Dendrobatidae

Most deadly, most delicate, the jewel-toned frog
like a crown behind museum glass
tempts a perverse grab. Once name it rare,
monkey-mind will do anything for more.
The tiny scarlet body barely breathes,
on limbs like sapphire mined from colonies
to mount in a tourist-dazzling diadem.
Is power in the plough and jungles hacked
and spill of oil like pavement on the sea –
or clinging softly underneath a leaf
as our murky water, crowded air,
flows through the tree frog’s bright defensive skin?
Beauty-mad, how could we not lick and stroke
and die? Soft as a fruit and berry-red,
it tempts us to devour what we love,
to steal the crown of knowing everything.

Sheep in a Pickup Truck

Towing the kids to church, I hear a bleat
loud as a car horn, hyper-real as the tweet
of stoplights for the blind. Unrecognized,
a sound so dominant, yet not mechanized –
three-year-old Jason squirms to catch the thrill
of an ambulance parade, while older Jill’s
big-sister smirk proclaims the music cool
because she heard it first. Now, between school
and churchyard, a pickup truck climbs the hill’s crest,
in whose flatbed a sheep in a blue vest
nervously paces. And why not be scared?
Nothing in evolution could’ve prepared
sheep to travel backwards at thirty miles an hour,
driven by hairless bipeds with the power
to shear and slaughter, or protect and feed.
Scarcely we’ve marked the sound, when – mystery
half-solved – the pickup truck drives out of view
onward to abbatoir or petting zoo,
and we follow, hoping next time for the spirit
to recognize the real thing when we hear it.

The Man Comes Around

He lifts up the chipped stone,
strokes the tousled grass,
its scent never greener than when crushed.
He breathes soft as feathers
on the blue, abandoned egg.

He watches the salmon feed on the glittering flies
and the coarse-furred bear feed on the salmon.
Quicksilver as thought chasing error,
rough as desire blanketing thought.

He shears the glacier like a lamb,
the seas split by a blade of ice.
He lies all day in silken paralysis
in a spider’s web.

He is a dead tree, a frigate
of green moss and mushrooms.
He falls like a tree in the fire,
the crack of a legion of snapped lances
as the blackened pines topple.

He cools like smoke,
plays disappearing games with the wind.

He sucks up the soil hungry as a worm,
as a diver drinking in sweet breath.

Spring shoots up green, the spear points hinting
of an army marching underground.
His voice is red as the hollering tulips.
His voice is white as the crash of ice
on the melting river.

He breaks the sun like bread,
shares the warm pieces around
in his burnt hands.

My Spam Folder

Ruin anyone anywhere. Your penis
could become longer. Access secret credit
histories, best loan rates, amateur wives.
This is what they don’t want you to know.
Levitra. Cialis. Viagra.
Turn your worm into a snake. Make women scream.

Go ahead and scream
at your boss, that penis.
You could invent the next Viagra
working from home! All you need is credit
and we’re here for you, even if everyone you know
thinks you’re a schmuck, even your wife.

With our hot young Russian mail-order wives
you wouldn’t have to understand them when they scream.
That’s about all they’re good for, you know.
Grow hair on your chest, enlarge your penis;
puberty’s over before you credit
it, bub, from here on it’s mortgages and Viagra.

Choke your chicken with both hands! With Viagra
you’ll never hear another complaint from your wife.
We don’t care if you have bad credit,
male pattern baldness, eat too much ice cream.
Write us a check today, pencil or pen is
fine, we already know

where you live. Learn what Wall Street pros know!
What if you’d invested in Viagra
in 1987? A Swiss bank account is open, is
waiting for you to help the wife
of dead dictator Sani Abacha cream
off Nigeria’s oil wealth. She just needs your credit

card number. “Socialism’s discredited,”
she whispers seductively, “Those in the know
take all they can.” But you’re stuck at the screen,
cubicled, dumb with choice. Viagra
or Slim-Fast? Porn or mortgages? Your wife,
if you really had one, would say you think with your penis.

But ask yourself: what if this Viagra, that penis cream,
is your only creditable shot at a meatspace wife?
Don’t press that delete key. We know more than you know.

Worship

Who will stand in the storm when the flame
tears a scar down the dark cloud’s outcast brow
and the loved body swells in the silted river
or floats as a raft bearing all
that’s of consequence, the one question?
Even you, who have been spared only for this,
that you might tend flowers growing in a crushed skull
and bathe those fat faces greasy with feasts of tears:
if not you, no one.
And who will praise the author, and caress the book
whose rotted bindings breed spiders,
and kiss the ink’s sanguine tracks, saying: There is one
greater than good or gentleness,
who chooses men as sweetmeats, to His taste
to savor or devour — Him I worship.
You say this, daring not to judge
between one end or the other of the sword,
placing yourself where sent, like a butterfly
dead on the pin. For who but He could breathe
anew the life that’s lost, whose righteous word
or innocent cry would be a wind great enough?
No one, no one again.