I'll Be the One Wearing Tiny White Boots

In hell,

In hell there's one

Season. It's called cold

Cruel oatmeal but it's never

Too soon to wear white slacks,

White hats,

White socks, white jocks.

Sundays we fling our javelins

Into the mystery down by the river

While the feted ferries come in. Toot Toot.

We're concerned

Less with accuracy than distance.

May this toss take me elsewhere, may

The breeze off Fire Lake carry, may these boots

Move me and if not, make me happy here.






Brian's Brain

Science insists and how

are we to disagree?

The alien topographies

the brain displays

resemble stems of Caribbean coral

or the pockmark surface of the moon,

which in turn resembles Craters

National Park—but that's comparing

two halves of one brain.

It can be flat in Idaho,

and where it is is sometimes stacked

with volcanic rock, piles of black books

forgotten among the library of trees.

Studies show the wind alone

rarely courses the gorges and scours

the gulches of the western desert,

our desiccated inland sea,

home to Atomic City,

poor Shoshone.

There is raven and crow,

eagle and sparrow,

and like pharaoh the radiant

vulture reigns over the earth

and its vast crevasses,

the furrowed flesh of gray matter.

If there is salt in our blood,

it's a vestige of the sea. If

there's mud in our marrow,

it's magma's memento. If

pottery chips and coral bits

litter the desert floor, then

there are more mirages than oases.

A vulture rides the thermals. Up

ahead, the sun.