August 19, 2012. Here is blog #2. Above is my "poet face" at 7000 feet just outside of Jerome, Arizona..


This acrostic poem is in free verse, and appeared previously in Flutter Poetry Journal, thanks to editor Sandy Benitez.

A LATE BREAKTHROUGH

Later, the cheese melts we abandon to

Omnipresent ants. Mark high the

Sun, set course for the swamp

Through a tall bamboo thicket that

Inside is an anti-forest, green khaki canopy

Nearly blots out all light. Stalk-surrounded, we

Tiptoe along, and within quiet minutes we

Have become confused; lush summer exudates a heat

Envelope to drown us like bagged pups.

Concentric paths we traverse, humbled,

Angry blame thrown as we pass marks that re-appear.

Now worry turns to panic; we thrash

Empty-handed through the yellow maze, fight to

Break through verdant mirrors to a door unknown,

Reaching for a exit handle not there, not

Able to find the hole at end of the fecund

Kaleidoscope. In smothers of anguish

Extreme, we stumble dumbly out into pasture dusk, saved. 

I write a lot of haiku, sometimes in a series like this one, which appeared previously in Bear Creek Haiku:

EIGHTEEN HAIKU OF ARIZONA

Valley of the Sun

baseball tourney to be played

five games in five days

catch the Painted Rocks

boulders piled like God's own dung

Native petroglyphs

up early today

breeze gives me a warm greeting

"one hundred degrees"

Verde River Days

folks fish in the green lagoon

meet Smokey the Bear

"Population: strange"

high times in Jerome today

mountain Vieux Carre

manager is late

Diablo Stadium dark

spooks us in some way

four a.m. sounds of

interstate jackhammer thuds

not my job, thank God

curandero guide

Boyce Thompson Arboretum

we hike the high trail

hitless in two games

wooden bat is not to blame

stray gray cat knows so

Gila County ride

such incredible vistas

I can see for miles

Besh-ba-Gowah site

archaeology in Globe

climb staven ladders

                                                                                                                                            

antique mall again

no, no shotglasses this time

hard back book of John

Celebrate two hits?

I don't really give two shits

lost the game again

black hawks gliding low

scouting saguaro brush hills

sagely seeking prey

copper mine slag piles

transformations of nature

pennies for your thoughts

La Casita meal

comida Mexicana

green chiles con meats

one more guided tour

Colossal Cave Mountain Park

not so claustro, me

What about baseball?

lost four games in five days

nothing left to say

Finally, a sad poem from my first book, "Whiskey, Whimsy, & Rhymes" (2009):

In Quietude

In nausea in a hung-over bed,

In stacks of books still unread,

In reverie of morning’s dreams,

In contemplation of future dread,

In reams of film not yet seen,

Indifferent to the tasks ahead, I’m

Inconsequential with an aching head.

In an estate sale three years late,

In belongings I can’t bear to pack,

In furniture I can’t move yet,                       

In my mother's house that can’t be sold,

In an elder sister’s gentle scolds;

and, you know,

we argued constantly,

and were never really close

until the end.

We were too much alike;

half of me has flown.

 John Lambremont, Sr.