core drill

a poem

Yeah, my poems can be odd . . . I make them like a stone mason, not a writer . . . more craft than art . . . the words are like the stones at hand and I try to put them in interesting arrangements . . . the structure functions, but evokes a lot more than it explains. I love stonework and could gaze at it for long stretches like some do with paintings in the great museums.

boring
her corrugations
the spinning bit
the augur shaft
through sable soils
finger
fire
flesh
stone-ice
and blood
an orifice
a ram lurking
through
her vale
and untaught
depths
of plasma
and milk snake

the chimney
heat
the dripping
eels
the cucumbers
and pomegranate
all
the lefthanded
wallows
racing
and carked

the hatless
rooster
wading
through orchids
duff kissed
and gunshot
raised
and discharged
fluming down
nipples
and duff
belly-down
and (o yes)
belly-up

the languid
caress
prepared
to kill
armies steeled
with creams
and heads

the copious
damp
the cheeks
enticed
the cascade
nub
and glowing
coals
the naked
snares
and hardstroke
frisson
the melted
drip
deleted
in fall
and flood

she crosses
cataracts
in the mind
of the moon

This is an herb spiral I made some years back with cast-off concrete I’d salvaged from the city dump . . . this stuff responds surprisingly well to the chisel. Except for the mortar tie-in, it was all dry stack. The vertical accent was fun, but it borders on a structural flaw (the loose seam running down from it) That’s a bee-house tucked in on top by the nasturtiums . . . good eating, nasturtiums.