Culture Jam

Pick a low hanging fruit 

(enough to keep out of their hands) 

Clean until the water runs in a trickle 

and circles the drain

Peel thick skins 

Find a heart

Pierce thin skins

Cut to the pith

To the core

Watch for small seeds (which can grow again)

Remove and crush

Place pulp in a seasoned bowl

A sacred vessel 

Deep enough to boil over

Strong enough to heat under pressure

Check your pantry: find a sweetness 

hidden in the dark 

extract it

Cups to ounces to spoons (3 to 7 depending on tastes) 

Cook on flaming outrage (stir ‑when cycle ebbs)

Cool cool cool

Spread it on thick —it’s a learned taste

Fall, 2024

Rootbeer Eyes

Ice cold

How they can be warm
(am I drinking the Kool-Aid?)
Enter a room and make a 

—SPLASH!

You have a bubbly personality
It literally spills out
spills slips spreads surfaces

suspends

Sweeten my mood

surprise me with your depth

suspense

What is that flavor?
Lingering on my lips
intriguing my tongue tingling 

Tangling
my heart

How fun it can be to taste
touch hear smell and see

senseless

July 2026

Crazy On You: Uxoricide

Last night, you were cutting toenails

(mine not yours) 

This morning, preparing my special cup of coffee

the only one I drink in a day

You drink yours all day from a Thermos

—blackened  —oily  —lukewarm

Making my single cup you spill the milk

(oat beverage alternative, actually)

And you are late to leave for work

cleaning it

Placing the single cup of coffee at the bedside,

you say “I love you” then you go

 
Did you know the word uxor means wife in Latin? 

"Submissive" is considered a simile —before "devoted"

and therefore, Uxor overly so

 
Yet, there is no singular equivalent for a woman controlled by her husband
 
Except, of course –wife

Summer, 2024

 

Pik-A-Mix Esoterica

Don’t eat all those 

Chik-O-Sticks Pixi Stix Lik-M-aid Fun Dip Garbage Candy Wacky Wafers Bottle Caps Bubble Yum Big Buddy Grape Gum Charms Blow Pop Tootsie Rolls Tootsie Pop Sugar Daddy Sugar Babies Horehound Hard Candy Candy Buttons Mini-Snickers 3 Musketeers Zero Bars Topps Trading Cards Gum Bazooka Slo-pokes Mary Janes Long Boys Black Cows Necco Wafers Now-N-Laters Starbursts Jolly Ranchers Flicks Cinnamon Hots Chunky Bars Mounds Almond Joy 100000 Bar Good'N Plenty Dots Jujubes Rolos Marathon Bars Wax Lips M&Ms Wax Bottles Rootbeer Wax Bottles Dots Razzles Dum-Dums Charleston Chew Milk Duds Malt Balls Reeses Peanut Butter Cups Lemon Heads Mike'N'Ikes Red Hots Boston Baked Beans Pop Rocks Juicy Fruit Fruit Stripe Gum Laffy Taffy before dinner.

You’ll spoil your appetite 

Summer, 2022

Cranberry Men

After the storm
The Cranberry Men arrived
Bobbed up & down
Bogged towards me

Red round and acerbic

You just know they are full of Vitamin C 

And tart

But dull and slow at the same time

The ponding from the high water
Brings them to me
I can’t swim or even walk in the surging flow
But they remain on top
Brightly rolling and dipping

And coming towards me 

Jan 2023

Haibun, Under a Rock

Slime a conscious kind shivers delicately a thousand bodies shrink in a state of vulnerable exposure upended in a rough hand just curious not unkind in the same way crushing an egg or snapping a thin bone is too rough too brute just casual in the tearing of a cling film or a web that one can barely see unless observed up close to a naked eye which is never naked never anything less than shielded from being seen back into and understood as the thing being observed is forced to reveal its secrets and the seal broken means there is no putting things back the way they were the intrusion is so massive 

 

and the deep study 

is over in a second 

rock left to sun dry

Summer, 2019

My Masked Mystery

Next you sell cars

You are gifted with the gab
The propulsive talk
A pushing quality but (for some)
Not unpleasant
You find the buttons on those
So exciting & easy to press
They are waiting for you (it seems)
To activate their needs
& provide their wants
Radio, video, promo, pronto
Che bella pronto que sera
You aren’t fluent but it flows
Make money with your mind
Open your books and show me
It’s all there —all your strengths
And weaknesses (somehow)
Are your own best qualities
And you have always sold me

Next you sell cars

03-20-23