It doesn't take a rocket scientist
for DBS
Published in Science Editor • November–December 2006 • Vol 29 • No 6 • 207
During the Federal Budget cuts, David’s job
is to educate congressional greenhorns
on the value of materials research,
a category no one’s heard of, but David must turn
into the phrase-of-the-day.
It Doesn’t Take a Materials
Scientist to know active-matrix screens are clearer
than dual-scan he paints across a billboard
en route to the Capitol. It Doesn’t Take a Materials Scientist
to know, as he hobnobs with senators,
that winter will crack these tennis courts, read more
No ordinary happiness
Published in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12 Nov 2011
I'm a helium balloon lifting up
to where the sun outlines each
leaf on the trees along the
highway. Because I know that
by the end of the day
I will plummet, I try to hold
myself back but my arms fall
away like string.
The Good Life Cafe
Published in 5 AM Issue #20 2004
They write on the page: Adventurous--
but she is unprepared to follow through. She sheds the padding,
unmolds the clay, places her hand in her partner's. She says
I want a brochure to describe our home as The Good Life Cafe:
turmeric, garlic, Algerian chicken, a mosaic porch floor,
a mural of Boudicca painted behind wallpaper, red hair
of the warrior queen behind the headboard. At the Good Life Cafe,
our bed & breakfast, good things happen: A couple celebrates the first weekend
in which they do not fight, poetry pours out of the Kawai piano upright against the relief of eagles
on the dining hall wall. Miracles happen here. Women push through
the barriers of their past; this rocking chair holds layers of clothes,
hers and hers, jeans and suits, sweats and sweat,
the beads of investment, the second year over; songs are sung
of two hermits who room together, groom together,
tear out their hair, beat the floor with their drumsticks,
holler, carve out their stake in the ground. And out in the backyard:
Look! Hopping minnows
Break the lily pond's surface--
Living excites them.*
*Haiku of last three lines by Ron Carpenter