Day of the Dread

Hippy babies are taking over all the funky cafes. Hippy
babies in their patchouli soaked diapers with their natty
dread dolls. Hippy babies with their Buddha bellies
spilling over their hemp diapers; running between your legs
as you walk across the hard wood floor with caramel rivers
of coffee rolling from palm to elbow; scalding your
fingers. Hippy babies bouncing off table legs in striped pants
and polka-dot shirts with tassels snapping in their wake. One hippy
baby shows up and a commune of organic scone-flinging babies is sure
to follow. As the floor blooms with all-natural crumbs, the hippy
babies divine spirits from soymilk stains on the tables. Hippy
babies swing from the philodendra vines, laughing too loud and smiling
at all the seated babies with napkins tucked in their shirts. Hippy
babies drooling 100% organic cookie drool down Bob Marley
T-shirts that cost a dime at the Hippy Baby Boutique. Hippy
babies chanting with bodhi beads and bangles around emaciated
wrists, playing ukuleles and drowning out Greg Brown and Natalie
Merchant in their ganga-stained hippy-baby voices. We ask them
politely, please sit, please clean up after yourself. The hippy
babies won’t have any of it. Who are we to infringe upon their freedom?

Before Seatbelts and Sunscreen

My mother drank Livingston’s screw top wine
in the summer of ’71.
At the bar she was called, “Sweet Caroline,”
Around our campfire she sang Glen Campbell songs.

In the summer of ’71,
we never wore shoes, or combed our hair.
Around our campfire she sang Glen Campbell songs,
sometimes we’d dance outside the bar’s back door,

We never wore shoes, or combed our hair.
In the morning, she’d drink coffee through a straw.
Sometimes we’d dance outside the bar’s back door;
Dad was on another tour in Vietnam.

In the morning she’d drink coffee through a straw;
her hands shook so hard I’d hold the mug.
Dad was on another tour in Vietnam,
but he was there the day medics strapped her up.

Her hands shook hard so I’d hold the mug.
I knew she was sick, but she was always close by.
Dad was there the day medics strapped her up.
Though we never wore shoes or combed our hair.

I knew she was sick, but she was always close by.
She quit drinking and spent most her time with new friends,
Though we never wore shoes or combed our hair.
Strangers told us our own stories through a new lens,

She quit drinking and spent most her time with new friends,
I can still see her cocked smile over the glass.
Strangers told us our own stories through a new lens,
I can hear on the juke her man Johnny Cash.
I can still see her cocked smile over the glass.
She drank Dr. Livingston’s screw top wine.
I can hear on the juke her man Johnny Cash.
At the bar she was called “Sweet Caroline.”

Romantic Suicide

Like her coffee cup forgotten
on the roof of the car,
this monument the moon—
full and pretty, but
does it mean anything besides
a bowl of light in the dark?

Thinning every night
as if to contract from wonder.
What’s the point of it
to us anyway? As if
obsucurity raised hope.
As if the moon too
gratefully acknowledged
what remained of the object world—