Frank Synthesis

There are arches in Marin County
thanks to Frank Lloyd Wright.

Some echo parking lots, frieze
facades and Frank’s own eyes.

Meanwhile, power poles dream
stupa spires punctuated by light.

2015
In response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, Frank Synthesis, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015 (my apologies for glare on the image and poor lighting)

Scotty’s Palette

Are your legs columns or turrets?
Walter Scott says both.

Do you realize Scotty’s castle
Was your own sweaty back?

Death Valley drove away
In endless cars as stories.

The ending was always the same.
Full of Scotty’s windows.

2015
in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015

Frank Religion

Our bodies are crosses walking,
windows with four panes.

Perhaps our own spines
are two yellow center lines of a road,

saviors who say, Do not cross.
Others pass the opposite way.

2015
In response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, Frank Religion, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015 (my apologies for glare on the image and poor lighting)

Rock Phenomena

The earth makes bricks, stacks
them with hands we call our own.

We leave openings for doors
to dark places, make windows.

Like water and wind, we eat stone.

Who can last? We carve
our names into rock domes.

Winds blow sand, water erases
letters we mistook for home.

2015

in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015

Prescott Flowers

When your arms unfold lanceolate,
My chest spirals
Fibonacci. We die into seeds.

Will you sit in the small boat
With me and row to sea?

Mourn the bees?
Notice the world is a stem

For what we want.
You too are a stem.

Most days, our rayed heads hold
Fragile yolk,
Scheming a beak, wings.

2015
in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015

Designer Umbrellas

If umbrellas are daisies
and clouds, what is my head?

We tourists, for a moment,
give shelter to the boat.

We pay to point at mountains,
numb to the inner view:

Mountains, too, are parasols
along with this proud lake.

Even a field of stones
protects the under-nest.

Choose your ribbed shield.
How easy not to merge.

Over what precious thing do you open
and spread to avoid its getting wet?

2015
In response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, Designer Umbrellas, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015 (my apologies for glare on the image)

Sedona Phenomena

Any arrangement of five could be you or me.
Make my head a violet petaled bloom,
a trail head sign, a twisted tree.
Your two arms serve as penstemon,
my legs two creosote. Still, my head
could simply be a head. Twenty years ago,
Sedona was my dream.

Your limbs were nearly shrubs then,
my left leg was a sign.
If clouds were bushes and moons,
my mother limbs were clouds.
Sedona loves to dream.

The carved sign tells you how to find
the overlooks and loops.
Shout from the spires and buttes,
from shadowlines of roofs:
You are Sedona’s dream.

What is your vantage? Where will you stop?
When do you finally open your robe,
unbutton your blouse, expose rocks?
They are smaller than you think,
so close, or possibly farther away,
receding atmospherically—
Sedona’s fading dream.

2015
in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015

Designer Radios

Press the button of the cloud.
It’s song a rusty truck
blaring absinthe green, Lautrec.

Press the button of her hand.
Finesse the station.
Who is talking?

A tree has its own buttons
that are not leaves.
Hairs press the breeze.

Record our singing.
Fast forward, reverse.
Pause the season.

If you must
control sound,
choose a CD.

Or play it real-time,
radio. Dial in.
Press me.

Even sky scrapers respond to touch.
The street has its own song
Inside your loafered feet.

Who or what
Presses what or whom?
How plays the dream?

2015
in response to Les Barta’s photo construction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015

Reverse Galatea

Then, as the singing ceased and the lyre ceased, Down stepped proud Galatea with a sigh:

~Robert Graves

Make love to a poet
(illicitly)
and he will make you
dictionary
(fill lines with light)
pencil scrawl
(prop the sculpture)
pedestal
(sisters all)
his résumé.
You will be put on
display.
No one need know
your name
once you become
a dozen poems.
Try to walk
off the page.
Be a screen
he reads
while his life eats
oatmeal.
Your poems meet
secretly
to pound each other smooth.
Galatea’s mouth
spills his sea
without you—
a wary diction.

Mistaken Metaphors at Close Range

Some ancestor of the pyramids
Landed on Plymouth Rock
And started making bricks

To throw from a ladder
In the wide bearded sky,
Mistaking metaphor, boarding doors.

Fast forward: pawns knee deep
In ocean foam wring their velvet
Coats upon the shore. Kites grieve.

Revolver barrels gleam, growing
Boys evolve machine gun clarity
On screens. Televisions drown.

This is our Eight of Swords warning.
Beg your daughters, teach your sons:
Scribble golden pentacles on your arms!

2013
in response to Mark Kreger’s art exhibit, At Close Range