We tear rapaciously at the earth
like the lions on the savannah
gnawing away at a carcass.

We call it black gold we are
after when all it does is
blacken our lungs and

the golden of the sky is a lie
fooling us with its beauty
when it is dusty heat

rising and bouncing back to
burn the earth, sear the
sea and dry up coral

reefs so that species vanish,
forests burn and we sit and
suck in black, noxious fumes.

Soon, we will be gone, too,
and in our place, a green
shoot will poke through.

I saw Charlie’s cartoon 
of Jesus 
popping out 
of Mary’s womb
and saw some other cartoons
including the Prophet's
butt, but, 
yes,  
I had a visceral
reaction to bright-eyed,
smiling Jesus 
emerging from 
a daffy Mary’s vagina, 
but,
I caught myself 
saying, kinda,
it’s just a cartoon.
It has something 
satirical to say about 
marketing Christianity;
I could accept it
and let it go
but I’m not a Muslim
watching 
the “Kill a Bunch of 
Muslims Show” 
on T. V. 
brought to you 
by the U.S. and 
European police
and military.
Good taste, bad taste,
in the name of free speech?
Insult upon injury --
“Blow back” is what 
the radicals preach.

In the Arizona winter
desert the most
beautiful

time of day is between
five and five
thirty p.m.

as the sun is setting
and the reflect-
ion off

the hills and mountains
is bright bronze,
a golden hue

of warmth just before
the sun sets
and the

hills and mountains
turn dark brown
and black,

the temperature plunges
and the coyotes
stop hunting

and slip into their
dens only to
resume

their quest before
sun-up and
sunrise

when the other side
of the hills
and

mountains begin to
shine a beautiful
golden hue

and the people on that
side of the hills
and mountains

believe the most
beautiful time
of day

is somewhere between
seven and seven
thirty a.m.

The poet of the day was an angry, 
black, lesbian
who had the guts 
to call out just about everybody 
including black men 
for hurting 
     the cause
for their sometime irresponsible,
		sometime wretched
			behavior. Well, she could.
I am a sometime angry, straight, 
old, white guy, calling  
out other old, white guys for 
our sophomoric self-image, 
our whining mouths as we lose political 
	and, at some inevitable point in time, 
		economic power,
our ignorance of Know Thyself, Knowledge 
	Is Power and the only power that 
		lasts -- Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tsu 
			self-sacrificial,
 			suffering with 
				and for power, 
our incessant finger-pointing, like Dubya 
	defiantly jabbing a finger into Matt 
		Lauer’s shoulder while 
			trying to justify the unjustifiable,
our misogyny, homophobia and racism, 
                                   racism,  
                                      racism.
our omnipresent denial of reality,
our near-sighted omniscience,
our impotent omnipotence,
our destitute Manifest Destiny, 
our mamby, pamby, little, baby boy behavior,
our thumb-sucking, eye squinting, pinched 
	faced facade,
our scrunched-up underwear,
our bullying, weak-knee bravado, 
our last but not least, last resort 
	(and I don’t mean on a tropical isle 
		where the one percent of the one percent 
                                         keep their tax-free money)
	and first response to FEAR,
our violence.

I told my sister, “Your plaque in the
kitchen is right. It is bon
appetit, as in “tee,”

but I still like bon appe-tit. Hey,
I only passed French because
Ms. Wonderlick,

yes, that’s right, Wonderlick
really liked me. I was the cutest
college kid

you would ever meet. I would
come into class and say,
“Good morning, Ms.

Wonder-LICK,” with the emphasis
on the last syll-Ah-ble. And she
would say,

“It’s bonjour, my sweet.” And I
would say, “Peut-être,
bonne nuit,”

thus securing a “C,” for which
I was the most grateful guy
in a front row seat.

One anti-histamine, two anti-histamines,
three anti-histamines, four.
I know they are clearing out
your sinuses, but still you
continue to snore.
Or is that the dog?
In either case, I’m
moving to the couch hide-a-bed,
turning on the classical music
med.
and shutting the
bedroom door.
Buenas noches, mi amor.

