Short Poems: six lines or less

It Does Not Matter Where You Look

A big blue bend in an endless sky

A yellow fire clinging deep in a dry well

It is all the same

A cloud of stars

Grains of rice in a black bowl

Simple

A Song Without a Beat

I move in dreams

frantically arranging pictures

in their places

painting faces

timing the spaces

missing the beat of my own heart’s thump

The Way I Came

Searching for beginnings, I write days

From suburban boxes, I moved moments

I was incrementally replaced by another

Singing loud we filled the night

Through summer days, we tumbled blindly

alone, together, alone together, together alone

a note on a toy elephant

Israel

Can play with

this

after Wednesday.

He threw it in

the bushes on Tuesday.

Kendo Class

The tiny woman pushes the large dry mop

with precise grace

bare feet patting

like a fox on the snow

The Last Summer Train

A train moans and roars through the valley distance

down the hill in the cooling last summer night

Carry away despair

Carry away my weary worries

and leave all silent shining in the morning sun

Winter shell

huddled in ice

a white cocoon

I drink warmth from earth

ready to rise

with the coming dawn

The Ferry Dock

In the delicate

Shadows of the pier

Waves break

around wooden posts

Progressive Painting

If that’s gonna be hills

then that’s gotta be blue

Spring

Yellow lilies in a crystal creamer

Perfume the air

Books lay open on a table

Time is not here

Wind Tides

The rush of wind bends trees almost in half

Soon they will bend over backwards

Flying their furious heads to the sky

Staff Meeting Prayer

My heart is impressed, experienced

broken and healed strong

fused with the world

through the fire of passion

connected to my mind

through my dreams

Just Passing Through

Light travels through light

air through air

Sometimes we travel through each other

as if we weren’t there

Larger Infinities

The bars of falling life

the prison of the hermit

Inside

all this garden

outside in the rain 

green behind the bars

A Silent Dream Movie

Hitler with a teaspoon

burying plastic animals

in a sandbox

The mumbling of tired old men

who can’t kill anymore.

A jangle of bones

tangled in flesh,

trying to push shape

into a cloud

Lake Walk

Sunlight falls in stripes on the path

“The water is high today,”

she points.

“Look, this is where the children usually stand

and play with their dogs.”

Our Part of the Meal

We will carry

the bag of red and yellow cherries

up the hill from the ferry

with the watermelon

and beer.

Flower Islands

White dots, blue spots, bright yellow stars

Pink  globes the size of hamster eggs

float in tangled rafts

on the calm surface of the newly cut lawn.

The Rhyme of Me?

Tension, wire, bloody ram

Maybe this is not the way I feel,

but the way I am.

A Place Outside Of Experience

It all had to do with

the center of a cat’s smile

and empty parking spaces

on top of a tall building.

Dream on an October Night

Ghost rides that whip

sprung from the blood of day

onto the back

of a long thin howl.

Through a Winter Window

As I procrastinate

the moon is swallowed in the rising day’s

rosy haze.

Walking to the End of the World

Dragons, new leaf green, the size of small dogs,

chomp in the mud beside the road.

Further on,

A man with a giant skillet,

standing next to an egg 2 feet taller than himself,

tells the history of the world.

Laundromat

The clothes and towels are spinning.

I am losing and finding things.

Nothing has dropped out completely,

Yet.

Clover Blossom Sunset

On the window sill,

a clover blossom,

picked a week ago

now fading to brown

in a cup,

dark against the sunset.

To Do List

Desire toward fulfillment

and purple dye

Drop all pretense

Make obsessions that work

Dump Run

Summer Storm

All night the storm grumbled around

Lightning flickered through my eyelids

With one tremendous crack-rumble

ripping me out of loose sleep

into dripping dark