave the driver's door ajar

'Til all his mousy friends and kin

Bring all their kids and move right in

Never give your bird a plane

The neighbors surely would complain

When, instead of tweets at four

They're wakened by a startling roar

And never, ever, for the world

Give your pig a string of pearls

For piggy pigs won't just make do

She'll want a set of earrings too

Time and Dreams and Waterfalls

The stuff of sonnets

Songs

And odes

Their mysteries we've oft

Explored

Down briared paths and

Open roads

Each parallels the movement of

Our lives

Along immortal streams

'Til time and dreams are

Cast to sea

And love and waterfalls

Remain

In A Booth

Seated side by side

She laughed

In all the right places

Watching his face as he

Ran

With the kite of her

Attention

Caught in the breeze of

His enthusiastic accounts of motorcycles

She probed like a

Detective

Looking for clues to the root of his

Fascination

And with her mousy hair

Her conventional

Glasses

And her gray pullover

She was never more

Beautiful

Homonymbus

All that I was taught

And everything I ought

Would surely come to aught

Without connections taut

Recipe

A man

Balanced on a bench

A book

Balanced on his knee

Thick paperback

“Child Custody Made Easy”

No doubt

As are so many hopeful tomes

It is filled with

Avenues

Axioms

Anecdotes

Assurances

Like a cookbook on a tiny

One-tree

Island