Becoming the Bull

Yesterday I was grazing and cruising the heifers in clover. This morning I stand at the edge of the bull ring in sawdust and bullshit and sand, listening to music to salute an armada, triumphant strains for a dusty empire from trumpeters sniffing for blood.

Swallowing Light Bulbs

He wasn’t always the man who swallows light bulbs. He did at one time have an act. Like many others, it amounted to filling in blanks: an adjective noun of noun and adjective noun, it verbed across the noun when the noun was adverb, but when it fell, it fell like a load of bricks.

Commencement Speech

I look out over these rows of eager faces turned toward me with self-assurance, not one brow wrinkled, eyes bright with confidence in the rosy dawn of tomorrow’s inexhaustible sun and it reminds me of a joke.

Arc of a Diver

You’ll say I’m making metaphors, but this is how it happened. You could ask around. There are witnesses, disappointed people who repeat the tale to teach their children a lesson. I was a diver with a feeling for the calculus.

New Arrangements

They were together in the bed in his room every weeknight for over a year, feeding on each other like prisoners downing their rations. Weekends were work nights, the only gigs he could get, and she was too young for the clubs,

Tango Lesson

When the world has too many parts and mine don’t fit, tango is another way to touch her. It can’t get me in trouble and always seems to please her, and I can drop in any time I have ten dollars and an evening hour free and wait my turn.

Bunting for a Hit

My boy powers a line drive through the gap just about every time. Claims he does it by not caring, taking easy swings. Me, I spray the ball to every corner of the park,

The Dive

It was an admirable dive, technically haphazard but stylish like good slam verse, and confident despite daunting conditions, including absence-of-pool. The diver launched from his start point at the concrete median was not in diver’s trim.

My Eulogy

Dearly beloved and others, it is with heavy hearts we gather today to mourn my passing. Mine, perhaps, is heaviest of all. I know the current fashion is to celebrate the life of the departed,