Three Haiku

A cricket and I
danced in the bathroom today.
I bowed, and stomped him.

This moon-like street light
won't even allow the mist
any of its secrets.

A jack-o-lantern
and I sit on the cold porch
with our two faces.

Halloween Gourd

I carved a tiny face into the bulb
of a small green gourd and cut
two holes into its head for air.

I carved a candle small enough
to put in it's head and cover
with the scalp I took from it.

It was a face with almost no
detail. Two diamond eyes,
a wedge nose and bow smile.

It had a fire in its head just
breathing enough to stay
awake and out of the wind.

You held it by the neck
upside down as the fire
heated the head inside.

A smell of hot pumkin-like
flesh came furtively out
of the bright eyes and mouth.

It's serene little face
looked ancient and glazed,
like some fossil that finds you

and tells you with its dead
features, all the dreams
of the hands that carve it.

Seeking God

In a clearing formed
by dozens of converged
trails, a tent stands open.

I've come here by one
trail or another, dropped
my bag, crawled in, and slept.

By morning, the tent
is gone and I'm sitting up
at the head of countless trails.

Food and the Hands

Apple

The fist with a weapon.
Yank out the stem like a pin
on a grenade.

Peanut

The knuckles know the seam
to press and split the hull.
They work like a rhythm section.
The hands labor for the mouth.
The hands don't think about
the mouth; they work, and when
they're done, they sweep
the empty shells together
and off the edge of the table.

Banana

You hold,
tight.
I'll crack
the end.
Easy now.
One,
just so.
Two, again.
Three.
Keep holding.

Manna

They must have held it
in both palms together, lifted
above their heads with open
mouths and let it sift down
through the hour glass
of their two cupped hands.

Water

Drunk from your own hands,
it tastes a little like you. Even
your body makes a circle
from your shoulders around
to your hands and mouth.
You swallow and bring your hands
a little closer in, not like the snake
eating itself forever, but like someone
who's just discoverd something
inside themselves worth taking
and has just begun to reach
with their hands.

Not Listening

Sometimes I listen to the news on the radio without
paying attention to the stories. I listen to the voices,
how many and how loud. I hear accents and gender,
temperement and interest, but no news.
This comes from listening too much. The way
you can eat too much and taste little but feel
the chew and swallow, the heaviness in your gut
and the swelling of your belly in your clothes.
I'm full of news and words. A bag of memory
in by brain is swelling with slanted questions
and irrelevent answers. A man makes his voice
swing a fist of indignant contradiction and laughs
too hard. A woman speaks in a language and
her voice fades to another woman speaking
another language, English I think, and then
the sound of traffic and whistles and words.
When I get up and turn the radio off, I feel
like I've walked out of a room with a patient
still talking about the reasons he needs me,
and I've discovered he's hurting me and that I can't
help him. So I stand in the hall, listening
to the sound of his voice that I'm not certain
isn't just the echo in my memory.