Is a gully-washer a toad-strangler
Raining monkeys bucketing bullfrogs
Spitting bolts and drowning geese
It’s torrential and a soaker
Copious and inundatory
Swamping fish and fowl
Pouring rodents and snakes
Raining devils and pikels
Spewing lives and souls
Even voices and heartbreaks
And the sludge of information
To the depths of loneliness
To the depths of despair
And whatever else the storm picks up
On its way to our destruction
Chaos and Dystopia
Disguised deluders
Two faces on the same head
A demented Janus
Streets explode borders burn
Truth tethered then torn
Media monetized
Peace pirated
Addiction afflicted
The impoverished impugned
Knowledge kneecapped
Science scandalized
Stupidity standardized
Life levied by lunatics
Lawlessness laughing
Greed aggrandized
Earth entering extinction
War at the wheel of wealth
Genocide justified and gratuitous
After a Live Performance of Ofrenda de Cempasuchil
Ofrenda de Cempasuchil by Rodrigo Loman
(Marygold Offering for Día de los Muertos)
On the road to the cemetery
Marching steps grow heavier and sadder
Processions of musical notes
All ring with the glow of their candles
Flower music turns into fruit music
Baskets of shadow murmur with sound
Crosses of salt are spread over graves
To feed the dead with the earth’s bread
This offering of music flowers
From the crypt like the birth of birth
It lines the pathways with its golden glow
And flows past our reality into another
Suddenly sensation leaves the body
The dance is possessed by ghosts
It’s like bones are joyously dancing
And spirit feels itself in flesh again
We’ve all been made flesh by the music
Remembered by it and reanimated
Mixed into the melody of mortality
Stillness and the silence that sings
Pioneers of the Prairies
Seems to me cottonwoods feel changes
Before any other tree.
Even the gust edge of an approaching front
Sets all its leaves into flight.
It’s the first tree to sound the alarm,
To set the distance shimmering,
Telling us the wind is at our backs
And tonight will be a night of storms.
I study all the trees for signs
But a cottonwood tells me everything.
How soon to find shelter
And how many stars are born to dreamers.
Praise of the Purest Air
Between song sparrows, catbirds,
Waxwings, orioles, and red-eyed vireos
Spring has blossomed into sound,
With birdsong so spirited and alive
You’d think it a religious revival,
Save that these spirits are innocent,
They have real feathers and sing
Of the purest air praise can promise.
My Daughter Writes a Poem
My daughter writes a poem
Rings in the water multiply with each drop
One more songbird is born to the stone forest
One more pair of wings over the smoking crater
Arturo Gatti vs Micky Ward, Round 9
May 18, 2002
What held them up
After so many strikes to body and head,
Both bleeding, bruised, and battered,
The canvas bespattered with their blood,
Blow-by-blow the brawlers battled,
They punched with pain and passion,
Their pugnacity profound and pitiless,
Their courage conjuring Greek gods of war
And a tragedy of trajectory
In which a fight can never end.
“Come on, come on,” the combatants
Beckoned to each other.
Dying, they never felt more alive.
The Backs of My Hands
“Look, I’ve written your names
on the backs of my hands…” Isaiah 49: 15-18
I look at the dorsal aspect of my hands,
The skin is growing transparent,
It looks like rippling waters.
Whatever else is in my veins
Runs out the tips of my fingers.
Age spots no longer distress me,
There’s nothing I can grasp
With the backs of my hands,
Nothing I can hold or possess
Except the names written there
And the heavens above.
The Tears they Shed
I regret not giving you diamonds
But it’s a spring day and snowing
And on every spring leaf
I give you the radiant jewellery
Of freshly fallen snowflakes
And the tears they shed
Death and the Green Moon
Visiting the forest
You experience change
Trees start to waken
Relaxing their limbs
Like the old doing Tai Chi
A few move about
Looking for water
To put down roots
Others you’ve known
For many years
Aren’t breathing
They might not be dead
Listen and they speak
It’s nature’s peace
To die and rot
To be and not
There’s a presence
Both in earth and air
Exult in your age
The forest is saying
When you look up
And see a green moon
Forget everything
You are everything
Salvatore Ala 