9/30
Sonnets From Other Lives: SueEllen

She's gone.  She didn't even take a coat.
That detail gnaws--relentless--at her mind.
She imagines her alone out in the cold.
Where did she fail?   How could she be so blind?
She tries to glean some clue out of the past
few days--replays the last few interations.
What vital question slipped away unasked?
What hidden slight demanded a retraction?
Outside the window nightfall swarms with danger.
She tries to tell herself it's only rain,
but cannot rid herself of those dark strangers
lurking in the shadows of her brain.
Is it too early to go to the phone?
She doesn't care.  She wants her baby home.

9/29
Sonnets From Other Lives: Donald

Donald doesn't worry anymore.
The small stuff floats away like a balloon.
The dinner dishes done--he's out the door--
jogging underneath the gibbous moon.
The demons had their day but now they're done.
He's learned to take it one day at a time.
Drawing strength from all these solitary runs
& the brave New Balance driving every stride.
He'll head for home & help wrangle the twins,
cuddle puddle reading Charlotte's Web,
help them through the sweetly tragic end,
then tuck them  carefully into their beds.
He'll watch T.V.--make love to his wife
& thank God for another chance at life.

9/28
Sonnets From Other Lives: Helene

This is the best part of the day--
the morning blooming like a teenage girl.
She makes herself a large care' au lait
& surveys her little corner of the world.
A cloud of bushtits swarms about the holly.
The breeze drops hints that autumn is awake.
She's thinking that she'll ring up her friend Molly
to catch up things and walk around Green Lake.
Freedom calls. She thinks she likes the book
& approves of Franzen's rehabilitation.
she settles herself in in the breakfast nook
& joins in with the Oprah Book Club Nation.

What's with these people?  She's sure she could give
those Berglands some advice on how to live.

9/27
Sonnets From Other Lives: Tim

He doesn't think about it anymore.
Doesn't need to--just follows the script.
Boot up. Open file. Type report.
Automatic.  Like a switch was flipped.
Who was it called them "veal fattening pens"--
these ecru labyrinths of cubicles?
His CV302 form's due at ten.
A meeting after lunch.  The day is full.
Roberta stops by bring him decaf.
They break for coffee & commiseration.
With her long athletic legs & flirty laugh,
she's a daily gift to his imagination.

At five he'll drive home, go to bed & then
get up & go & do it all again

9/26
Sonnets From Other Lives: Zero

You can call me Zero--as in nothin
& while you're at it drop a dollar in my paw.
Bet you hate the way that I just butt in.
on your complacency. There oughta be a law!
Would you be shocked to know I'm just 15
& living on the streets--a gutter punk?
Or that home is where the stepdad gets all  mean
& beats on me whenever he gets drunk?
Well I can eat three squares out of the dumpsters
& my posse keeps the pimps off of my ass.
People give me crap.  I take my lumps--sure
& I've been known to stoop to huffing gas.
But if you don't like it piss off & be gone
'Cos I'm the fucked up & forgotten face of freedom.

9/25
Sonnets From Other Lives: Gerald

Whan that aprill with his shoures soothe
triggers cherry blossoms in the quad,
the mad professor flees from his computer
to sing Franciscan canticles to God.
Odd behavior from an existentialist--
some vestigial ghost from Catholic school?
Did he become a medievalist
because he was enamoured with that cruel
holiness--all those saints & martyrs?

Lusty students sprawl about the lawns.
Nature pricketh hir courages ever harder.
The term ends Friday with all of them gone
to strange strondes: resorts, motels, lodges.
So longen folk to goon on Pilgrimages.

9/24
Sonnets From Other Lives: Frank & Tony

--Where is he.  Fuck. It must be after nine.
--Nine fifteen.  Go buy a fuckin watch.
--I pay assholes like you to tell the time
I don't like this.   I'm thinkin that he botched
the job.   The bastard set us up.
--Come on. He might fuck up but he's no rat.
--You think?  Fuck this. I've had more than enough
of this guy.  This aint' the first time that
I got a feeling somethin 'bout him stinks.
--Jimmy vouched for him--says he's OK
--Jimmy's a moron.   Who cares what he thinks.
This shit is bad.  You--make it go away.
--I think you're getting paranoid but shit
you're the boss Frank--I'll take care of it.

