Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, had a hammer named Mjölnir. Mjölnir was considered a fierce weapon that could level mountains and summon lightning with every blow. In this poetry blog, every Thursday, (Thor’s Day), Mjölnir will forge only song - sing of the mysteries and beauties of the world.

Thursday, March 28, 2013



SHIELDS

How many murders in a broken mirror
How many superstitions and lacerations
Shards of an unincorporated self
How much blame and shame
How many orphans and riddles, curses and slurs
How many humiliations
How many shadows, loomings and woundings
Fables and counterfeit conspiracies
Cacophonies
How many betrayals and trespasses
Duelings and deflections
Shatterings within shatterings
Scars
How many shadowed segmentatas
How many shields
How many men 
Before the Man emerges.

Thursday, March 21, 2013



MINUS THE METAPHOR

We can sit around a table on the Sabbath
on the first day of daylight savings
eating Olallieberry Pie and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
for breakfast and debate if there is a god or not
and whether the divine force was here
before the beginning or will arrive just before the end.
We can muse on the existence of intelligent life
elsewhere and why all our efforts to make contact 
go unanswered – and then wonder if
our SETI instruments are just not smart enough 
to receive what’s being sent.
We can make ourselves delusional
pondering the imponderables
by setting query inside of query
as if they were nested matryoshka dolls
or by stacking turtles on top of turtles 
into infinity. We can and, happily, we will 
do this, all of this one fine morning 
and probably with a little pie on our face 
because we must. Because we must 
make meaning. Without it we don’t know 
who we are. Without it we are like the poet
minus the metaphor. Like the heavens
without the stars.

Thursday, March 14, 2013



MUSIC LESSON

Two men.
One young, one old.
In a redwood grove.
At the end of a day.

A lesson.
A gift.
A legacy passed on.
Music from man to man.
Love.

A clarinet sings in the shade.
Birdsong answers from ancient branches.
A burl clones new growth.

Embouchure is everywhere.

Thursday, March 7, 2013



THE ANECDOTE

The toxin and the tonic.
The thief and the saint.
The ransom and the bail.

We are these.
We are these.

One sunny day in Santa Barbara
I took my broken heart to the Mission
and handed it to a lame priest.
He gave it back sooner than I expected, saying:

Thorns have roses.
Thorns have roses.