Collateral damage

Driving home one cloud-cluster-fucked night,

I saw a man cross 20 feet ahead then heard

a sickening thud-crunch and hit the brake.

He’s yelling “back up, back up, you’ve run him over.”

As soon as I make out it’s about a dog,

I’m so relieved it’s not his child that I start sobbing

my lungs yanking tighter than a draw-string purse

and as tight as my company’s budget.

I had killed his black Labrador puppy. I back up,

get out and wail, “Why wasn’t he on a leash?”

More and more angry. “Why did you let him run loose!

How can I see a black dog in the night?”

A woman appears, cries her puppy’s brand new.

They were going to get a leash the next day.

The puppy was lonely and crying to stay with her

while they were moving into their first house.

This really happened to me at about 8:30 pm one night, and I changed jobs as soon as I could afterward.

Strawberry haiku

That 200 seeds stud
the average strawberry
is a nitpicky fact.

Retirement, actually

A nail biter of a technical writer,

I asked dumb questions for a living.

Some folks write pulp fiction

I canned pulp fact, a manual laborer.

Like geology, each job deposited

a block in my resume, each

burying the next until the weight

squashed my shaley petrol soul.

Today I light a bonfire of my vanities

And manuals. I prance about adding fuel.

Layered papers that curl black

releasing smoke and dancing flames.

A wrinkly mess that crackles and ashens

all the logic and clicks, valves and bits,

and fuel lines, screens and splines,

or networks, tuner loops, and widgets.

Don’t look back in anger...

the buck has run out of steam.

I now live between every clock tick…

have time to peel a raisin, taste its skin,

and savor the fossil fruit within.

Unified field theory

Written Easter, 2011

What if Gaia is Pandora?
What if her jar hatches Easter Island
writ large? What if Allah, God, Yahweh
and Zeus conspire to turn Earth
into solar fryer and jungle mire.

Moai move like rooks across our land
spurring a Dark Age to descend,
till Hope, pale as mushroom clouds,
makes a last stand in a Yukon caravan.

Oh Prometheus, please steal fire from
mankind this time, empty our ears
of lust and hubris so we can't dismiss

Gaia’s raspy howl as Siren song, or ignore
the churning velvet roar of brewing storm.


For those who are not familiar with the history of Easter Island, please watch these http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hO-vCPuuQQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DBTtC4J0OY&NR=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNkS1zuAQyw&feature=related plus Parts 3, 4, 5, and 6.

"Dirty pigs"

Its time folks learned

that a pig is not dirty

unless confined to a dirty den

by greedy men.

Given a choice and enough space,

a pig, or even a rat, will need no lure

to nest in a clean place

and keep its pig-tailed piglets pure.

Sadly, the pen is as

mighty as the pen.