Lunafull

Here comes that bald nun again,

catching out the werewolves 

(you know who you are).

According to habit

she adjusts her coif and wimple

at each slice

shuffling through phases like  a nurse on Xanax.

She forgot her rosary, 

but the mumbles say themselves by now

mostly just a ghostess,

a reminder that the rent is due.

A valve in my head

drips ancient fluid.

Most days it’s a slow leak,

nadi to nadi, 

sap trickling down 

to the sump of my spine,

pooling there like red salt brine.

But on nights when the nun is bald

the gunnery salutes

firing all 31

like a brace of silver bullets.

She knows I’m just a man 

in a nightime tee,

alarming a glow

at the base of his neck.

Is this the terrible sting

they all talk about,

or just the radiator bonking?

Overheard

 Overheard

A guy on a phone in his ear on a bus on a rant

to a girl on the way to a dance as she whines to a friend

who's out on a break on a trip to a dive in the hood

in a fix with a wrap on her waist,

a scam to con a babe 

who's a catch with the eye of a trout

with a glint in its slit 

as the bog scatters blue,

is yakking too loud for our slouch of a crowd

jammed up to the straps as a bag lady breaks

the string of her Ked right left in a knot 

tucked back in the hem of her sock.

She couldn't care less what this peach of a prize

in his mother's martini 

pimento speared olive-green eyes 

has to badger the girl on her way

to a dance as she carps to her friend

and cries to a guy on a phone.

She Writes in Lemon Juice

 She Writes in Lemon Juice 

She bathes in baptismal muslin,

soaked bone-brown and wrapped

in twice-blessed river water,

once for the pain she ran from

once for the pain we caused.

"I'll shave my head," she begs,

"and weave a shroud to warm you."

When her face breaks through

the dunked-brown river water

she spits out a wren,

hoping for a raven, but a wren will do.

"We'll both be better off," she says,

a threat I take to heart.

Every timid stalking voiceless

after midnight call, 

quick breath on the line,

I know it's you.

Short Poems

I love the craic
of lake ice when it breaks
the news of thaw to the fish

Shasta Manzanita berries

candy the crumbling slope 

a volcano in waiting

Wintu crush and sup

the bitter juice

California Poppy

queen of a sunny day

sometimes the single life is best

Tag-Ulan

farmers rejoice 

to see the world in ruins

rain time

wild turkey strut

some birds prefer a bare scrabble

to a place at the table

the chillest hour

forced out of bed

to write in wolf sign

Ubud Streetside

mason jars

brimmed with gasoline

stock the roadside rest

tiny bamboo trays

weave the walk as prayers

to tourist gods

all the neighbors sit and clang

at evening gamelan

Tense

 Tense

I'm so done with the imperfect,

salty for the second chance,

undone by the pluperfect,

ready for the goldilocks

just right with the right now,

left with the one too 

soon sleeping in my bed.

And she looks just like me.

I'm so ready for the beta jack 

hooked on the slack line 

improv with the perfect

2020 pretest release.

Steepside Life

 Steepside Life

Rain buttons the water-tight bug pond,

slow enough to can't hear it drop

on a tin roof Sunday.

All the time in the world

helps water wash us away.

It slickens the hillside briar

on the loam crawl down.

My yard's on its own

way into town, tangling the neighbors

on the long slide.

In a hundred years we'll all be valley

Glowworms

 Glowworms

Vespina Yellowjacket

troubles the drunk pulp

unplucked deliquescent mango.

Its flesh turns sugar in ferment,

Bugs rattle in the open air,

the squeaking ankle rasp

amidst a mad halo 

of chitinous wings.

Envenomed, we

forestall intoxication

until anaphylaxsis

opens your mouth.

You can light your tongue

as I lit mine

with the luminous imago.

Glowworms eat us from within.