november post-mortem

petite doggie sits on a pile of belongings in the passenger seat of a dirty snowball, staring stoically ahead. starving artist I used to be a cafe regular with saunters past in a heavy raincoat the color of rescue. lone crow glides down from the leaf-thinned elm tree each battered leaf a yellow flag, waiting to be lowered and received. the murder feasts, pecks enthusiastically at the circle's mustache of broken bread. she must pretend, she must pretend not to see what she sees until she's clocked by the last punch of the day of the week, until then kiss the distant rings. verdant sea churns about the proud pine twins, squirrel bounds through the plush lawn, its tail an ash-gray exclamation mark. glum sky yawns, asks,

hey man, where can you score some sun around here?

Coyote does Halloween

I remember in my early teens, that uncertain age when you might be too old to trick or treat on Halloween, which feels both shamelessly opportunistic & a little embarrassing, except that the candy is there for the taking! My best friend, who had a little scar at the corner of his mouth which made him look sinister, even as a boy, and I got the bright idea to knock on the door of a family of Vietnamese refugees in my apartment building, just to see what they would do. I know and I feel awful now remembering it. So we knocked on the first floor door and announced, Trick or Treat! I would be surprised if we were the first to knock on their door but you never know. They answered with big smiles and offered us packages of ramen. We protested but they insisted we take the ramen, smiling & bowing the whole time, so sweet & sincere, unlike us. We turned and trundled off, feeling exactly like the little shits we were, and yet amazed that these desperate people, living twenty to a two bedroom apartment, would be willing to so joyfully give whatever they had. It was a truly humbling moment that I had not thought of until this evening. Happy Halloween, whatever that means to you.

first autumn sunday

drizzle caught

in a spider's

net. berries

dangle beneath

belly soft sky.

shine struggles

in its missed place.

Poem for the fallen (Dedicated to Fallon Smart)

sitting at a cafe's sidewalk table

sunday afternoon, black irish tea

and a chocolate chip cookie, late

summer sun palms the right side of

my face, my cheek.

traffic crawls past the median's

memorial for the fallen

girl who tried to cross

the too wide and impatient

street, anthology of

Italian women poets

lays open on my lap

as a tawny young butterfly

alights

upon its sunkissed page.

http://bikeportland.org/2016/08/26/a-life-lost-too-soon-photos-from-the-fallon-smart-memorial-ride-190481

I get high

I get high 

from 

the chemistry I have 

with 

the curvaceous 

cannabis clerk 

David Eagleman quote (and flowers)

"Each creature perceives only what it has evolved to perceive." 

-David Eagleman

the sweetest hello

early august overcast reminds me of but does not spell rain. alone with whoever may enter, how long since the sky caught & released something besides shine? berries appear like a box of clothes, abandoned on a corner, waiting to be picked. spontaneous sweetness awaits you. i pull the clouds over my head & drowsily tumble down the steps, hooded. i am asked for a story which i don't have & feel around in the pockets of memory for enough shattered calcium fragments, floating there in the slick, to shell something soft & personal to give them. but can you really trust met flesh, as if no one has ever lied to your face, your heart, or your belly? what will the unborn know of you that the crows don't? stray morning kitten, tiger in training, friends me on the sidewalk beside the raspberry bush. collarless & sweet but does not cross to other side with me, where i find a crow, crouching on the pavement, its wings tucked in, head lifted, beak open as if it meant to say something it could not say to the barking wire above. i look up at the crow that's been barking nonstop, like a knocked down boxer's trainer in the corner, yelling at him to get back up. i turn to leave, not wanting to interrupt whatever has to happen, when i notice the other crow, watching in silence several feet down the wire. i nod to the one who knows & continue toward whatever awaits me. as i enter the circle, a beautiful woman from work who worries me, walking around with her head down, as if crouching inside herself, rounds the curve on her bicycle & startles me with the sweetest hello.