Happy April Fools’ Day, Ostara, Easter, and the beginning of National Poetry Month!

I’m including some poems in my forthcoming short story collection, Dragon Scales & Other Tales. To celebrate the day(s), here are three that didn’t make the cut.

This one is the most recent, and the most self-explanatory.

PAINTING

As I’m painting the bathroom walls,
I think of Michelangelo.
Okay, so he was painting
A ceiling, and there are a few
Other differences. But I have to wonder,
Did he, while putting the final touches
On a face or cloud, worry
About water damage, chips and dings
Just waiting to happen,
All the ravages of time?
Did he see himself picking up
That old brush again
To patch things up, years down the line?
I doubt it.
Genius flashes, then fades with grace.
Only mediocrity needs maintenance.

This is one from decades ago that I still like.

BREAKFAST

The phone, ringing
In an empty room,
Makes no sound.
Leaves stick
To the cobblestones.
Sorry, the sun
Can’t appear today,
So we give you the moon,
Who’s been losing sleep
For years
Rehearsing this part…

You startle me
Before the mirror—
Narcissus, deflowered.
The sun pokes
A bright fist
Through morning clouds.

Once, when I was out running some errand in downtown Seattle, I noticed a woman walking across the street. All of a sudden a loud voice said, seemingly from out of the sky, “Ma’am, you’re jaywalking!” It was a cop with a loudspeaker, I guess, up in one of the buildings, but it seemed more like some angry god obsessed with the small sins of humankind. The woman ignored the voice and continued on her way. Later, I wrote this.

JAYWALKING IN SEATTLE

City of back alleys
And dead-end ecosystems,
City of ten thousand smokes,
City where homeless men
In ragged clothes
Wait under the freeway ramps,
Looking out over the Sound,
For the next Messiah
To forget them again;

To get around you
I must bend the rules,
Step on cracks,
Cross painted lines,
Ignore the megaphone voices
Of patrol cars
And the Metro buses
Bellowing like bulls in rut.

Your flashing red hand
Holds no terrors for me,
Your little man
Made of white light
Is no friend of mine;
Like a cat I keep
The right of trespass,
And go against the flow
Of space and time.