9/23
Sonnets From Other Lives: Harv

Those goddamn flowers were all sentenced to death
the minute someone clipped their stems.  The life
of each cut rose and baby's breath
wilts now beside the box holding my wife.
Myra chose the flowers--music too.
Ever dutiful--her mother's daughter.
I'm grateful she gives me nothing to do
but sit & be her helpless grieving father.
Some minister will stand up front & say
that all of this is part of God's great plan--
that Annie's resting in a better place.
Bullshit.  Her place is right beside me.  Here.
I won't give God a single goddamn tear.

9/22
Sonnets From Other Lives: Damien & Jaz

-- So whatcha think of that guy over there?
by the window pounding his computer?
--OK--I'll play. He's having an affair
with a cocktail waitress he picked up at Hooters.
--He's a Microsoftie.  He fakes writing code
when really he's engaged in IM sex.
--But the wife hacked his account & now she knows!
--He's packing up to leave.  I'm thinking next
he takes the waitress to a cheap motel.
--Where she hits him up for her kid's school supplies.
--No! We need a murder--some blackmail!
--Must you always make somebody die?
--Sex & violence, babe.  It's my conviction
life is boring.  Always stick with fiction.

9/21
Sonnets From Other Lives:  Tashia

I told my son we're going camping--and we were--
tenting in an unused parking lot--
a blue tarp village plopped down in the burbs.
It ain't much but then it's all we got.
We lost the house a couple months ago.
I lost my job a few months before that.
Finally there was nowhere else to go.

I watch my baby read.  The Cat in the Hat.
Next year he starts school  What do I say
when they ask me my address?  Nicklesville?
What if his new friends want to come and play
at our "house"?
                             At last the night is still.
Sleep my son.  Dream your American dreams
as mommy's life unravels at the seams.

9/20
Sonnets from Other Lives:  Dale & Robin

--I don't wanna talk.  Give it a rest.
--So I'm just supposed to live with your foul mood?
--It's like you're always giving me some a test.
Do we have to "process" everything we do?
--You're an emotional retard--  the way you pout
about some secret sin that I committed.
--As if talking with you helps!  I've come to doubt
that thinking for myself 's even permitted!
--Oh cut the crap! Think I don't know your game?
Your private little lists of all my crimes.
--So your position is that I should name
all the crappy stuff that you do all the time?
--Why do we do this? Look at us! We're wrecks!
--Myself? I'm in it for the make-up sex

9/19
Sonnets From Other Lives: Coyote

You see me.  Like a shadow in the fog
I run across the beam of your headlights.
What incongruity! A wild dog
inhabits your suburban paradise!
I would sing for you, but I know well
the loathing my survival can incite
in those who would bend nature to their will,
so I run--silent--through the night.
You changed my world but  I can live in yours--
invisible--adaptable.  Know that
I rule the night outside your doors--
preying on your trash and fatted cats.
You see me & you feel that thrill of fear
that something wild as me still exists here.

9/18
Sonnets from Other Lives: Carole

The girls & I are watching Sleeping Beauty.
The Princess dreams behind her wall of thorns.
My own Prince in Iraq--this tour of duty--
his third deployment since the kids were born.
We meet each week on Skype--proclaim our love.
He manfully disdains the pains of war .
(O Disney save me from the terror of
men in uniform at my front door.)
The last reunion scarred. He never spoke
about the ghosts that shared our bed at night.
Then there were the times when I awoke
to find him drinking hollow-faced by TV light.
The fairy tale ends.  I want to know
who will it be this time that comes home?

9/17
Sonnets From Other Lives:  Richard

You'd think 23 years would count for more
than a box to fill with crap out of your desk
and a security guard's escort out the door.
But when you're the old guy and your wife's has got MS
you become a red flag to new management.
Surprise. You're labeled a redundancy--
an easily disposed of net expense.
Waste two years trying to peddle your CV...
But at 56 years old?  An ailing wife?
You'd send their goddamn health care through the roof.
So it's down to bagging groceries.  That's just life
in this economy.  You see the proof
when you see guys from the office as you are
hauling someone's groceries to their car.

