A poem for a day trip from LA to Ojai — a good man is hard to find in the outdoor bookstore in Ojai. but not a virgin apparently, as the tourist from Virginia quipped as if he were the first to make the joke, we’re virgins. his sister maybe wore a periwinkle sundress on a Wednesday, and my love wore a periwinkle tank top too. and…

Poetry Sunday —

A Human Resources Director in the Texas oil industry laments mass layoffs due to COVID-19 — With a nation writhing under the weight of a once-in-a-century pandemic and suffering through the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, it’s apparent a lot of people are very not okay right now. And with the end of the federal unemployment boost and rent moratoriums now upon us, the…

A Free Verse — my father drew dimensions for the soapbox car on the exposed particle board wall in the space between the 2x4 framing in the garage. he sharpened his pencil with a carpet knife leaving incidental lines of graphite on the razor blade. the soapbox sketch was crude but intentional. …

A Poem —

A Poem — “You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.” — Alan Watts the mighty spruce has shed its bark the tortoise is just a shell a frail girl drinks from a little red book but the sip she draws…

A Political Poem —

a beat poem for the moment — conspiracy theories explode in multicolored mortars overhead, streaming down in red, WHITE, and blue between chopper blades, spotlighting the DEAD — lungs turned to stone in hospital beds, patients cry out — I CAN’T BREATHE! shiny BLACK boots on hot asphalt, knees of cowards on innocent necks — I CAN’T BREATHE…

in the random house treasury of best-loved poems second edition… —