Issue I

My son gave me a book
of koans,
as if parenting a son isn’t
confusing enough,

Moods shift when the fog
building by the gate to the bay
decides enough, it’s time to begin
the slow seep through hilly streets
at dusk and even the steady hum
of cable under California changes.

Two routes out of Nikko take forty-eight
hairpin turns to reach
its lake-in-the-mountains destination.
The bus will be full.

The sun commands the lake to dance.
Blue, green, and rubber-ducky yellow
columns shoot up through pinprick stars.

Nothing much, really…
no witness (angel or otherwise)

No spanking the maid under cover of clover, Mr. Coover

It’ll all be just na’kid teamwork         couple of 
marvel Euro’s on tricky spellings  

YES, what was left of the fat chance corporeal slug was rolled flat

Rolled out on kenophobic parade
Spooks’ ghost dance, collegial mischance

Bomb da bards, we say, wrong side d’grass

Listen to your Angel Number, hon…      Run!

There it is again (there it
is again)          ≈  saucy seventeener  ≈

Taxiing down an empty runway
triggers en masse (as we said)

I’m going to hop on this poem
let it move like a rhino
leather seat worn beyond years
eye of extinct planet
honk its horn contemporarily
tippity galumph.

each footprint in the snow
is a stroke on the wall—
each move
contemplated
calibrated
painful to all joints—

Outside,
the rain whispers—
playing counterpart to the sounds
inside.

Soft tapping of keys
gives birth to ideas, …