Squirrel Zen

Grey squirrel drinking from
The copper birdbath
Both front feet in the water

KILL KILL KILL!

Kill, kill, kill and keep on killing until you run out of people to kill

and then kill, kill, kill animals and keep on killing until you run out of animals to kill

and then kill, kill, kill plants and keep on killing until you run out of plants to kill

and then kill, kill, kill the environment and keep on killing until you run out of air to breathe and water to drink

and then find another planet to kill, kill, kill and keep on killing!

Kill, kill, kill.

Kill, kill, kill.

KILL!

Poem #1-2016 Paddling the Cobbosseecontee

With thanks to Gary Snyder for
Four Poems for Robin/Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest

We moved along the calm water

Sunlight dropping hard

Sweating in our life jackets

Hands glued to their work

Feet firmly planted

No thought but forward

Our first time was like this

Paddling together on the Cobbosseecontee

We met late in life

Both of us almost half a century

Now we're 10 years older

You're retired and I'm not

But that's the way of things

Our stream calls us

We don't move so fast anymore

But we remember when we could

Poem #1-2015 The Only Poem

So much depends -- sorry, WCW -- on the upshot
the downdraft
the uptake
the downtrodden
the uprising
the downcast
the upstarts
the downplays
the uplands
the downwinds

And so much depends - sorry again, Walt -- on
yin
and
yang
both of them, not one or the other

No life without death, light without dark...
blah blah blah we get it, Mr. Watts,
but only in our heads and that's the wrong place for it

It needs to be written on our hearts
but now I sound Biblical
and this was supposed to be spontaneous

Crapshine toodle-oo pisspot Mother Macree alien
invasive species rag-a-muffin carol Dickens
peacepipe terrorist free-for-all Seminole
aging ratter-tatter resistance underground

Words are easy
It's the living of  'em that's hard

And you don't need to be a red wheelbarrow to figure that one out

Poem #7-2013 Less Can Be More?

It's      all     vibration,
            and relation,
and avoiding castration

 Submitted to Dversepoets.com Open Link Night #108

Poem #6-2013 Mortality

On waking this morning:
a hintergedanken
Something, slippery ... unspoken
Looming just out of consciousness

Drove to the nearest cemetery
Lay down in the grass atop John Siemens
Never heard of him before
He was mortal like me

Climbed up and sat on his headstone
My feet dangled
Heels bounced on the etched dates:
1945 - 2004

His entire life unfolded in that one-inch dash
Didn't even make sixty years
Wonder if I will
John said it was unlikely

Other dead spoke to me
Mothers and fathers
Gone angels spinning
Around my disbelief

Jumping down
I left two footprints
Dug into the grave
A defiant act not contained in John's dash

Bought an ice cream cone on the way home







                                      Submitted to Dversepoets.com Open Link Night #97

Poem #5-2013 Forest Haiku

Symptom of nature
I walk through the piney woods
Through myself darkly












                                   Submitted to Dversepoets.com Open Link Night #96