Arizona

I dream of desert mounds, cacti, and pomegranates

Where I snore in hollow mauve orchestra pits

And wiggle in cool sand sheets

I dream of coyotes, snakes, and spiders that may kill me in my sleep.

I snore in hallow mauve orchestra pits

With eyes shut, I see gold-laced clay rooftops dancing just for me

I dream of coyotes, snakes, and spiders that may kill me in my sleep

The prickly cactus deity watches over me.

With eyes shut, I see gold-laced clay rooftops dancing just for me

The sun bakes nectared promises to lure my dry palette

The prickly cactus deity watches over me

Scarabs perform a dance to a Navajo’s appeal to blue.

The sun bakes nectared promises to lure my dry palette

My skin sings of pomegranates and rubied citrus flesh

Scarabs perform an interpretive dance to a Navajo’s appeal to blue

A heckling diamondback displays his scaly cicada rain stick.

My skin sings of pomegranate spectrums and lemoned flesh

My feet savor the taste of freshly caught desert sand fish

A diamondback displays his scaly cicada rain stick

Unknowingly wooing the desert with scales, fangs, and sensitivity.

My feet lament over the forgotten taste of sun-lathered sand-koi

A cactus pines for green garnished with daybreak

“Does wooing the desert require more than scales, fangs, and sensitivity?”

I write her a poem about urban Stop signs and laundromats.

A cactus pines for shades of vegetation and chilled starlight

A rock seeks some shade beneath a fruitful carcass

I read the desert my urban poem about stop signs and laundromats

Shedding her veil of impassioned hummingbirds and blooming Saguaro flowers.

Upon the return of the long-departed thunderclouds that bellow like timpanis

I am roused by the crunching of store-bought pomegranate seeds

And the wind’s rant reeking against my window forgetting that

I dreamt of desert mounds, cacti, and pomegranates that watched me in my sleep.

Trinity* (Renku Collaboration)

1945

A boy sits and ponders as
A boil explodes

Radiation burns scarring
Soft faces and bloody skies

Patches of sun burnt
violet massage
the tainted air

Come! All you disbelievers
Praise in the name of science!

Splitting the atom
yields the thunderous applause
of our fearful land.

Explosion defines the earth.

Flames destroy its surface.

An odd cloud appears.
Somehow, I know I will die
Or count my blessings

Atomic, verdant crater
Melted into a glass bowl.

Thunder howls in pain

Screaming out thousands

of bullets in one voice

Men in masks stare at a girl
as she excretes destruction

Planet-cracking force
shakes the scales of Gaea's skin;
Tectonic thunder.

Fumes of reaping metal cling

To the planet’s scarred flesh

Numbers chant in sync.
The ritual melody
Adds tones of despair

Binary screaming heralds
the gallop of four horsemen

They helplessly trot

through sands splashing specks

of glistening ash

Shards of green glass and crystal
Bond; Earth’s radiant smile.                                   

Gaea smiles no more.
Blood spattered on melted sand
Countdown to sorrow.

Drowning in a Hennessy

intoxicated sun

John and Blanche made love,
And drank chilled rum and Cola while,
“Don’t Fence Me In” played.

The atom's atomic dance
in a throng of thrashing force

Destruction is the

Weapon that fizzes

Fumes furiously

My skin tells me that it’s time.
One day this is how we'll die.

Festered barnacles
of irradiated flesh
pockmark her children.

Leaving them exposed to the

Poisons filling into their land

“Please take the children!”
Cries the father, as the lumps
Begin to surface.

Dark splotches on milk white skin
Sunspots mark the dusk of man.

Tarnished land feeds on

memorable sunken souls

lost in gloom disguise

Solvents now find themselves in
A realm without alchemy

Lead and Mercury,
Archaic elements now
Obsolete witchcraft.

Divine power unraveled
Behind masked western science

Director Kenneth Bainbridge,
Said, “Now we’re all dead”
To Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer said, “Now I
Am Death, destroyer of worlds.”

And so the sky said,
“Bienvenue!” to the newest
Fungal Phoenix.

God missed the divine rainbow,
Trinity’s "bulbous fireball."

White sands melted green
Glass grows molten in the glow
of nuclear lamps

Light burns the atmosphere

illuminating radiance

Manhattan, borough
many boroughs into one
Secrets in shadow

A breathe of dusk protects

the camouflaged agenda

The Atomic Age
heralds the dawn in the shade
of a mushroom cloud

Pieces and particles prance

In the public’s pupils

Gotta get 'Gadget'
Secret names for omega
Hark! The end of days.

Twisted conclusion of a

demolished beginning

There goes the blue-sky
atmospheric deletion
or complete dud.

Red smoked gray’s beauty

as the mountains just watched

Flawless disturbances

abandon civil

beings in wreckage

Raising blemished questions

of broken moralities

The Allied gamblers
Toy with the apocalypse
The horseman called war

War it was. Shock waves rippling

Riffles through distant echoes

Verdant glass a scar
forever on the white sand
the new age cometh

An Impatient generation

yearns for new science to come.


* Note: This poem is about the July 16, 1945 Trinity nuclear test. This test resulted in creating the world's first atomic bomb.