the holy hoax was a hoax itself indeed

The covered path to the redbrick cloister
was overgrown well before acoustic strings
became the dogma of the pilgrim's skulk,
well before the baroque cake of an April down
replaced the simple brick of the red earth
with a hyacinth path that led to furtive tracing.

To have found in the crispy regulus one last spout of glee:
slated into the broken legato of the paving stones,
a flip-book pareidolia tempered in the flickering crypt.

Between the flat gray panels of kerning cracks
the nascent spouts of lime and white
poked with insouciant crinkled laughter,
though the splatter of up-kicked dew
drenched the parted surplice hem
with the haughty charm of lifted habits.

So we conversed into the third of the seventh sext
but we were not to attain the hoary fourth,
heated though we were by the chill of purple snow,
barred by the thin lack of another slippery lambskin.

The repressed pulse of bloody flats but sharply played
with devoted stops stepwise notched in muffled air,
majora chords to minora chords swollen to a key:

an egressive kiss inside the robed and hooded matin
brought our pearly spittle into proud display,
warmed as we were by the gnostic mist of promise
and a pink fascalia wrapped to prime your chords.

Winged cymbals clashed and fey proclaimed
loudly into that brash and heathen season
when we were the power and the glory amen.

the flavor of simplicity is hidden yet pleasant

It is starkly the fragrant lattice
of leaf-stripped branches black
that gauzes the linen soft of river dusk
and frames, in its pink expansive glow,
the fuzzy drop of a glacial velvet sun.

An arced string of parti-colored pears,
strung in a scarlet garden ripe with rain
echoes and re-echoes in the hushed ludic night.

Come to be drowned in eyes aqua and lacustrine,
framed by a pine torch of flickering doubts
beneath the needles of a wavering sigh
that absolves, in grace, the attic stairs of almost.

You are merely a liquid bag of liquid bags
draped on calcite branches of porcelain white,
a ghost of gray silk that quivers in the breeze.

To see what cannot be seen except through mist
is often hidden in the immanent thrill of now,
the pearly lies from a teal bowl of steaming tea.

So you hang your blue-striped bathrobe
on the chipped corner of the closet door,
skipping the knobby habit of the brass hook
in order to thank your white and holy god
that it was Bellamy, and not Rothberg,
that came to pave the driveway.

rock salt has its own reasons for being

twelve tenacious yellow leaves left behind by an autumn late

were otherwise quivering on a stark and twisted spray near
the bleached ropes of hammock that grasped my inner name:

I waited for your windy release in the leafless valley chilled,
so early anxious that my burning weep was spilled into diamonds

and scattered in hopscotch gratitude upon the concrete way.

positing a moon of isosceles and tide

i. sometimes we hope there are talismans that can distract the fisher

what is prescribed by the dessicated wise
with their vertical slits and alligator eyes,

leave them to leer with their yellowing leer
and wait-

until our dreamy dream of the moldy rye commences:

then, we shall resume our habits imagined from the sand-
we will bobble at will in iceberg blue among the laughing blue,
laugh again where joyous scales are washed by blue
in a laughing shimmer of also laughing laughter blue.

ah! selchie, come to me in a form that magically matches
the creeping sundrop, my rough sweater, and the orange tide-

if I were a sea leopard laughing in the salty tide,
I would only bite you, nicely, while rolling underwater:

I no longer care for herring.

ii. alone on the strand but not in those dreams of sand

a flowery sonnet a day is anorexic to sum
with all dem iambs and such tricks that seek
to flatter the notches of conquests begun.

from how many realities is it possible to flee?

I only ask because I'm counting on something-
algebraically, I would claim that n is greater than zero
but that does not sound sufficiently endearing for now

and I can see that you are not melting.

I have attempted to capture something:

it's just laughter during blue abundance,
and a crystallized frolic in freezing water.

the stupidity of men: volume one

my first grand-daughter is being born tonight.

my wife is at hospital,
welcoming our little Annabelle.

what did I do?

I watched every version of powderfinger on youtube
until I wept like the baby to come.

while you were sneaping with the others I got my education

i. it's so nice to lie among the living

my stirring, buried in triplicate in your broken zipper,
died a little that day, awkward of the rustic chrome,
and patiently exploding with an bronzed innuendo of why:

it was, as science says, a matter of degrees,
but mostly in a purple mist of irony, captive

in view of the violent fruit to come
I would have been a fool, then, to disagree.

ii. to wait for blueberries and skid into view on a falsely tiled floor is a cherished pleasure to some

then I saw you exiting the melodious factory,
the bronze chimes in a metallic haste towards

your felonious smile and your poisonous pocket bulged
with the ribbed beige cartridges from a sinister east,

the left-handed chimes in a hoison haste
so immaculately born of harmonious boredom:

then,
even then,
you agreed I was a fool to disagree.

iii. before the glorious separation devolved to pearly worship

I'd be lying if I said that I did not look down
when we circuited the alabaster dome outside
the echo chamber of black gates and whiteness

where sounds were ok, maybe just a faint gray voice

that was, if not professorially golden,
at least annoying to an erudite degree.

adding the swirls of rainbow sherbet helps
because green and orange and lemon matter
almost all the of time:

of that I know that you agree.

iv. then, bang! zoom!

anti-abstruse ranting in a pink and vehement form,

actually more abstruse and certainly less tame
than the sprouting seed from which it came:

after I had taken my time to target the moon,

should I take the time, now,
to re-explain my explanation?

and would you, ever, agree?

the naturalness of nature is a tube of lipstick denied

something skittered in the dark and crispy dawn
and startled me from my rose-colored meditation.

hey, man, I was intent on something that mattered
obsessing on the uni, the sweet and orange indelicacy
of that sweet and slimy and wonderful dream,

judged, now, in absentia
by a person that no longer matters:

oh!
that!

syrup dripped its orbs of ghee into matters planetary that

and, excuse the phrase, were parabolically and crayolaically melon-

but there was butter and honey and sugar powdered, so,
in a feverish and sweaty dream, I decided to stay a course
in which I was not chemically challenged:

it was just what the hayseed imagined.

I do things I do not understand: volume infinity

I had a daughter who bounced upon my knee,
she was the light of my life with her giggling glee.

one day she smiled at a boy from another tribe,

so me and her uncles
took her to a barren place

and

buried her to her neck
to prevent indecency

and

threw rocks at her head
until we were sure that she was dead.

we have cellphone pictures and video
if you need proof that I'm a man.

I have decided to expose my deferment

i. it makes sense when you consider the pleasures of transgression

then they brought the heavy oxidized cannons, erect and
rising through a green mist of mud that oozed downhill-

it was, after all, necessary,
and they did have scriptures and all that shit,

and they brought it
and they brought it
and they brought it,

hallelujah.

they brought it to an previously obvious place
that I never, idiotically, expected, duh?
and, to emphasize my stupidity (in case you missed the point):

I cannot say that I was surprised or even cognizant
of the absurd and ribald bloody scene that drew,

in the modern sense of the gerund cutting,

an audience of ten.

ii. I need to buy new glasses

man, I am just trying to see.

iii. in the interim, someone asked me about the afterlife

just to be clear,
man, I am just trying to see.

ectasy found in a seaside market

there was little between our rough geometric god,
dreaming of pale supplicants in chessboard robes,

and the encouraged benediction
of smooth white pebbles
that tumbled onto the silver strand
in a chaotic foam of shelled joy;

who could not sense the saline grace
of that warm and briny rhythm,
the rhythmic perfection that erupts
from the incessant sand of eternity.

champagne, the descant of marvelous claret
and a frivolous mink with an upstaged shout
that, seductively, stole the freckled show:

it was the day a million of me
met a million of you
and echoed a million harmonies
that, in harmony, echo still.

a hair is such a simple thing

then I noticed that one of your rebellious golden strands
had flown awry from a crucible winged with the wilted brass of quills,

had pierced the imagined golden fabric of my pompous fleece
with a sinuous mythology that was tenacious
and prompted, to a ticket holder entranced by teal,
an ancient head of expertly burnished copper-

then that almost bronzed and autumn needle
suddenly, in refracted sunlight, opened

into a kaleidoscope irresistibly imagined and,

serendipitously shadowless,

waltzed so dreamily into such a blond captivation

that I am captured to this eternal yellow day
by a flickering prism of luminous mineral glass:

periwinkle, burnt sienna, forest green-

when I am feeling confessional, especially,

I am still confused by the red and violets

and

I embrace, as always, periwinkle,
but not so much the continuous bland reflections
of that new and awkward chrome-

I have heard that, occasionally,
for the want of a better watch,
time fritters away in a perfect rhapsody:

I heard also, reluctantly,
that there are things,
especially blasphemous,

things that are mortal
mostly to the young.

it's such a blue thrill to split the sky

i. the fair weather that grew into a silky redemption

our gate into the moss that day
was trilled in a perfect coloratura,
demising at will the bark target
that was grilled by rusty willows-

pink but secretly unmentioned:

the munificent weeping of impatiens
in a necessary press towards bloom
as to my blush became the saintly dew.

you might call it paradise,
I call it something more.

ii. every evolution has a modicum of unfortunate offshoots

then came a calligraphy shorn of boredom that never faded:

our foundry unspoiled and grave where carved tablets lounged
in a soothing sienna mud that reeked of bubbling, spiky abuse.

I was so high I could see the planets.

iii. it only sounds like growling when I mean it.

there was something barking a gray language of granite oppression,
a voice that dragged with sisal ropes across the canine floor
and tore into the seductive sway of elms and oaks and maples:

it had the darkening violence of an unexpected autumn storm-

I had only expected leaves.

iv. the circle is sometimes announced by the chimes of innocence

twigs were hurled until our nostrils reeked of blood-
times were so much different when the sun arced low
and a horrified pack of shills went monkey, totally:

for a split dream moment the falcon aspired
under gray flurries that huddled with the Valkyries-

to wait for the freeze is, often, to be frozen still:

I still yearn for that sky-blue pop.

I don't really like saying anything

it's so lamely obvious to sit here,
an aging ham on a cold veneer of knotty pine,

chrome tubes austere in the Bauhaus style
hoping to support the paunch of gravitas
that seeks, in its Laconian chill,
the awkward lacuna of now:

then, of course, that moment,

thrusting forward trying to spurt this

po
em.

I could have been a trunk

the lichened limb had spread so slightly freaky now
downing itself upon the brisk green slope with a tender growth-

that made me think of an arabesque that swirled serene,

when,

someone whispered in my ear about purple perambulations
and a sudden swoon turned this sour world into a swirl of joy:

it's hard to blame the classics even when four becomes five.

is it really that easy to die?

birds crash into windows

i. why lemmings have no wings unless supplied by plastic

there was something necessary about the flocking of the birds
and their frenetic quest for the ripe twilight drip of overripe berries

causing an anomalous pace of crashing that seemed, if not anomalous,
at least thickly innocent and bloody and raspberry obscene
for the feathered camera with its lashing snap of obscure eyes:

there are many forms of tethering and all of them are broken.

ii. looking before leaping has its own demise

glass walls are more dangerous than brick
and the mirror is the greatest horror of all,

it is glaring and habitual,

or so I've heard from sages more learned than I,
through lenses ground by the sandy glee of you:

in that moment
by the shore,
you leered,
just before the dawn.

iii. it's hard to retreat from the crowd

an observer might merely chant from the obvious vade mecum,
the richly pebbled leather that goes unquestioned
until the brick-red crayon becomes itself a brick
or becomes a brickwall and the illusion dies too late:

alligator piping is out of season, again?

oh, coco, coco, coco

give me a sign with one of your prehensile digits
or I shall never strut again until I see you sign
a simian prayer of lonely and eternal peace.

iv. mentioning the cage would be too trite

I've got my dark glasses on
is one way of saying that
the world is too much with us:

it gets kind of boring
when the speakers want to blast
into the great want of ears.

it all boils down to taxonomy and hegemony

i. for the incessant requesters of context, we begin again

there are them that want to name the things
and them that want to rule the names,

sniffle, sniffle, sniffle-
boom, boom, boom:

it is only a recurring dream when you find the exit recurring.

I am so glad that that is settled.

ii. stopping the wheel with a peasant's shoulder

when syntax is a fait accompli, the semantic will bite your ass-

hard.

and it will hurt:

like a crocodile dictionary which,
incidentally,

consists mainly of canonical entries for claws and fangs,

and skin that defies those moisturizers
that were hyped in loud and lemon green
when we splashed around the pool:

has anyone seen my swimmy wings?

the pyrrhic triumph of a taxonomy gone awry

i. can a minor struggle with a major classification go unpunished?

meanwhile, the electro-magnetic pulse is not a timeless adjective,
just a simple case of seeding the wolf before the wolf seeds you:

I shall never use it again,

unless, of course, it is required by your trowel point of need.

a papa-oom-mow-mow
a papa-oom-mow-mow

I shall walk now on haywire splinters of golden intent,
but, perhaps, more erstwhile than my careful voodoo friends:

there was something in the gumbo that defied digestion.

ii. reversing into paranoia has a calming effect

your every move is being watched by stalking eyes
that are alien to your nature because you are alien to their eyes.

there are periods of disgust that rattle the stalwart mesh
of blacked seamed matrix knots and the fish that got away:

I hear this sound everywhere I go.

iii. vanilla creams on a curb pebbled rose and gray

she plays her last hand of scarlet trump,
happiest, as always, when everyone else is not,

and delivering the pat percolation of a demonic smile-

beaten soundly by muddy hands into muddy deltas,
the inopportune chirps of the downy fledgling
could not hold the day the day that we imagined:

it was the funniest sound that I ever heard.

it's a strange evolution that drives

i. suprise! it's a mutation

the blossomed cherry branch was deeply trapped
in our bursting spring of unexpected exuberance:

we laughed, if you remember, when we snuck
behind the white history of the blistered fence,
never suspecting a scarlet freedom so deliciously close:

from the deep retrospective of a pearly cirrus swallow,
we never expected, then, the opalescent snarl of a dragon.

ii. i'm sorry, were you saying something?

to be in a time and in a place and to do a thing
is exactly equivalent
to being in another time and in another place
and doing another thing:

the skull still smiles from the hedgerow
after the balky deer have naturally bolted.

sometimes, there is a point for tears.

dripping sweat into the crescent

i. bastet leered when you sanded the dog-star

the dynastic womb of your drooping limestone desire
had prickled the chipped tomb of my pharaonic intent
when the crescent dove flooded the canine drawl at dawn:

you can't be serious.

grrrr.

how many lascivious cones does it take to mold a croissant dominant,
patiently, into a steamy delta buttered by kohl black nightfall,
an empire once mummified in a chronic loss of apocryphal noses
hidden inside the starry rolls and ermine wraps of buttery resolution?

welcome, once again, to the boredom of eternity:

where the fuck is my cat?

ii. the secret ministry of frost is the first misdemeanor

you were caught by the generous green boughs of hemlock,
before the sacred teas had browned your crispy veins,
before you slept, awhile, in the scratchy embrace of velvet fingers-

misdemeanor the second:

before high-piled books, in charactery-

misdemeanor the third:

the lone and level sands stretch far away.

call me serial:

oops, I did it again,
but badly and out of time.

isn't it romantic?

iii. not a moment is ever wasted

always, but only in memory must we return
to the moments when the sleek quenching rain
abundantly splashed your freckled face and
unexpectedly gleamed the shimmery grain of alder beams
in that secret orange loft under the gauzy sun of winter
where bits of dessicated hay anointed drooping marigolds-

it was the day your eyes rolled, timelessly,
into the whiteness of tomorrow.

it was the day we died in parallel,
like all great lovers do:

what a pity to be born again.

hallows and halos and forced hellos

the lozenged mirror of gray cut glass reversely
smoked the sharkskin mints of an iridescent suit,
exposing the reet petite of blushing diamonds
and ravishing the violet heart of albino blues-

before or after the clubs, I don't recall-
but there was something about those buttons and stripes
that really blew the metaphor I was hoping for:

people decking people
decks peopling decks.

something like that.

chalk stripes are often too regular to reveal the true crime-
true crime requires nylon, stilettos and blood
if you want to rise to the scarlet pitch of pearly perversity.

this is where the charcoal danger comes-
bid another suit and do a brother solid;
the other recourse, that apology most profound:
a stage-managed bow that reeks of powdered lilacs.

adding a feather would, redolently, brown
a book-pressed rose discovered too late,
but, man, it would also reveal, in spades,
the strangely dealt trump of yellow sprouts
that matured, slowly, in the april rain.

the age of the manly kowtow had morphed
into the timely flutter of dying blossoms,
blossoms that dropped pink and white
and made me cry most of that afternoon

as I watched them inevitably shrivel
into a dry, lifeless brown.

I am only telling you this now because
the beige spines of your cursive history
have been chewed by long-eared greed
and, frankly, it does not matter anymore.

you closed a door; I closed one too.

there is always a dance in memory recalled

do you remember the petty thieves that nicked our golden time
with inexplicably bucolic adhesives and simpering mailings
while, in our panic that suddenly erupted over a bloodless box,

the ticking low tide crawled in like a sneaky scarlet clock,
and grinned?

I think I meant the tide but I might have meant the thieves:

I remember the clucking of a wet tongue over frosted puckered lips
and plaid shorts that rhymed the bongo with a wryly thumping rhythm,

and:

go, man, go.

if you needed a color to make this scene ring true,
I would have suggested a pale, cool, translucent green-

then there was that geometric row about cranberry and lime,

before:

lefty told gene to nose the impala out from the lane and watch for heat,
and paul declaimed mayonaisse on a hamburger if lettuce was included,
and paula groveled her greasy coins for the salvation of neon seduction-

My clamdiggers got wet when I washed the tidal loss,
and I had to go to bed.

even enigmas deserve farewells

i. this was a journey I never intended

after the weeping bride was ushered from dust,
she came and returned,
through the bad hair infinities of catholic statues:

creepy, creepy, creepy.

and, then, she wrapped a lacquered box of ashen remains
into a lengthy scarf of lacy bone and fussy linen,

speaking that funny breath which only lives on widows-

I held my brotherly weep
through the ceremony of silly hats and silk,
through the chanting of a veil,
but released it gladly
for the scarlet processional
of black turned white:

but only
but only

because ten was ten on sale just now beneath keyser avenue
in an extraordinary discount on red hot sausages,

that barked surreal on that ordinary august day-

they were offered in scarlet hand on sidereal cardboard:

I could not suggest out loud while sweltering
through the summer sweat of tiny purple falcons
that esoteric naming was an unnatural act for me,
reserved so I thought, for that moment of grace,
when the pale monsignor and his swarthy minion

made the basilica of st. anne smoky fresh with myrrh.

having heard about this anne,
I decided to make a K-turn.


ii. every body comes from somewhere

a grave observance of boneyard maintenance,
was softly trumped by blades sharpened but barely used
on the majestic green carpet so prophetically deaf
to a funereal gurgle that prospered on rhythmic hills:

she said lock, I said open-

this was the world before fire.

iii. the pressing reception of endless sorry

by you, I held a hand of scarlet,

rusty graves forming the flushed push of red parapets:

this is where our choices narrow into marshy deltas,

into the thin promise of a gaunt and yellowed family tree
and thirsty purple pistils with a perky greeting card font-

snookered by the scenic overlook that takes me hoom [sic].

this sweet low lumbering beneath a city of unexpected
charcoal cave-ins and the moaning black of carbondale.

the relish-drenched offering of discount dogs,

offered like anything else in life,
an end at the start and a start at the end.

I especially liked the corner cabinet of sacred oils
with its endless neon flashing:

save me is just so beatifying.

when I turned on Wyoming I got the Lackawanna blues

i. I saw a blend of freaky spectrums bleeding unto a scarlet deck of hearts

the fluted feast of yellow sparrows dewly pecking,
posted a periwinkle rain of righteous seed and aging rye:

ahem.

this caused us to sputter the caraway spunk of testy innocence
into a forgotten chamber of mouldy fireflies and cloudy glass-

this caused us to thrust aside our staunch and freckled youth
and embrace, like tadpoles, the amber tufts of wispy grass
mirrored upon a glassy pond of our own silver reflections:

ahem.

that was the sacred spark of ebb and flow worship, eminently reasonable,
when salty promises from a freckled ocean lolled unexpected bursts of foam-

respected threads of black and purple,
and funny hats and other things that should never be rewoven:

ahem.

ii. then the beach led to a main street confusification

maybe the fine line between loitering and malingering
disappears when leaky black macadam turns to tranquil sand:

I tried to jump down from the white wooden slats
but your one chaste kiss made me dizzy:

a day later, I fell in love with you,
and you've never left my mind.

iii. romance consecrated in neon never really dies

dancing in the surf is timeless and ironic at dusk,
given the salty cautions of tidal beginnings
and a gulf stream of gold champagne and ruby claret.

and ebbs and flows and neaps and baubles
that the innocent boardwalk is compelled to hawk anew.

it's just the norm to be forsaken
by the fake enthusiasm of departure
and the selling of mink to a salty few.

to hang with ocean friends
that a tide of books cannot wash away,
revives memories of the numinous plane:

a sticky popsicle stick stuck on equally sticky thighs.

hush, hush, you said,
go into the reeds and be rabbit still
and wake me in the morning.

iv. crispy letters and bleached mockery

then you lived near a trove of antique bottles
and the blue glass of ancient friezes eclipsed,
like a privateer, the galleons of my mind:

on a blistering beach I parted the summer weeds,
without a cutlass or a clue, trying to reach your shore.

I almost forgot about that benighted time, when, with rusty key,
our ballpoint scrawls from tidal nibs in a blue-clawed basket
were cloistered into mahogany antiques and left to nightly yellow,

unilluminated.

v. memory is merely redemption etched on slate sidewalks

I always thought that the cave of sacred birth
was hidden in a cornfield near a drainage ditch:

then, you said, Mechanicsburg.

the artificial grotto is, therefore,
a pale mystery I do not fully understand,

meant perhaps to hide dusky acolytes in frankincense
behind a smoky lattice with purple velvet draped on slats-

gadzooks!

I only wanted to look for you
in the streets below St. Anne's
but the streets were all one way:

I do no know why that was,

unless the pale grotto was an artificial heresy
that kept me from finding you.

to seek an Arcadian torrent while blinded by naivete

a wooden outing to the place that was just another finned guardrail
should not, in the double haze of white and aqua retrospection,
have necessarily required the mirrored transport of myriad bottles:

they were non-the-less exalted by my puny mind
into a stalled fetus of recaptured time.

I forgot to mention the pitted chrome and lagered breath,
that were, in nineteen fifty-nine, the latest model of foundry chic:

even flannel shirts of red and black with matching hats
and jokey flaps that jacked into the season of autumn jowls
should not have ended in a maple drip that saved a grieving queen
and ushered in, grimly, a maple shriek of quiet perpetual napping,

for thousands.

I almost forgot to tell you what I forgot to tell you:

water always seems to be a primary memory-
oh! the water:

gush, gush, gush; it's elemental.

of course our bottles were filled all day,

but when I saw the cascading torrent in its froth and sneering foam
rushing from a crippled scrub with its nascent grin of piny truth:

I thought a new god was being born from a mouth of silver rain.

I do not think that now.

jitters and cigarettes can paint the highway

i. later on, the cloying was almost defeated by a decent merlot

I saw, indeed, the beige vibrato of the ancient strings
and tasted, with the peach choreography of a taut tongue,
the crisp and dulcet rhythm of a noter's dowelled rhyme:

I was audibly assured with a familiar snicker of homey smoke.

of course, there was a dulcimer droning from the hollow,
amply spread on a seafoam bed of cross-stitch hatchings-

at that girlish moment, what did you think that you would think?

ii. when cooking home seeks another morrow

even drunk on the black sniff
of professionally burnt crumbs,
the sobering and cross-hatched menu
was snatched and far from offered
in the chilly blanched manner
that drives you to a hot suspicion:

the excess of vanilla sanity
is only practiced deeply by the most sun-dried suspects.

iii. the tragedy of escaping a perfect loneliness

when a wandering drone appears, the queen may reconsider,
if only to largely erase the monotony of yellow and black,

the whispers with the regent, on a daily basis,
the royal lapping of blood against the curb

passing in a flash, the splattered sliver of such
that drapes a shiny garland on the blur of metal now-

the frozen silver that was our crown
stings just a little in the cold night air.

the shady jargon of an azure remembrance

i. the scarlet babble of a mind that justifies

I painted a frieze of sea girls frivolously slick
with a bottle brush of Revlon Pink Chiffon,

I performed a soft manicure using musty chapters of twelve
that sanded erotic half moons from the curt edge of sea-side taffy:

there were so many hungers, so little time.

why hasn't someone invented a cherry cheese-burger?

ii. the periwinkle distraction of involuntary memory

so, she walked with a pink indifference
along the cresting bank of innocent azalea:
a rising tide of inland salty foaming
that burst the day with a rosy madeleine.

is it really that easy to confuse
the loamy land and the salty sea?

that I thought so then is humbling now,
humbling in a way whose drift is only important
for an overboard body that has drifted
into the saline soup of crumbled creation:

this is one entrance into the apprehension of trite.

I only wanted a biscuit.

iii. around the browned curbed corner, there came a chime

the chromium bell of an instant savior
brought an unexpected parcel of cloudy frost
and delivered us from the evil of toasted almonds.

when you dogmatically live that life is sorrow,
life will happily obey with sweet, sweet sorrow:

the most profound verses screamed from a public address.

hello?

iv. friends long unseen with shocking lines

a small snipe of purple genius
can tremor the cranium, electrically,
with mattress memories of a former night-

I am not unfamiliar with
a set of synapses that fire at will.

if you can say one true thing,
I will surely say another,
equally untrue:

and so it goes.

though I call it love,
there may be another word
that is equally equal.

wading into surf was not enough,
wading into the surf had to be enough.

yes, we loved at first sight-
and still it's still not over.

still.

how semantic quivers make the world go around

afterward,
rummaging through the sub-text
of an already bloody encounter,

trying to salvage, like Proust,
the personal pronoun,
the ambiguity of which

fueled this tragedy of miscues:

when you said "She's very friendly",
I thought you meant your dog.

still glad of a little seaside death

i. destructive though it seemed at the time

first there was the silver chance that rolled as bones
and delivered the stony pearl of your peach unto me:
that was a jeweled chalice which rolled away so mordantly
from the carved marble tomb of our musky white desire.

so we called them emeralds,
so we called them rubies,
so we called them sapphires.

if only I could have endlessly bitten those gleaming stones:
my alphabets have become a poor excuse for breathing.

green,
red,
blue.

it was only what we wanted, then and forever.

the violet rhythm of the your bonnet dirged on the strand
and celebrated, with pretty ribbons in a flapping cadence,
the unseemly end of a common sun that, suddenly, came around.

funny how some things never seem to last.

ii. thirty years just to pay the thirsty rent

here the plaid pleats are a sure sign of sin
and, also, the incandescent price of a gouged admission
to a circular trek that has, strangely, ceased to flatter.

there always is, of course, a paradise in the lifting of a hem.

iii. the incandescent joy of recovery

later, you donned your flowered bonnet without regret
and followed the familiar garden groove of marigolds
that, arguably, started and stopped at the same doorstep:
you seemed to remember the woven cat that stopped the draft-

the blue lungs that were deeply hidden in the chameleon clouds
could not breathe the periwinkle vapor of your dreams.

iv. released from gravitas and tossed into a crimson orbit

an endless parade of blue dignitaries
is marching towards the silky sunset
in silly robes with silly borders:

I said I could but now I can't.

to name every creature must be an unctuous burden,
when every alphabetic permutation, however comical,
must follow rules set down during a primordial sunrise-

when you know the last permutation will end the world.

beating the batted bane of beauty
is one kind of rune for the tiresome
crawl of the player piano of now:

ouch! does not quite state it.

that was a set of dots beyond your comprehension
playing a melody you could not understand.

they had one thing that you did not-
a testimonial captured in an eternal frieze.

v. it seems your brights are on again

the shiny hose unsystematically curled
upon itself begs the green striped maze
of stony lanes filled with cheap goods-
belying, if it can, the directed sashay down to the stony beach:

the whelks themselves will throw your buttery fortune,
drawing a card from the uncomfortable deck of rounded stones.

lips once pale are suddenly painted with desire.

every spectrum contains a circle

i. it started near the garden of almost blooming

the pale blue shadow of a predictable leaf of graph
dripped behind the green sun of a fuschia terrace
on an afternoon filled with the geometric curve of insteps:

easy wide to eyeball this, from the sigh gasp calves
to the scarlet thrust of glamour toes in beige sandals.

this was the craving summer of grimy gnat filled screens
and curved lines that infuriated the crispness of Euclid.

and what was simply advertised as a failure of the will
became a rainbow of coincidence hidden in erupting leaves.

ii. after mid-summer the seasons start to change

the shadows of mimosa buds, having lost their scent,
form black comedic masks on the rain rusted siding.

we could smell the orange winds of autumn
hiding beneath the humid hems of summer
and the silver underside of weigelia leaves
that warned of scripted trysts unplanned.

a silver key balanced on the black mold,
unblenched, of the rocking chair armrest-
the chair painted in dramatic flowers
by the arm of a child expressing thanks:

this key could not open the painted doors
that lavishly barked the entrance to the garden-
it was a path we could not take.

iii. there are many ways to rectify the forgotten

in a dehydrated attempt to wetly articulate
the saved yellow globules of nostalgic desire,
the cancelled postage devoid of cellulose hinges:

deference is due to the wrappers of seed,
but only when the set of lavender ribbons
is proportional and, oddly, ironically demure.

there was the pitiless sun, not precisely prodigal,
that arced across peninsulas of the proverbial burning sand.

wait, she said, the waves are passing the bow
and the island is too distant.

iv. do not be disappointed by the refactoring of your bedclothes

in a windy foyer filled with antique chimes
and dead replications of the already dead,
do not sniff expectantly for a blowing wind
in this brown and barren alley of moldy must:

we cannot wipe away the chanting of the lost-
we can only hope to find someone who touches us
the way we touch ourselves.

the garden had a gate for exits

i. the pungent spread of nonsensical landscapes

the red flag that demarcates
the mulched illusion of a perfect lawn
puzzles the lone observer
with its signal of bland perfection.

the small set of saplings annoy with freshness:
what goat-footed god would call this a grotto of now?

there is a small fortress of shrubbery
that protects mechanical brassy water
from the inevitable rotation of crops.

there is a quiet nibble that swells your lips.

there is the inevitable theatrics
of inhaling the big green tongue
that could have lapped your shores
while the scotch broom in its gaudy spray
of cream yellow and regal maroon
blushed over the paint chipped banister.

in retrospect,
removing the ferns was a big mistake.

ii. meanwhile, back at the franchise of mystery

wire frame glasses inverted on a desk,
a tin of tea, two pencils and all the rest-
it all wavers slightly in the sweetness of a breath,
a piano climbs somewhere unfathomably deep:

the movie of a blue-veined hand reaches your cup and drinks.

this is one way of letting go.

iii. a final climb in the ecstasy of nothing

to effectively pull the shaved and mottled skin over one's head
it is best to either use a bulky sweater knitted by a mothball aunt
or to replace it altogether with a natty cover more in the Phoenician style:

a wisp of purple feathers, perhaps, or maybe hard brown scales,
perpetually reeking of the perfect oyster salted sea.

this is the pearly paralysis of endless choice.

just below Washburn cemetery

a sizzling slate sidewalk speckled like a spaniel in heat
is an unlikely canvas onto which to paint the mottled past:

in an aerial spray of chemical geraniums and exuberant gems
we have promoted the chrysanthemums into a cascading explosion
of the luscious pinks and sultry mauves that once burned a history
on the grainy needled page like a red iron on a bare wooden plank.

that part is, unfortunately, a distraction from the pain.

do you remember crouching by the mossy brick retaining wall
and cherishing the smooth pebbles we found by the anemic creek?
later we spat on the pale and cracked shale of the hillside sidewalks
and made a personal mortar to write our names in shades of beige.

saying good-bye to an old friend for the last time,
a friend that stood beneath the wispy poplars
in a spring that never ended in your mind:

I still cannot pronounce his name.

insomnia is so overrated

reverse the telescope for a creepy inversion of sense
that depicts the starving moon on a unexpected draw down.

these are the incandescent trumpet trills that nail your heart
onto a carpet that is only shagged in the pink of memory.

somewhere in a wood that is the crayola of forest green,
we hear the dark tremolo of gnomes that are prone to biting.

this is a culture of scary stories that ascend into the heaven
of the things unarticulated that make you cry at bedtime.

migrating towards the harvest

there is a rutted road where the mud has dried
in a burnt sienna chorus of angelic certitude.

can you separate the bouncing of rusty shocks
from the season where broccoli must be certain?

when the chrome rims beg for a seamy satisfaction,
it is the leering end for the greasy lips of someone.

an unexpected exile causes a memory of the future

the windy reversal that made us wetly laugh
in that memorable June when the smoky rain fell
with a dripping insistence that cloaked the roof in musk
and aired the tarnished chimes in a sad, jazzy arpeggio:

in simple times the black climate is an arc that vaults
from downy tufts to the scraping of leather soles.

but the enchanting static of chanting matins
made a scarlet vacuum in the drainage tube that year-
when all we wanted was a savory tear to fall on salty lips:

why was it so hard to bring red closure in a time of dripping rain?
being unable to count the diamonds was not a crime that resonated
in the sparsely screened gazebo with deck chairs slowly yellowing.

the abstract pleasure of pulling purple smoke
can be easily settled in a variety of manners,
from blackly noxious to the wispy puff of now.

living a half-step beneath the melody of shrubbery,
your rough napkins could not rub away the rouge.

every day a full return to velvet

i. an ode for the shy leaf that forms a festive star on maple

a buttery chorus amid the pulsing maize of swirling penitents
has formed a circle of rocking barks with white and luminous sails
in the wine darkness of a foamy sea where flapping canvas flatters:

this is where the tides confuse.

they openly chant, for our sea-washed sins and khaki thighs,
salty ditties that have onerously ceased to comfort
in the lucent parlors where colorful board games rust:

this is where primary plastic goes to die
in yellows, greens, and blues.

when is it time to ask, hello again-
are Tuesday's game nights really dead?

ii. in a little alley, the den of thieves roll nice

there was a drawn tinsel palimpsest of a pointed beard
on sale in the palest corner of a silvered dollar market-

the flickering fiction of the black lit anti-Christ
slips into paisley posters of pink-edged parchment

more often than not, they offer a hand of peace.

iii. if there is a river please inform as quickly as possible

when you need to find your Great God Pan in ringing words
listen for a language that babbles with the cadence of brooks
and massage your heathen head into the green baptism of moss-

look! there's your horned savior fluting where the mottled rocks
have been moistened with the minor spit of pagan embouchures:

pale lichens are always in season in the easy key of C.

iv. something about the late taking of a ridiculous stand

then dreamy slip into the sneaky rhythm of marching bands
with their fabulous epaulets of fringed gold and royal blue-

when the brassy tubas thumped and the tom-toms thundered
they celebrated the miraculous elevation into a pantheon of thieves.

there was a ill-shaved man as gray and gristly
as a rabid scholar of marsupials gone extinct;
he tottered on a white mountain with plastic cliffs
that spilled into the tight beige of his Scotch moist lips-

he almost reeked of Calvin on the frozen rocks,
destroying even the modest thrill of breathing.

v. a crust of day old bread will surely float upon the water

it's just a downward dance of the inner joyous dog:
at once a silver entrainment with the apple moon
and the silky enchantment of an azure dew at dawn.

this was after a fumbled cast of the spell of snarling teeth.

a bird in shadow with his yellow beak in the morning sun
can only suggest the simplest of purple questions
and properly disregards a respectful seed for pecking.

maybe there's only one wily poem that lives within the peat moss,
that rotates solely through the steady mind of white mechanics
and each righteous, sweaty, compulsive, silly, pointless re-write
is the only wordy sport that coughs the pitch towards heaven:

failing is not so bad in the company of strangers.

to celebrate this time we've had together

i. resistance is futile in the face of crushing surf

when the timely spray leers a proper twelve o'clock
my etched face always bends towards the salty ocean
with the upright satisfaction of a quiet sandy satyr:

greens smashed by the green smashed in another giddy decade,
rise now smoothly as the sandy glass of tide-ripped bottles.

when the sun gives rise to the alto sand of sea-grass spring,
we can only sniff for the pounding waves that make us gyrate so.

eyes uncontrollably rivet the shine of a clinging maillot,
the pulsing jade of amulet that is our cherished sea-glass.

was it the teal that made it so?

ii. when you bought a black return, the station master giggled

the end of blank expression is pregnant with the eternal possibility
of small font timetables blurred in the black wash of anxious tears:

all aboard! all aboard! were we going somewhere? oh yes. we were.

then you bring in the comfy chair to stroke the sweet coffined coif-
salty hams on flocked upholstery only enhance the coughing fetish:

suppressing laughter is always laughing most dryly choked
when narrowing and distracted eyelids are least able to wetly thrill.

we wandered the twisty dead-end hallways
until the musty death of twisty wanderings,
announced the twisty death of musty wanderings:

our hotel proudly served the scarlet pepper goulash
in cobalt china bowls that skittered from the sideboard
like mutant mice desperately trying to please the dead.

this was before your lungs gasped the closing air
that was rancid in the claustrophobia of the alcove,
before we grasped the smoky closing of a velvet door:

I did not know the dead could have such hair.

iii. insipid murmurs about the cycle of life

each atom of the acidic raindrop that plagues you now
was a salty teardrop crusting on Cleopatra's cheek
when she stared into the desert and wondered why she cared,
when she stared into the swirling dust with bitter eyes of kohl
waiting for the brute that never comes:

so much for the stamped and signed postcards from the forum.

enjoy, if you can, a prophetic mixture of soot and salt,
arriving in your waiting box with so much postage due.

iv. after the storm we noticed broccoli treetops

pearls that hang from evergreens:

if only the afternoon would glimmer
like it did that day in shimmering August
when the rooftops angled against the sparrows
and the fear of flight became a silver possibility
that commoditized a pitiless sun
with terracotta arcs of blissful sienna
near a violet gate open and cascading
with a formal flood of planned wisteria.

yes, yes, you were there and jangled too.

v. in that day we welcomed boredom

a painted tunnel devoid of butterflies
can only give a sprayed and painful birth
to the luscious graffiti of orange and pearl:

come, she said, come play with me.

an insanity triaged grows puposely weak

i. when the crafty herd comes home, cowering is neglected

the glorious reversal of a bovine nightmare
often causes the maple cupboard to squarely revert
into the green reality of a weedy lot of chewy cud
and the proper disdain of black maple furniture:

wood chips! wood chips! wood chips for all!

this was meant as a numinous carving misunderstood by others-
a constructive lesson of the woody longing formed by antique hands
that is always wasted on the long-eared snouts with milky tears:

such spilling and spurting on the sleek commodity of future bellies
is ill-regarded in the close quarters of the straw strewn barn.

the genius of the dovetail was lost somewhere in the mooing meadows,
but even lost is relative when the orbiting milk cans seductively spill.

ii. here comes the lonely trumpet now to celebrate our failure

the blue quadrangle that laughs at your excuses
bestows from the right and bastes the bend sinister
with the fecund gravy of a leaf filled gutter:

gifts wrapped in the wonder of rain are gifts just the same.

you can ignore the water filled basement, for now,
because the common way of not letting go
involves a plush blanket and a cardboard box
that discourages talking to the constant rain:

this is worrisome, but not devoid of fetal comfort.

but pity the secret wolf that stays:
wet hair will mostly stink in time-

can someone open the door, please.

iii. we evolve our own book of sorrows.

what was the glory of the four of leaves
and the shaved glee of the pluck of three
becomes a bitter leaven that still dances
in the orange oven of a rotating turn.

the elderly grimace of crinkly garlic bulbs
sometimes looks like babies laughing:

thank the gods for inner voices.

the rapture never comes too late

the seductive regret of scarlet lipstick late applied
is easily erased by the chartreuse ferns of a feathery dawn
and a woody prayer of silver moss that is perfect in its worship:

when your flowered skirt is breathlessly lifted
over the variegated heaven of your musky thighs,
ah! there the firm blossom issues, and causes us to climb-

baptized so surely with a rainy spring of hidden desire,
this precious bulb so long buried, in a fashionable arcade,
by the distracting drifts of bleak chatter and snowy bores
has burst through the dam that was always too weak to hold it.

so ecstatic to take the waters, in the roaring way of alpine cures,
from the holy torrents, once reserved, for stark liturgical glaciers:

in the graying cloud of snow melt, an edelweiss has blossomed,
delicious, at the summit, in its white and dusky innocence.

no clear place to start

i. moss still comes back to haunt me

though the eternal afternoon of infernal rain
is harmonically crafted by a sliver of humid truth,

if you froze into a promising pause and, wetly, stood
you might recall the silky ash of a remembered smoke-
it brushed, conspiratorially, quick and crying patterns
into the quietly expert polish of chipped and weeping alleys:

there, in the corner, stood our beloved and believing statue,
thick marbled with almost veins of deep pink and shallow blue.

this was, of course, flicked with the disinterested aplomb
of a monument engineered by the classical greed of yellow print-

you might remember the phantom headline
that broke your heart
back when paper mattered:

an ancient time of fluttered muttering that, barely, lubricates the now.

ii. turning is a constant metaphor for something

it was a childish ceramic effort far short
of a sloppy turn on the spinning wheel
and the ample joy of centrifugal burn.

keep the rhythm smooth, she cried,
in a proof that birth was imminent:

this was our season of clay triumph
and the bas-reliefs that made us glow-

what could have been a slim sculpture of common birds
became the hulking tomb of mordant blue and perky gray

and pesky cracks that once defied
the calm mending of chalky hands:

if you hold your quiet breath and wait,
in a moment of clarity sometimes falls the rain.

iii. healing is only possible when you suspend disbelief

the slow migration of lazy blood
from the wound into the surface
confuses the fast mind mind of now.

here comes the orange harbinger
that cannot help but bark and chime
into the yellow dusk of tomorrow.

we could have wrapped the calf
in a blanket of stretchy coldness
or lost the tricky clasps
in the impossibility of transit:

both paths are silently plausible.

iv. redemption crawls in like a snake with purpose

arrives the barrista of glee
with the washed-out fantasy
of well-groomed beards.

the suppositions of a lacy mind
can, sometimes, damp the grief of memory.

the boasting king of the laurel sapling
fails to filter the fashions of spring.

funny lines forgotten now
bubble like gravy in the mist.

the publicans call for a carved vomitorium
but the chiselers arc a ribald streak-
so the streets are washed with marble dust:

this was so predictable.

an afternoon obviation, avec crossaint

i. it began and ended with a floured swerve

the cleansing curvature of the bleeding brink,
while, tasteful in its necessary spring of pink,
delivered, still, a heave to knead our breathy loaf:

it was the beginning, and the end, of the white bell curve.

ii. sometimes the snowy drifts require packaged yeast

after the bursting cloud of moths had fluttered clear
and since nothing sings like the diaphanous warm of near
we murmured into the rhapsodic blurs of a sapphire sleep:

unpredictable pudding, so clever, makes a scarlet feast.

iii. in the end, it's all about the slice that's prized

the learned courtesy of beige paranoia left no lasting score,
but, happily, swelled the dusted board with a crimson floor
and a draped sunset of nascent pearls that, rising, pleased:

a bread delayed is a bread denied.

there was a sign ascendant, I do not know its name

i. the walking way of suburban demise is saved by memory

the beige rhythm of a bonnet dirge
celebrates, in geriatric cadence,
the unseemly end of a graying sun:

the incandescent price of a velvet gouge
elbowed through the misty ropes
was the in we wanted long ago.

now a circular trek no longer seems to matter,
but buoys the stylish blossom of a flowered hat
and the rainbow scratching of a groove worn flat:

if only it were so fetching as it premiered in silver
when the mirror preened its dominance.

it starts now and ends now
at the wonderfully static doorstep
and the knitted cat that stops the draft.

there was nothing about a rock, but

ah! the fragrance of meaning is honeysuckle joy,
and this is how a love continues.

it is so good to own a visor.

ii. weather can be so fickle in the spring of memory

something on the humid wind
that hints of salty pleasures,
something from the musky south-

a breezy treat that might arouse
the trade winds long kept hidden:

what can you do in a day?

a lifting of the lace that shows
that lips are made for kissing-

the rhythm of a mossy gait
is a calling card for frisson.

iii. dark myths shackle the dining public

cue the caterwaul into the valley of chrome,
set the salt and pepper to stunning gleam-
here comes the curvy creamer, at last,
with her lascivious dance of awkward patterns
and the calico china of cryptic grief:

a checkered board in nine dimensions
where the purple valley is forever lost
and the shallow knife is far too keen
for the cut you need to make.

we only wanted to feed the hungry
and, see, what a mess we've made:

in the hidden canyon of jailed desire,
the magician always removes the cloth
in one efficient seamy wink,
inserts a joke about congealed dessert-
the barmy always mention pudding.

is it just a bored quip of the coverlet
or the Pan that comes from wanting?

the raincoats of a lesser god
sell moonbeams from a jar.

it's not that hard to fall in morning

i. why that spilled epistle stayed unposted

the awkward reflection of a winter sun
on a ginger jar of bitter breakfast tea
still pokes the roving eye from a misplaced leer
to the mostly false purport of balky leaves:

there was, in a kind hysteria, no future in it.

conspicuous cups veil the blue of porcelain veins
that creep in time on the cupboard shores of sandy hinges.

a slim ouch of white in the creaky elbows
that reach for the learned cozy of woven cozzies.

there is a crazy danger in the modesty of weaves
and the oblique loops that define the trajectories
of lemon orbits that, falsely, denigrate the spin.

this we learned in youth.

ii. a lonely spin into the perversity of now

into the stiff rattle of drama that only wanted crease,
instead is delivered the suspect shroud of shriveled peace-
someone had remarked upon the beauty of the vulture
in a slippery dream that mattered much on waking:

makin' it easy for the clean-up crew
in the horrific now of meat space,
or so the vanilla argument went-

harrumph, harrumph, harrumph.

our lack of wings is comically entrancing.

iii. burning wood sometimes requires a kit

a cloned kitten with sixteen cloven toes
leaps forty feet through the tropical fog
to the crusty summit of a leafless tree-

while this amazing feat is a form of temptation,
the three ring circus of rapture always seems to bore,

completely.

it's so hard to imagine a Satan outside the door.

it is so hard to presage the anti-feline forces
that force with force to force the clipping-

indeed.

why would you question the self that licks,
that contraindicates a rebirth in water so much better
than the brackish pools of brimstone's grim delight?

the stropped tools of an idle recreation
are shelved with the bracing smells of burnt sap
where, in this bitter sawdust winter,
the wood has barely blistered.

better to craft your own damnation.

if we could only count the speckles

i. because there was no rain to soak us through

the timid beak of the bathing thrush
concentrically ripples the polished dapples.

the mirrored pool smirks beneath austere maples,
an intrusion of rust forcing the oxbow birth:

there is a current that knows its swirling mind
and will not bend to unbend the cowering mud.

six stark claws leave evidence of lather.

ii. each fluttering wing has a hidden story

one flashing swoop flips a visitation,
blackly tumbling a quilled re-division
for the fossilized flutter of a feathered bed.

latitudes where a fallen bud once made sense
seem to diminish in the gray uncertain moments
and the intoxicating orange of a crisply setting sun:

an idle counting of ones and twos and threes
reflects the breathy throbs of what might be:

an ironic ode to the ocher futilities of shale.

iii. into the quiet thrashing of languid dreams

each drooping laughing half-formed leaf
that spurts to flourish in early spring
becomes a sermon on the mount unheard.

each drip of sap a sticky tear
that runs through the maple eyes
of a world that will never bloom:

a cryptic euphoria that fails each breath
when the end of the clouds is grasped.

your mock apple pie is already being served.

the pulchritudinous turpitude of medusa in the tub

i. to peek upon the washing is its own secret rite

the first bath of an oddly promising spring
easily births its own peppery cascading joy-
what might have speckled in the continuing winter
rushes into the copper stream and, lonely, drifts away:

the pesky mites that might have ravaged bloody roses
clamor onto crafty rafts of golden straw and, clutching, float away-
they will not burrow in the clay-skinned perfection of ageless models,
they only want to, quietly, stroke themselves and drift away.

ii. windows are made of abysmally slow liquid

reflections of a dead branch grasping,
held by green hands that will not let it drop:

these trees inside the water
that hints of other currents.

in the dry season the rooks come out to play-
it is not the dry season now:
the release of pent-up yellow on the weedy hill
has its inner sense of dignity.

the shadowy plumb of straightened lines,
in your sinking house of rotted soffits.

skinned knees on cracked concrete are a stark reward.

iii. it's hard to deny the cyclical

there is no mortared vault of berries yet,
inscribed in autumn with beaded numerology
or the angled facts of a hooded ghost:
the jeweled sconce of red and blue and green
plastered in a room that has drifted earthward.

through the years no angle stays true:
the pedestal font begs for the dirt of your ablutions
and the adulation only, if at all, reflects back at you.

there may be a green salad at the picnic next door.

soap is dosas spelled backwards

It's easy to despise the sardonic grins of spoiled poodles-

Many also claim that potato rolls are the lowest form of bread:
It is hard to disagree more without intending violence.

There was a man whose highest gift was the ranking of soups:
He's better suited for tidal water, the sea is just too much-

He's coming back as a dog,
Skipping cat completely.

Muddy jeeps parked at jaunty angles
Hint at something you cannot grasp.

The universe is larger than your stomach can hold.

murmurs from a perfect afternoon

i. drifting into that hermetic seal

the picket fence stands proudly unwashed
in the three trunk hemlock afternoon:

it is all held together by wispy cables
and the dreamy embroidery of soapy eyelets-
those painted threads of yellow, green, and rust
that are all inside a glassed-washed afternoon:
the clearing fog of then and now and when.

a tempting little drip will propel the suspect elders
to wander into the white promise of the warping slats.

ii. the trifurcation is an amusement that briefly matters

she dances in the chartreuse lemon spring,
is the green summer of our frothing joy-

she flutters again in orange leaves,
that, saintly, burst and burn in autumn:

ironic words of appreciation always seem to fail
in a way that is pervasive and, oddly, geometric
on the tear-stained Appian Way of patio pavers:

there are many things that cease to matter
in the Euclidian formulae of wind-swept leaves.

yet, we try, and try again, to simply find the point.

iii. back to the idle rust of dropping cones

each shadowy dot of near and distant leaves
is bartered by the tricky once-washed slats,
traded for a moment that waves good-bye, well met:
saplings proudly foil the coniferous quivering-

the compost can, always, existentially blue,

a calming retreat from the obscenity of now
that is telegraphed by this obstinate relic-

boasting of a clarity almost reached
if, indeed, it was reachable at all.

the rest just freezes,
impotent in the set of choices and meanings-

what is the course beyond the fence?

through the unwashed slats there is only:

the soothing green of the distance mown,
the windy rhythm of dappled seed,
the promise of pale berries, lush and sown.

when wry goes horribly awry

I tried to buy your silk-screen,
but mommy wanted milk:
I only needed glasses
'cause me lennies was feckin' fucked.

I squinted through the reckless lines
of inky greed on fabric.

It's easy to love the raining coppers,
but the patina takes too long.

I never studied physics
but I heard about the neutron:
I heard things other things, too.

I was a child soot painted
and crawling on mine skinned knees,
working through the shadowy nave,
hoping to find a candled altar
where that green-blue rust was true.

From your words and your words only,
I was able to struggle, fully hod,
into the crimson light of day.

Can a brother get a witness
and a bartered square of soap?

There are moments
and moments, again,
that call you home.

All art freezes time,
even the mostly easiest,
the shudder click of rhyme.

ode to the saintly moth of a modern glee

there might be a dance that rhythms bleakly,
away from the sneaky beadle's crafty stare
a pillar carved to blossom in hidden stone,
roses in secret corners where the few might go:

it is a seductive distance from cold stone joy
to the erect monastic chant, a flying buttress
is also nice to bobble in the saintly tide,
an easy wish for the iconic joy of marble:

just to be somebody must be a potent thrill.

all are eternally frozen in a stony grasp
just beyond the step that steps from two to more-
the weak calf captured on a brick that seems to move:
cloudy dissipation that tempts and fools, repeatedly.

little bulbs pop and flash an afternoon devoid of gnats
cropped scotch pines frame an obese ballerina-
was it frozen by the chimes of an icy carillon?

is the little bird that licks the melting dew
merely a moment that matters and does not?

come little bird, then, lick the ineluctable dew
from pistils now and then-
they are mostly a grainy flash of orange.

you can only move to defy the eternal sun
when you choose to bloom downward,
piercing the wet earth with a fragrant sigh.

overheard something about a wall

there are thirty-seven ways of dealing with a brick wall
when you do not count the moss that scales your growth:

the first way levies a smart tax on the scattering gray,
way thirty-seven a bitter grinding of spent and bloodied flesh-
the in-between a forgotten study of the mesh of considerations
chronicled by crusty sages and a glacial permutation of beards:

the cat's cradle of crow's claws scratch isosceles in the sand.

between mortar smash and vermillion splatter
the arithmetic of salty after mirth is just a playground
evolving from sweet blue rust to chartreuse plastic:

the heavenly brat swings through gravity's lurch
and bullies the cream cheese and jelly from unsuspecting grins-
stolen tarnish from the sweaty coins of palmed redemption
is ransomed by strawberry globs and a bread-like offering
that, in its globular wonder, seems like a god is coming.

there are many ways to chatter and one way to silence.

this is not devoid of gray and grainy pleasure
and that is, wonderfully, the way to point your brickwork-
the now is great with its equilateral trowel,
the then a softly dripping, if encrusted, trough.
luscious ocher wax drips from a taper that is over-
the worst of the stains elbowed into musty boxes
by the steadfast recovery of yellowed grease.

this is mostly not enough.

the crushing ubiquity of chainlink

maybe it was the stalking mystery
that ran the perfect sidewalk blind,
waiting to pounce from the pebbled curb,

that forced the bark of health to wonder
whether claws could crack the code
and the scarlet purring of a cougar mind.

sure, there was mustard slathered rye
and the delivery of a crumbly toast
to dispel the cryptic myths of bread:
a carnage of sandwich in a deft parade,
that produced this lathering of frothy madness.

what was missed in the grim procession
was a reaper moving from black to red
through the harvest of suburban hedgerows:
a scythe of pink deliverance in curved disguise.