The monk quoted Ionesco:
“Over-explanation separates
us from astonishment.” They
said they valued the

questions more than the answers,
but they had all the answers
and certitude (of course, certitude,
one of the

last bastions of the cowardly),
because the questions were
too threatening, so they struck
out in an over-

explanation/justification as
to why the questioning couple
was being rejected and in spite
of that barrage

which embodied the group’s
untruthfulness, leaving the
couple on the edge of astonish-
ment, or perhaps, better,

incredulity not because of the
smoke screen, loquacious
letter — but that a congregation
whose motto is

“Everyone welcome, no
exceptions,” would be so
summarily dismissive and
strike so quickly as if a

Nazi firing squad riddled
the two over and over and
went home to Mozart’s Eine
kleine Nachtmusik.

More and more he wants
to watch less and less
violence on T.V., which
is harder and harder to
avoid, so he chooses
his evening shows and
more often than not it’s
something from the BBC.
It seems the English, who
after all those centuries
of barbarism must be tired
of it seeming to be more inter-
ested in solving the crime
than showing the gory
details, unlike America where
we cannibalize, Dahmerize
crimes, victims, shootings,
blastings, dismemberings,
gnawings, devourings —
and we’re the exceptional
country or just a stupid,
sophomoric society
following the money?

Everyone knows that males are
angry. It just goes with the
territory — young men of color
and old men of no color — ass-
uming that white, which contains
all colors of the spectrum, means,
sociologically speaking, no color.
But an angry, elderly, female
pastor of a small parish made up
primarily of elderly people, rallied
the troops, energized the gender
base, the frustrated, unrecognized,
generation of those who had stood,
quietly, behind their men all those
years with smiles plastered on their
faces all the while knowing they
could run circles around the guys
and called them to join the “Sewing
for the Savior” group, which they
knew no self-respecting old guy would
join, so they could plan their coup,
bloody or not, their ruthless revenge
on the men. The men fled; the women
cheered victory and even Jesus, the
pioneer of women’s liberation —
think this Mary and that Mary and
every Mary in between and, later, all
the Phoebes, Lydias, Priscas, Junias,
Julias, etc., etc., etc. — slipped,
during the passing of the peace, into
the fellowship hall for a cup of
coffee appearing only as Sophia and
the Holy Spirit.

I didn’t know what hoarfrost was
until I saw the word used in a poem
and goggled it. The generic diction-
ary person was right there to tell
me: a grayish-white crystalline
deposit of frozen water vapor formed
in clear still weather on vegetation,
fences, etc. Another definition
stipulated that low humidity was re-
quired. That explained why I never
saw it in the Chicago of my youth
or, maybe, I just wasn’t paying
attention. “Gray” caught my attention,
and thinking hoar, as in “hoary,” must
have something to do with it, I googl-
ed dictionary person again: hoar:
grayish white; gray or gray-haired
with age. So, there it was. It was my
frost, hoary frost, gray, old man’s frost.
I had called it frost — plain, white frost
when I saw it spread magnificently
across the high desert ranches and
reservations of New Mexico on a still,
pristine, early morning as I drove toward
Arizona. It didn’t glisten shiny bright
like the ice that pulled down tree branch-
es and electric wires in the storms I re-
membered as a middle-aged man in
Kentucky. No, this frost was muted like a
well-worn, once white blanket covering
everything in sight — fences, telephone
poles and electric wires, sagebrush, hay
mounds, dilapidated homes, beaten-up,
old cars littering yards, hogans — protect-
ing it all from the inevitable harsh winter
winds that would sweep unhindered over
the land until fences became tumbleweed
borders. Then, as I drove southwest as
but one more Snowbird in the flock, I
looked in the rearview mirror, squinted
and saw the hoarfrost disappearing quickly
as the sun rose relentlessly in the east
as if it were chasing me down.