9/16
Sonnets From Other Lives: Gus

Don't you love this trail--that skyline rimmed with peaks
like some enormous dragon's lower jaw?
Used to come here every three-four weeks
but now I'm too damn old.  First time I saw
this place was with the 10th Mountain Division.
World War II--we trained on Mt. Rainier.
Lots of us after the war made it our mission
to hike & climb & ski the mountains here.
We were the wild men of the Beckey era.
We swarmed the peaks & bars.  Made first ascents
all up & down the Cascades & Sierras
in  army surplus wool & canvas tents.
So as you hike these mountains think on this my friend:
Wherever you go--Ive already been.

9/15
Sonnets From Other Lives: Bunny

The Queen reclines in her hospital bed--
an elephant set in the living room--.
the atmosphere oppressed by things unsaid
and the awkward proximity of doom.
Once my concerns were carpools, PTA,
the battlefields of marriage, raising kids.
With cancer all of that drifted away
& left a sense that everything I did
followed a script.  I met my engineer
right out of high school.  Married. Pregnant. Plopped
into a ranch house. He had his career
while I had children. And somehow that stopped
time.  In some strange way I feel like I
just froze in place as whole damn world flew by.

9/14
Sonnets From Other Lives: Rick

You're absolutely right. I am a leech.
It's my job to make your life a living hell.
But then I'm only here because you've reached
the apex. You're a brand--a thing that sells.
When magazines print only your first name
the consumer  knows that they refer you,
and covets false proximity to fame
by knowing all there is to know of you.
Then my telephoto shoots your cellulite.
My flash intrudes on your illicit meal.
I expose your face sans make-up because I
despise the arrogance of the unreal.
We rain lucre on you to be fabulous,
but you're just a gilded version of the rest of us.

9/13
Sonnets From Other Lives: Wolfman

Wake n bake, dude. Fire up the long
established ritual hit on last night's roach.
Take a bootleg live Dead tape & put it on.
Some instant coffee. Bowl of Cherrios.
Sit out on the stoop--check out the chicks
waiting for the bus in little packs
Giggling & texting. Seems my dick
still gets ideas.  Too goddamn late for that
shit now.  Guess I've become an old fart joke.
I'll head for Gasworks Park to watch the day
pass me by & take another toke.
What was that thing we always used to say...?

The Kite Hill sundial marks the hours as I
float barely tethered here above the sky.

9/11
Sonnets From Other Lives: Daniel

Rattlesnake beside the highway. Dead.
I pull over, cut the engine, take a look.
A big one.  Someone's tire took off its head,
not long ago--meats fresh enough to cook
tonight.  I throw it in the bed
and take it home--which is not much a prize--
a garden patch, a trailer, & a shack
just outside Ukiah. 
                               Guess some guys
got out of Nam unscathed--I wasn't one.
But then my dad was kind enough to croak
& leave enough insurance to buy the farm--
(the guys from my old squad would dig the joke)
I got my goat, my garden, grow my weed
& ask only that the world leave me in peace.

9/10
Sonnets From Other Lives: Brandi

Hey good lookin'. Whatcha havin, hon?
(It's November & I'm dressed in lingerie)
Does my frozen chicken skin get you turned on?
A double caramel mocha.  That OK?
I pull your drink while you stare at my ass
from your giant SUV.  My flirty smile
is your reward for that inept, pathetic pass.
That's three seventy five. But get this--while
you decide whether I'm only worth a quarter
or if I'm hot enough to keep the five--
I could  hock a loogie in your order
while you're ogling my butt. 'Cause buster I
need that tip. It's how the bills get paid.
So,  Take care honey. You have a nice day.

9/9
Sonnets From Other Lives: Hiro

See that tree? The little alpine fir?
Planted that one back in '52.
Pruned like one I saw on Mt. Rainier.
A history prof from the U.W.
lived here back then, and he hired me--
a part time student on the G.I. Bill
with a piece of German shrapnel in my knee.
Dad did bonsai. Taught me and I still
have his tools. Minidoka broke his heart.
He'd lost the store and me in Italy...
Didn't see much point in Nippon arts.
Thought of him a lot shaping that tree--
 a gnarled mountain fir in Laurelhurst.
It's what a thing looks like when it endures.

