Fraction's Head

Fraction’s head an architect

foot an engineer — together

marvel & rigor inflect

structure & shape, flutter

of Sydney’s wings, slope

of pyramids bricked on sand

rising from fathoms deep

where slaves & pharaohs end.

What survives defies intent

relies on ever changing tides

a swallow’s path, extent

of maps ells & cubits wider

than Mercator’s fringe, dark

swell buffets of optimism

bartered against stark

ignorance — cataclysm.

Microcoder

The microcode word is 60 bits long, the microcode blasted into a ROM chip that plugs into a graphic controller circuit board for a 1980s computer workstation. Each word of microcode tells six or eight functional components on the board what to do, & each time a microcode word is read, those six or eight components do what they’re told — move data, increment or add or shift, change the state of one bit or another — the effect is visual, either the expected pattern appears on a computer monitor or it doesn’t. Sometimes nothing appears, sometimes the pattern is the wrong one, occasionally the screen jitters or flashes in a way that promises an epileptic fit for the sensitive viewer. Any mistake I make in coding means the newly blasted ROM is trash, means I return to the code & find the problem. I become a parallel processing machine — six or eight things happening at once, one word after another — I simulate microcode in my dreams.

Nothing But View

Phantoms a non-dark night raise

untuck & wrinkle sheets, rout the freedom

sleep might bring, posit an all

glass back wall, banish the laundry

upstairs till nothing but view’s left —

thrilling as artwork Leonardo’s

pencil drew until someone

mentions cost, that someone

the checkbook, upgrade relegated

to dollars & cents totted in columns & rows —

the total sum twice the eyeballed

guess. Grumble back to the catacombs

disappointed though not bereft.

Every insomnia gins new marvelry.

Elder Folk

What more could we want than raised

veins & wrinkled drapery, freedom

to study whatever we want all

day long — Archaea & botany,

coding & cross-hatch stroked left

because we might be Leonardo

or otherwise nameless, someone

struck off the rolls, someone

turning into a tree, relegated

to might have beens, ushered to back rows

where catarrhs & reddened eyeballs

won’t be noticed, mired in catacombs —

let it be known — we are not bereft,

no, we are rife, fertile with marvelry.

Cigs

Chesterfield, Dunhill, Kent,

Marlboro, Pall Mall, Parliament,

Tareyton, Viceroy, Winston —

anyone missing the obvious reason?

Raise your status, men, gain class

by puffing weeds named after brassy

titled folk the likes of you’ll never be —

lords & admirals ruling the high seas.

Dig your ditch, flog your broken mule,

smoke three packs a day — let Kools

take the place of Players once you’re fifty

& hawking up mucus gobs. In brief,

stifle the grudge you were suckered on.

Every smoker knuckles to black lung.

The River Charles

Tommy at stern, Johnny or I paddle

bow. The river forks to Mine Creek

where algae-capped turtles spot us & dimple

under. The bridge’s arch sinks deep

& comes back around — slow ripples

sweep the circle. Every day of the week

a river run, one kid in the middle.

Summer heat, thick woods, weeds

whir with grasshoppers second fiddle

to hairy woodpeckers hammering trees.

If we do (but we don’t) cut the babble

we sometimes spy a white-tailed deer.

Today the time, canoe, & dear Tommy

are long gone. The river — it’s still clear.

Sting

Yellow jackets have one sting to spend —

thus the communal species legacy

dooms each individual to end

its life to keep the greater family free.

My foot labels the sudden sting abuse,

responds with startling pain, doesn’t forgive

the insect’s natural unconsidered use

of what its tribe demands to stay alive —

sacrifice one to leave the rest alone.

I drink a beer. I ice. My foot’s deceived

into believing most of the pain is gone.

Surely the watermelon I chose to leave

out on the table for children to eat was the

reason this kamikaze had to be.

Milton's Milking

Yesterday so much to say, today nothing

beyond eat breakfast, take a shower,

strip the bed. Nothing like housekeeping

to fill blank time, nothing like blank verse

Milton writes to fill his blind hours.

Does he walk while he composes, testing

one Satanic conceit after another?

Every circuit a household blessing

for those charged with Milton’s well-being.

Out the garden door to the wall, reverse

direction. He never hurries, always fondling

his dog, sniffing every tree & flower.

He walks until he hears his minder’s voice —

time for Milton’s milking. He has no choice.

November

behind the grocery

a shopping

cart bulges

a blanket arranges

the square of ground

cloth, paper, plastic mounds

one of them

the occupant’s face

a dog

— untied, uncovered —

shares the dwelling

tossed uniformly
bludgeons relocate

it won’t rain until November

Play Perfectly

that a man would be            in fact men are not

           more often than not fatal            childbearing does not

takes decades            fed up indifference to

           anything in life            what was broken start over

no one else            ear comes first    play perfectly

Bantams

The dozen bantams stand here & there

in hay-sprinkled brown dust, feathered

muffs around their ankles. Trees twenty

feet away disappear in the fog. One after

another flaps up into a box to lay quail-

sized eggs, white & brown & unspeckled

& so small, so strong, they’re too much

work to break & eat. The bantams rush

to humans, they skitter away. Here is

clean water, there grain, in the shallow

hole fresh mounds of vegetable compost.

How are we different? Eating & giving

& expecting someone we rush to & skitter

from, our books & bicycles false essentials.

We finger lettuce leaves for slugs the birds

would make short work of. As night falls

they crowd into roofed boxes, locked away
as we are — in houses, beds — all night.

Landscape

The 45-degree slope of redwood branches

slung from the tallest tree is gravity’s equation.

Branches of younger trees bend to the moon,

show sky between them. No gaps in the tallest

tree — no, not gaps but small feathered zones

filled with gray fog & car noise. Staying here

among sounds of affluence, traffic, drought, fire

I remember why at home I foster silence.

Leaf fallen from the tree, tree an imaginary

construct formed entirely of leaves — space

where the tree stood, leaf on the bare earth

dry dark shriveled — wet black dissolving.

What constitutes ethereal landscape?

From scarce remains a backbone springs.