Fighting under Bulbs in April

Tradition how veins ride under your wrist like ships

trepidation how we all pull toward the sea

marked with elemental colors

replace ourselves in a cave every winter

under penalty of spring

nothing left to chance

Hibernation arterial secret

stroked in fur

how we’re all made alike

new bears crack flagstones breaking out of their born cave

cute only at first

code rewrites itself at ground level

fighting under bulbs in April angry fluorescent

fighting over stone bread that keeps disappearing

over how many lovers can love spring at the same time

Listen to the sun hum its dark side

true color amethyst

feel pulsing all around you like a maze of yarn captive

pulses colliding in an angry hive

cinderblock

back alley

clanging door

knifepoint

nowhere left

magnolia smells like a liquid you can’t drink

what will you miss by jumping off a catwalk into the river?

faces flow on top of the current

seven billion blue as veins

calling

This poem was almost finished before I understood what drove it. With the sudden image of seven billion drowned faces flowing on top of a river, the message snapped in to place: a protest against overpopulation, which has progressed to a terrifying extreme.

Radiation Freefall

Seawater

food supply word play

vertical

diagonal

how floodwater splits tectonic plate in its fifth season

fault lines expressed as zipper pockets on a map

where’s home?

deny categorically later

learn everything too late

fishtail dog swims ashore

what’s category?

not what we call species

goes monstrous

under milk

family redefinition

fold ourselves to paper angles

broken eggs become rare sing their own eulogy

we grow guttural as toxins wear away our voices

DNA kisses aren’t civil

what are we coming up next?

marine mammal

floating island

Maybe there’s value in wearing evening dress for the wave with our name on it

burn vapor cycle bread

on a scale of one to ten

is it better to drown?

Let’s write a book aimed at sea eyes of something descended from us

recognize ourselves confounded

in two eyes one side of a flat head

many times market price of flounder

phonetic spelling won’t keep us out of chemo

chemo won’t deliver us from fuel rods

thyroid necklace

lungs recycle broken loop

trash complete burn

half-life

seawater

Last March brought a three-way disaster to Japan: earthquake, tsunami, and horrific nuclear meltdown. The levels of radiation in the Pacific Ocean will be deadly for a long time, and what effect will they have on sea life? At a cellular level, what will ultimately happen along the food chain?

What Led to the Hawk’s Nest

Game board limits our options

from white rook vantage diagnostic

shows only a sliver

does it sum up the game?

explain rules by suggestion:

sidestep catapult aiming down the parkway

or shoot toward a museum

knocking down rabble of gods

too late to change your mind

how soon before mass demolition of Philadelphia

brought on by weather and too many school closings

leaving its grid pale as wallpaper?

I pretended my credit card theft was conspiracy

shortcut to summation

gold rush became San Francisco

became the edge of the world

now a pillow of water separates it from convulsion

sailor knots wring three corners of the Pacific Plate

pigeons lift off the parking deck in alarm

leaving dust devils twirling in heat of evacuation

hear what they’re saying?

no time to re-plan this

Florida panther paces toward you out of the garage

if you reach inside a pomegranate

will you condemn yourself to living underground in a hail of locked cars?

teeth close on your wrist

awful hacking open with broken axe

you didn’t ask permission

New York spirals down Central Park drain

leaving one upturned building for hawks to nest.

This poem originated with one of CAConrad’s somatic workshops. All four participants were asked to provide oracles for the other three. Throughout the workshop I kept seeing images of wild animals taking over what had once been cities and making them home.