11

The concrete peels like a banana from its skin
separating the tarpin glue from its rough, crusted surface,
fading to a light mossy gray with a rough lichen.
It settles beneath the rhododendron,
spots of pink in blossom above.

10

Some people seem to think of time
as a commodity
I think of it as always against me,
and I have a class soon,
and I wondered this morning if I even had time for a minute
a minute
and then I was sad.

9

Hit it!
Ride the Valkyries!
Thunder the plain and score the clay.
Burn the ocean with the engines plunged deep
to the plunder
Ride the saving swell to the tops of the mountains
To the blue, the purple, the waving peonies of the glacier fields.

8

I need to be honest.
All I can think of is a hang-glider in one of those
fruity-colored wing tarps soaring over the mountains
like in that episode of CSI.
But as I imagine it, he doesn't die.
As I imagine it, if he gets to be up that high,
he would never come down.

7

Let's be honest here.
Not every day is a poetry day, and not every day do I want my lines
to fall
into even breaks.
In fact, when the clouds hang oppressively low like this
(who am I kidding, they're not oppressive),
I feel no creative juices at all.
Is that a cliche?
I don't think I particularly care.

6

When I go long without showering
My hair feels like chocolate and wax
to my fingers.

5

I am a Christmas Tree.
(Never ever give up)
I am a symbol, so without the specifics
of the sap on the gritty, gripping fingers
or the scraping rusty saw,
or the dreaming of the pleasant brandy with cinnamon on the lips
I am nothing.

4

I am Professor Plum
but I don't have a clue.
I climbed to the signal tower
on the top of the bench in the park
next to you,
but signals have no meaning when I haven't told you what I want.
So you sat there as I made convoluted detailed hand motions with my pinky and thumb.
How does one sign that one doesn't understand anymore?

3

The sound is too loud
and it drains my thoughts down the swirling tempest
somewhere over Sri Lanka
I imagine the huts and cries of desperate peoples.
As they want my attention,
but the sound is too loud.
Too loud too loud too loud.

2

The bum on the corner, I walked past, and then returned.
But the second time, he wasn't there.
I looked around, but saw only traffic and ivy, and the door he had sat under.
I followed where he might have gone and passed to
the train station.
He was trying to find the land of opportunity.

Further explanation

Get it?

They are also minute .

1

Who rides the subway after dark?
Through the blue blossoming opiates in the park
I walk
under the night sky, iridescent from the solar curls
so popular in the arctic,
understood like jazz, which is blue,
according to the religious right.
Did you know abortion is being slowly repealed?
Since when do we lose rights?

Minute Poems

I give myself a minute and see what I can accomplish. Can I write prose? How about poetry? If I can do this in a minute a day, maybe I'll do this every day, or maybe it'll be too stressful. What comes out when you're panicked for time but the freshest and weirdest of dreams?