Ghost Buffalo

I will not be reduced to false clarity or deductive explanations of a leaf, falling. * There was a bobcat. To protect my rodents, I scared it off. Then came a squall of hail so fierce it pockmarked my house. * My Erasmus is dragging. * What I can't change  changes me. * Time has a twin, but doesn't speak of it. * I am overcome by reason, overwhelmed by song. * Budada is bigger than coca cola!  * The field is good for daisies  and daisies for the field. * The world wept wooden tears but it was already too late. * The degree of incongruence determines  everything. * Wednesday night is like all the other nights  Too far from dawn To be taken seriously.       - JM I think it was about fifteen years ago I first met Jack.  His first words to me were, You got a good weird on you.   Thus began a friendship between us that could only be described as delightful, peculia...

We are wise, or old. We can afford to laugh.  - RWK Bob was loved by many Colorado poets.  He was a poet who took his humor seriously, a journeyman, a wordsmith, a professor of English at UNC, curator of the Colorado Poets Center, and he was a dear friend.   A few weeks before he died, he asked me to say some words and read one of his poems at the service in celebration of his life, in Loveland.  Poets in the area who knew and loved him are invited to attend.  The services will be held at The Rialto Theatre, on 4th Street, Wed., May 3 at 4pm.  

What He Thought For Fabbio Doplicher We were supposed to do a job in Italy and, full of our feeling for ourselves (our sense of being Poets from America) we went from Rome to Fano, met the Mayor, mulled a couple matters over. The Italian literati seemed bewildered by the language of America: they asked us what does “flat drink” mean? and the mysterious “cheap date” (no explanation lessened this one’s mystery). Among Italian writers we could recognize our counterparts: the academic, the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous, the brazen and the glib. And there was one administrator (The Conservative), in suit of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide with measured pace and uninflected tone narrated sights and histories the hired van hauled us past. Of all he was most politic-- and least poetic-- so it seemed. Our last few days in Rome  I found a book of poems this unprepossessing one had written: it was there in the pen...

Only the drift of tameless folk, Tough in sinew, tough in bone, Knit in their outlandishness, Long endure by naked stone. from Will Boil Too Early, The Ten Mile Range Belle Turnbulle  A few dear poet friends and I will be discussing Belle's work at the Breckenridge Creative Arts Center the evening of Friday, April 21.  More information can be found here:   rANGE Turnbulle, who lived in Breckenridge for the last 30 years of her life, came to speak the dual language of mountain and mining:  Mountains were made for badgers, Probus said, And badgers for the mountains.  And so long As I can claw a tunnel, with the strong Smell of the ore beyond, I shall be led To sink my pick in holes unlimited, To rummage in old stopes and raise the song Of victory too soon, all laid along Hellbent to crack a granite maidenhead. And men of war may hoot and presidents Rock down the chutes to hell, but I'll be going Soon as a patch of mountainside is showing. Soon ...

Colorado Canyons Gallery and Gifts The good people of the Telluride Mushroom Fest have asked I design their T-shirts this year.  I'll also be vending original works at the event: Mushroom Fest, Videlock T-shirt #telluridemushroomfest

These good folks in Ireland kindly asked permission to reprint "Flowers, for my Mother," a small piece of mine which first appeared in Poetry, in their new anthology, which is available now: