this one makes me think of you, colleen:

We were in the Safeway parking lot. I couldn’t find my cigarettes.
You said Hurry up! but I was worried there would be a holdup
and we would be stuck in a hostage situation, hiding behind
the frozen meats, with nothing to smoke for hours.
You said Don’t be silly,
so I followed you into the store.
We were thumping the melons when I heard somebody say Nobody move!
I leaned over and whispered in your ear I told you so.

it's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and everytime we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.

An article at Poetry Foundation .org, When Yellow Ribbons and Flag Waving Aren't Enough, is as nonpolitical as you can get when speaking of war these days, but it has a strength that makes politics sounds silly in the end. An ex soldier's take on recent war poetry, eloquent and worth the read.

I was standing
on a northern corner.

Moonlit winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves.

Proof
of Your existence? There is nothing
but.

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through a marriage into a marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
...
Love is not enough. We die and are put in the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wilderness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.

little lonely nights

on the bright side, i may have a paying job soon- but no one hold their breath...

the numbers
...I want to close my eyes and find a quiet field in fog, a few sheep moving towards a
fence.
I want to count them, I want them to end. I don't want to wonder
how many people are sitting in restaurants about to close down,
which of them will wander the sidewalks all night
while the pies revolve in the refrigerated dark.

An all-night barbeque. A dance on the courthouse lawn.
The radio aches a little tune that tells the story of what the night
is thinking. It's thinking of love.
It's thinking of stabbing us to death
and leaving our bodies in a dumpster.
That's a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey and kisses for everyone.

I'm tired, I want to rest now.
I want to kiss the body of my lover, the one mouth, the simple name
without a shadow. Let me go. How many prayers
are there tonight, how many of us must stay awake and listen?

the numbers
How many nights have I lain here like this, feverish with plans,
with fears, with the last sentence someone spoke, still trying to finish
finish
a conversation already over? How many nights were wasted
in not sleeping,how many in sleep-- I don't know
how many hungers there are, how much radiance or salt, how many times
the world breaks apart, disintegrates to nothing and starts up again
in the course of an ordinary hour. I don't know how God can bear
seeing everything at once: the falling bodies, the monuments and the
burnings,
the lovers pacing the floors of how many locked hearts.
...