My poems usually result from a single poignant image, thought, or sensory experience. Through the poem, I tell the story of that experiential moment.  On occasion, however, I compose a poem from random shreds of sight, sound, thought, and memory, stringing them together like multicolored bulbs on a string of lights.  “Tulips” in one such poem.  Though the glow of each image is unique, yet a common thread joins them.

TULIPS

Special sauce drips
from the double bacon
cheese burger clamped
between fingers and thumbs.

Overgrown boys goggle and grin
at bikinis bouncing
down the beach
as the girls blink and babble
at biceps.

Not one yellow patch
or errant blade
mars that lawn,
frequently fertilized
and mowed twice
to a neat crisscross.

He smiles at himself
in his tailored suit,
white shirt cuff linked
and monogrammed, perfect-patterned
tie, long-point faux alligator shoes
shining.

JD. . . MBA. . . PhD. . . CPA. . . MD. . . DDS. . .

Though shifting,
even clouds have shape.
Air I cannot see
rounds the alveoli
of my lungs.

Blood spatters my face
from new battles
with brick walls.

Drugs at least
dim the pain.

You had better shut your
window against the wafting
putrescence of skunk.
Dogs know only
how to bark.

Put down your gun:
no violence pursues you:
your bullets would pass cleanly
through the clouds,
undeterred and unaffecting.

Run to retrieve
a vomit bowl
for him or her. Summon
the compassion to watch
as they wretch.

Surrender to the universe
inside you. Let go
your clutching at clouds
you are not meant to capture.

Stand unafraid in the mists:
the dews will coalesce
to cool and sooth and moisten.

Tulips swell before the house:
purple, yellow, orange, pink, red, each
bright under the morning sun.