It’s all gray.
Yes, that’s the way of the land here.
Do you miss green?
Only in the way you miss a childhood
That ended too soon.
Or the sound of a screen door knocking 
In a summer breeze.
We have it now with a dry gentle
Smell of sage
Stretching out as far as you can see.
Green can’t do that. 

We Too: A Pastiche
(inspired by Marilyn Johnson & U2)

In the hotel, a tattoo convention.
At the train station,
police with big guns and sniffing dogs.

On the web, Jesus and MLK
At the coffeeshop,
the homeless eating sugar packets.

In the park, a tea party crowd.
At the library,
books battle teachers and firefighters.

In the name of love, roll n roll.
In defense of freedom,
prisons without trials or rights.

Written on the skin, icons of light.
Around our bodies,
Symbols of dark might and vague lust.

In the heart, love and hate.
On the corner of the mind,
thoughts that have no end or death.

A man named Waters from Baltimore
has a following larger than Valdemort.
Many loved his Devine,
whose “Hairspray” was fine,
but shit-eating “Flamingos” was fault to more.

It’s that list-making time of year. Best books. Best movies. Biggest news stories. This is a different kind of list. 2009 was quite a year for assholes. In fact, even in the last days of the year, new assholes were revealed. We need a list of them to keep up! I posed the question to Twitter to ask folks who they thought were the biggest assholes of the year. This list is partly mine and partly from my Tweeps. It seems politics is a fertile field for assholes. But sports and entertainment aren’t without theirs. Let me know if I missed anybody.

• Tiger Woods – world champion Casanova, amateur texter
• Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – luckily he was incompetent too
• Glenn Beck – there is hope for dumb people
• Lou Dobbs – because talk show hosts ought to be leading the country
• Rush Limbaugh – somehow, he seems like small-potatoes asshole anymore
• Goldman Sachs – mismanage your business – blame poor people – get rewarded
• Jon Gosselin – posterboy for the horrors of “reality” television
• Kanye West – “Imma let you finish” music video critic
• Global climate change – polar bears are hating it
• Joe Lieberman – small man relishing his power
• Ben Nelson – protector of wealthy women’s access to abortion
• Sarah Palin – death panel critic
• Max Hall – BYU quarterback, is there anything less classy than saying your opponents are classless?
• Bernie Madoff – investment Ponzi world champion
• Joe Wilson – “You lie!” South Carolina congressman
• Mark Sanford – South Carolina governor, Argentina Casanova, and Appalachian hiker
• Rod Blagojevich – “how much you willing to pay?” former Illinois governor
• Richard Heene – Balloon Boy’s genius father
• Elizabeth Lambert – Lobo soccer player, expert in the ponytail takedown
• Mike Locksley – “those aren’t my fingerprints on the guy’s neck!” UNM football coach – great year for UNM sports
• Maine voters – because California voters won the biggest assholes award in 2008 – Iowa out-cooling y’all
• Charlie Sheen – long-time asshole thought to have turned himself around
• Perez Hilton – giving victims everywhere a bad name
• Chris Brown – small man taking his frustrations out on a woman
• Joe Jackson – even in losing a child showed high levels of asshole. Worst parent ever?

So,  who is the BIGGEST asshole of the year? Cast your vote in the comments!

Silence

It’s like a roar in the head
Even though no source for it
Exists

No grizzly straddling prey
Giving voice to predatory
Triumph

No attack planes shrieking
Overhead, no shock and awe
Apparent

Not even the machinery of
Industry, deafening, productive
Enmity

Just the quiet tapping of
Keyboard fluttering out text
Whispers

And the turning page’s soft
Rustle, momentary blink of
Paragraphs

While the heart strains in
Vain to escape, break free of
Restraint

The brain calculates the price
Of it all, real and imagined
Penalty

It’s like a roar in the head
Breaking the quiet world
Apart

The dog has eaten my arms

The dog has eaten my arms
but I soldier on
typing out tweets with my elbows
Googling the river of words

below
our
hopeful
end

When the capybara with
a blog boggles my mind
but I soldier on
marshaling the social media

beyond
time
on
high

Where I live a life within
a virtual lie
Kindled with a fire of ice
but I soldier on

beneath
each
empty
word

Winter arrived in Albuquerque last week. It didn’t stay long, but it was quite cold and slippery for a day.

1) My yard at sunrise,

2) The feet of someone waiting for the bus in the evening,

3) Snow-covered yucca in a parking lot.

Another typical Albuquerque happening during the holidays. Luminaria! You can buy faux luminaria with electric lights. But it’s suppose to be a fire hazard! Candles and paper bags. This is the scene that greeted me when I left work in the Zimmerman Library the other day.

I love having the iPhone handy to do snaps of Albuquerque as I drive around, but it never does justice to what the skies really look like. This cloud looked like a huge black shadow in reverse over the Sandia Mountains.