red wing (2018)

today we will borrow the red-wing blackbird

from the dizzying array,

viewed through an amber periscope,

under the influence

of earl grey's fog laden orchestra,

moving like the cursor

of beauty's greater drone

or a figment of wealth,

his epaulets and omnivorous appetite

shine the scabby paint railing

free of corn tidbits,

no tool of time

transcendent departed to

loan the lawn a sword of song







1-24-18
Portland Or

A Bump On the Head (2018)

The injured one, injures all, not inured in isolation;

A bad apple, metaphor sly weakens, rots the nation

     spreading bruise from falls or shoves,

     the outcast shadow lengthens  views on love


Done a wrong turn, "no fault of my own,"

Lucifer removed from god rib's glowing bone

     "dropped down among man, hurting us all"

     say the barrel of monkeys about the fall


Kicked out, pariah, nay saying scapegoat

Silver spoon don in his velvet waistcoat

     directing the masses, his mental instability;

     fascist-product of being dropped in his infancy,


   down on don's head a crown glowing Red

   his injured mind wishing escape from his Head




1-11-2018

Caliban # 9, Forest Bloodgood "hairbrain"

http://www.calibanonline.com/store.html



#9 includes an art portfolio by Kisoon Griffith, interviews with zydeco musicians Wayne Toups and Nathan Williams, and work by Gerald Vizenor, Wanda Coleman, Dionisio Martinez, Diane Wakoski, Antonio Porta, Spencer Selby, Forest Bloodgood, Dieter Weslowski, Christopher Davis, John M. Bennett, Melissa Monroe, Ronnie Burk, Ray DiPalma, Edouard Roditi, Simon Perchick, Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris, John Bradley, Sonya Hess,  Joel Lewis, Amanda Yskamp, Edward Smallfield, Sheila E. Murphy, Stephen Ratcliffe, Kevin Walker, John Lindgren, Silvia Curbelo, Greg Mulcahy, George Kalamaras, Raymond Federman, David Huerta, Jeanne M. Beaumont, Edward Mycue, Nico Vassilakis, Jay Passer, Christina-Marie, John Bell, Jose Quiroga, Judith Roitman, Gaspar Aguilera Diaz, Lisa Cooper, B.Z. Niditch, Tyrone Williams, and Guy R. Beining.

Allegheny Review 1987

In the Hammersmith Garage

_________________________________

winter prys its icy fingers

into the crack of the huge sliding door,

pointed colors gust in the car exhaust.

greasy joe slides under a car

&wrenches at pipes, straining

not unlike a man milking a cow

in the frost of four a.m. iowa

he loosens a nut that drains the oil

and the cow wobbles

weakheaded. he puts a feedsack over the hood

and gives the back fender a

fleshy, familiar slap

Lawrence, Kansas 1987

published in the Allegheny Review

won William Herbert Carruth Poetry prize at K.U.

ads for dirty epitaphs

the old seed bread  

thrown under the laurels

turns to soil frosting as 

onepartoxygentwopartshydrogen

resembles rain in isolation extreme,

from what is read
about that once prolific phenomena, 

before droplets in general
were criminalized

and cattle with tubes attached

carry milk straight to the sewer,

as wilbur has a buttermilk bath  

and spiders write ads for dirty epitaphs 

in the rafters
at the processing plant 

       tossed
out of view

 from the interstate nearby



may 2, 2020
siberia