Ten Poems for Consideration

1. Framed
2. The Number 23
3. Highways
4. The Dream of Faith
5. A Blackbird on Morning Dew
6. Christ Contemporary
7. Breakfast
8. The Edge of the Earth
9. Memory
10. Women Don't Smoke

Two Image Poems

Memory

A burnt out picture
Leaving soot marks on the wall

Women Don't Smoke

A child watches a lady
in a blue dress
smoking a cigarette

After Rebecca Dygert's 'First Dance'

Dresses are shimmering,

Fish under bright lights
Swimming to music, again
A daughter's tender grasp
Swept up in her father's -
His wrinkled hand, still fresh
Beholding the bride,
Dancing away memories

Rebuild

A Grecian titan summoning kryos
Over a sleepy Midwest town
In the deep snowfall
Footfalls ripping paper
To the caved in schoolhouse.

Later-

Ice weighing down yellowed grass.
Sketches of frost.
Numb and brittle ground,
Cracked from necessity
To rebuild.

Framed

Reflections on the Gilcrease Museum of Western Art

Frame upon frame of oils and dust collect
Portraits of the Cherokee in headdress
Plains of trembling horses stamping thunder
Whistle of a gun over the shoulder
God in the wilderness, the barbaric,
The cherry blossoms and dances for rain
Chained to brushes to behold the savage
Terrain at arm's length, marvel at the past

America is wetlands and warpaint
Beads catching dreams over the waterfalls
Of imagination and all regret
Within the lands of opportunity
The artist's frame makes an elegant cage -
Pipelines and reservations break untamed

Unfinished

I pencil a pithy phrase to my palm
To burn it in my skin for none to hear
Keep it strapped like the bosom and the bomb
Internal wind whispering - escribir

The Number 23

A gift for Easter,
The celebration of childhood

The number, manufactured
in black and red over holes
printed on uniform

The number that meant
the greatest shooting guard
in the world was me.

Jesus played basketball
I was certain.

Celestial hardwood
angelic jerseys and
the slam dunk after
a three day blowout