9/8
Sonnets From Other Lives: Peter

The foot sticks out, so I'm obliged to trip
with a convincingly humiliating fall.
Much as I'd rather throw a double flip
over his head and scramble up the wall...
Ah, but I've run the thought experiments.
(& it is thinking that's keeping me alive).
When I compute the causes and effects,
someone who matters to me always dies.
Tonight I'll swing above the city's canyons,
stand vigil on St. Patrick's tallest spire,
battle mutant thugs and their companions,
then rescue someone's baby from a fire.
But for now I sprawl and make this bully's day,
as the girl I love, embarrassed, looks away.

9/7
Sonnets From Other Lives: Abel

This midtown fare will mark the day's first trip.
A Chinese man bound for the lower east side.
who pays with squared-off blue-nailed fingertips.
Congenital heart defect.  I give a ride
to a yellow tinged cirrhotic alcoholic.
Today I think it will be getting hot.
New York in summer can make me nostalgic
for Harare-- market days.... Ah but I'm not
so welcome in Mugabe's paradise.
A white man in a wheelchair hails me.  Says,
"Thanks. Six other cabs just drove on by."
The Avenue of the Americas...
I ponder, Which diagnosis best fits me?
Physician? Chauffeur? Exile? Refugee?

9/6
Sonnets From Other Lives: Sean

I catch the #7--head downtown--
watch the drowsy city waking up.
My love is dozing under eiderdown.
I'm nursing coffee in a paper cup--
greedy for the lightness of this day.
What if the children queued at St. Jude's door
could hear what mornings like this have to say
about the promise every moment holds in store?
Old woman in a window looks across
the street and waits for life to pass her by.
Old Indian on the corner looking lost.
Commuters board.  No one meets my eye
.
I am burning with this memory:
The girl that I love gave herself to me.

9/5
Sonnets From Other Lives: Lissa

You know you didn't used to be like this--
the evasiveness--the fugitive eye contact.
You used to put some effort in a kiss.
Now it's like negotiating a contract.
So, Party of the First Part, tell me what
brings us to this tabled conversation?
Why do I sense we came to celebrate
the tragic end of your infatuation?
This wine is crap.  But you know I can see
why you'd pick this bistro for a break-up.
The quiet pretension does discourage scenes.
Shit. This night's a fucking waste of make-up.
I can't eat this. Everything is cold.
I was all in, but now you win.
I fold.

9/4
Sonnets From Other Lives: Meg

You never called, so what was I to think?
(The cat clock's tick-tock eyes scan right left right.)
I opened up the wine I'd bought to drink
with you & Fred Astaire tonight.
then caved and left a message.  What's the use?
(I'm thinking Ginger doth protest too much.)
No doubt you're still rehearsing your excuse.
I'm asking myself why I'm always such
a cliche' --Rapunzel in her flat
waits endlessly to buzz Prince Dick  inside,
'til finally she's reduced to hoarding cats
like some Dickensian rejected bride.
The merlot is asking, Notice how it feels
like your  life is dancing backwards in high heels?

9/3

I will celebrate
your geranium smile
your sensible shoes
when I in my dead man's suit
meet your mouth with this
eternal kiss

the war is over
in Times Square
& the air
has gone electric
with ardent promises

everything  is happening
at the same time
forever
though it is only
when we are holding
one another
that that secret
is ever
revealed

9/2

St. Freakin Francis
Bless this
kneeling fawn, this
swooning putti, this
irascible gnome.
O sad-eyed concrete saint,
your paint-pitted piety
still moves.  Your
mournful gaze graces a
chemically perfect lawn
with infinite compassion.
O San Francisco pray
for this marooned Big Wheel,
this mylar pinwheel,
this calico sentinel.

The landscape abides.
The sprinkler ticks.
The azalea rests in
its cedar chip bed.

Pax vobiscum.

9/1
Being chary
of fulminate
voices, of incendiary
blasts from  the disputant
bloviators who harry
with dissonant
blasts of mercenary
conviction, I fear the covenant
with rationality has been buried--
rendered irrelevant
by these diversionary
meme blasts.  The incognizant
confuse reality with the imaginary.
Askant
we watch. Wary
lest noise finally completely supplant
truth.

8/31

Dawn finds the day distending
like an aneurysm.  Slender
threads unravel, rending
gravity--upending the ascender.
Whatever cards and stars would be portending
will befall before the fates can surrender
themselves. (Bending
like barflies before bartenders)
A sigh.  I rise, rendering
up whatever my intentions might engender.