Fremont (4/19)

Pink child-sized fingerprints of spring
stick petulant to the small red speed of the Mazda Miata.
The rain will ambush you,
even if you hide your convertible beneath the trees.

It's raining horses.

When it rains like this
newspapers slush
into pudding on the sidewalk.
When it rains like this
I have no doubt
that you would still love me
if you let your intentions run wild
like the horses they are.

The Earthworms

The earthworms yawn long, magenta & mauve
over Seattle's glossy sidewalk mouths
wet concrete tongues
stubbled with pebbles of milky and ambitious size.

Singing above the street lamps
power cables crackle open the throat of midnight,
in movements sharper than a hum,
lines vibrating edge over edge.
The mercury drops through April
sharp and heavy with intent.
Cold air forces spring into a fever pitch
of shivering restrained colors.

But the earthworms,
you must pay (you pen's) attention to the earthworms,
slow like a meditation master
they make breathing a full-bodied endeavor.
Dreamlike
the sidewalks are splitting
under the force of one more season
that's where the earthworms come up
and make the most of the her jagged and unconscious rupture.

I wanted this to be more haunting than it was

This sickness is an angry pinwheel on the back porch,
the hissing of pipes in the basement,
a shivering window in the night.

The bright gray gets sucked up by hanging rain
converts light into fog
and fog into conversation.
Words get sticky and you have missed your puddle
the conversation bus stops
beeps incessantly,
lets out the air,
echoes out an empty destination,
in a voice rehearsed every 28 minutes.

Mouths snore into another subject
and that rain just won't come down like it's supposed to
like a bushy-tailed spiral feeling
or a transient raccoon scuttling under the porch.
The air is hissing like so many suspended waterways
and the glass gatekeepers sigh
refusing to let the wind break.