Me & Howard Hughes
I'd pay for your kids' teeth if only you'd be my friend.
It's this desert that's so hard to take. My canvas canteen clatters on the highway.
My checkbook is as good as worthless with no water nearby.
For a drink of water I'd give you a million dollars. Honest.
These lizards are bold and I'm afraid…
Not even a cactus stands nearby to tide me over.
I'd eat it like watermelon just for the juice and ignore the thorns.
A flower would be nice, too. In fact I'd give it to you.
Mountain Climbing
small enough to make a giant of my hand light enough to mail with a few postage stamps
these kittens scale the long smooth face of my leg, ankle to calf,
and pitch camp on the treacherous plateau of my knee
the blue half-moons of my eyes pulse over them
they try to climb the tangled ropes of my hair chestnut tendrils damp and fair
Their tiny breath is white in this cold steep air.
Pinnochio
Oh Gepetto that we weep and kneel at this wooden doll propped in our spare clean house under a blaze of white stars and blue sky.
Our eyes grown dim in the candlelight after years of wanting what we cannot have.
Unchained Posy
Man reach out for woman, woman reach out for man. The sun reach for children The moon reach for civilization.
Hiawatha dance in heaven, he dance for evermore, his land of sky-blue waters is tide on every shore.
This body deny the tide, that man hate his shore. Woman sing her child to sleep, child love his mother's song.