one build-up, one moment, one release,
in the technicolor pomp of circumstance,
to pierce the pump that pumps no more:

one long commuting train leads to return-
it's a lonely way to save a crumpled ticket,
to come once again upon the carnal thicket.

it was just a canine flashing for a pound,
a reet petite on the down low snapping ,
insanely unaware of the limit of the links:
one bubbly ocean cry for foamy limits
in the uncertain azure of your prison mind.

no wonder dogs play poker.

laying down an offer of peace [sic]

hey little lamby,

come here I'll lick your thigh-

nothing scary,

just a nibble where fleece is shorn.

the pierce will be the start of spring,

but not with fang or claw-

just a little nudging

that will move you into bloom.

there is no blood this cycle,

just lapping at the place of birth:

the lion suckles too.

the sigh that falls on absence

skyward tendrils form invisible drifts

that christen smoking aspirations,
a golden chrism of gasped consecration-
your sacrifice so heaven in unseen mist.

can you sense again the crush of crinoline,

that opened, playful, your emerald chalice?
did the hush and hiss of the aural world
cast a sensual catechism on your carousel,
and did you mind, in your mind, or elsewhere?

remember the glorious cascade that roared
near gorse, sharp brambles, and naked thorns,
a course of white torrent through the chasm,

caressing velvet rocks and mossy pebbles
with the natural peace of untamed streams-

recall the scary roar that measured passion-
so sweet your quiver near metronome reeds:

remember that blistering, glistening yellow prism

when the blue grotto and red rhythm
could not help but sanctify the sky.

were the cirrus spasms that stained your dress
reflected in the wispy clouds that hid the lidless sun
in the lidded moment of your rolled white eyes-
that stole the bright but not the warmth
from bronze monstrance and rushing brook?

did the hawthorn blooming unusually pink
bleed a little on your blushing thigh?

in the subtle saffron of your sublime quiet
lies the silent history of what was
and what lives, still, in the musk of memory.

kyrie eleison
kyrie eleison
kyrie eleison

a frame in time saves none

ruby shimmers through the green mirage,
the hummingbird in iridescent hover:
can you capture time?

it becomes

a magnet that draws ferrous thought to fore-
a lesson in the tricky rates of hidden change
the bald clown is bearded with spiky chance:
back then, your weapon was merely a pen.

my, how you've changed, says a vacant friend-
your steadfast mirror lied day by dripping day:
fuck that mendacious glimmering sycophant,
lies, damn lies, and ballistics.

it might have been the beating wings
flapping into spinal clouds and dreamy chakras
or just the blurry haze of Euclid Avenue:

this is blinded now by greeting cards of pink and lace
and the perfumed memory of shocked receipt
in the gone horizon where the lick was expectation.

the certain demise of an ill-kept orchard
can fool the eye with a sudden blushing bride-
the failure to prune concealed by orange blossoms:
part the white curtain to reveal
the studious gift of kaleidoscope planting:
a lovely shoot that trembles the ribald god.

from the scary stumps of winter,
we get the herbal tendrils
of a wet and luscious spring
and the shampoo of eternal youth:
oh green, take me to an ice-pop moment,
the sky-blue ecstasy that surpasses all understanding:

can a brother get an egg cream?

each pulse of the heart tells a tale
that is muddled in its capture,
only the stills have meaning.

a sleepy march towards the hearse,
a pattern watched through faulty clocks
becomes the measure of a certain lie.

worship can be smaller than you imagine,
unless you're a special occasion.

an uncollectible invoice

i. woe to incur a debt

a physical generosity that is purely visual
is a scrappy way of giving blue cheer to the poor-
the strains on ribbed and purple silk
reveal a promise of transcendent exposure:
the shopping cart follows the minty grail,
inviolate chrome on the squeaky, sticky tiles.

collectors have an exact way of mounting:
clear hinges that mask the damage
with harmless opaque wings barely clipped,
sleek pins that map transgressions
with tiny orbs of red and blue,
that track, with oblique mirth,
the subtle smirks of the bon vivant,
the inner masks of conquest joy.

the split between the assumption of the real
and the dreams that masks reality.

ii. still we ask for service

when the flushed landscapers arrive
with their buckets of gaudy bronze
and seek to fix your patina fountain
with a box of fixtures beyond your call-
from a rusty dribble into drains unknown
to a complex address for a likely bill.

eyes closed, ears silent to the mad dream,
slipping into the sweet smell,
the murky scent of fresh clipped grass
and the bass hum of drums of expectation:
close your eyes and breathe
the first breath of verdant spring.

the unfolding of the swollen creases
begins in sacred earnest:
monarchs, moths, and pea-hens
with turquoise, shrieks, and gray.

the dwarf's vision of a setting sun

in the aftermath of a comfortable madness,

one can flip the striped hammock into a swirl

that equals the strident carp in the orange pool.

a candied leap from the aqua wash of pitted dreams

is refreshing in the humid curl of wilting leaves-

sweet scales can measure and cover the splashing

in a way that offers a coy disguise of hidden gills.

the wave of fin that says hello 

is magic in its greeting.

live like your brain is small

before the tiger growls,
it is fair to request an epiphany-
a minor something to balm the rips
that unexpected claws might cause:
it is easier to blame
than to cage the beast.

a clinging vine is sure to kill
in a way unlike the tiger-
one a swift and bloody gasp,
which is acceptable in its kind,
a sort of slipping oozing end
that is not without satisfaction.
the other wraps and compresses
the lungs into a deadly gun for breath
that is too slow for flesh to grasp
and causes greater torture.

some days you think,
some days you feel,
some days you turn,
drowning under the water wheel.

outside, the finicky twins
ride the twittering tailcoats
of turncoats of irony:
the neglected lawn chairs
stand mossily opposed.

there was a turn on the road to Damascus,
that seemed to do no good,
if you look at the unturned history.

when the chartreuse ozone
comes tumbling down,
smart rodents seek the rafters.

peel your onions and try to stifle weeping.

idle tears of fractal grey

i. when weather had a hierarchy

one might think that the tubular rivulets

would bring a kind of silver exurberance,

driven downward by an eastern mist so cold-

a washed forgetting to force away
the gray urge to seek a fetal grave

in the crushes, quilts, and bays.

downward, yes, these graphs of life

that mock, with only lurches,
a quirky stream that conquers all-
vertigo merges on the liquid pane:

sash tombs that quaintly slam
the dreamy fluff of merely ermine.

this crown is hard to fathom.

ii. now and then can tango

not a missing of the past,
but only what it meant
on aging sheets of blue then,
and now that now is now.

outside the ash-framed plane,
a season of yellow diffidence
framed by current daffodils
and clusters of purple hyacinths,
exists in a time that is neither then nor now.

it is possible to watch this twice removed,
in a subtle kind of trickery-
a blur of blue that nets the eye:

the window streaked with gnat buffets,
a certain proof of lonely primes-

or recovered views that weep in rhyme.

the separate streams make one,
eventually and inevitably,
but why does it take so long?

the pulse of low fidelity

a percolation of two penny nails
that seeks to pop from wallboard landscapes,
a festive fleck of paper paste
brushed on a pastiche of filthy seams.

a stroke of misfortunate aim that reddens
the pastoral view of neon, with sweet alarm,
into an afterimage of chartreuse revelation
that compromises the chill of no vacancy
with a vagrant rub on borders brick and white.

the pink hammer and velvet stirrups
form a sneaky pact to breech the act-
pressed so perfectly on bitter drywall:
fleshy prickles on the flocked blossoms,
no tumbler striped of frozen cubes required,
concentric rings of primal tones suppressed-
not the lemon grimace of the leering spy,
or the progeny of the wall-eyed stud.

in the aural embrace of furtive squeaks
the rumble of the rusty springs cries blue
or, perhaps, a long lost periwinkle hue:

it's just a joist away in the secretion of dawn,
he is always there in your moment of surrender.

a charlatan with best intentions

beneath the overhung silver of the birch strewn gulch,
there seeded the brawny moss that gulfed our spray;
there beneath the ferns that craved a sense of metal
we separated the vanilla branches whose swollen pods
encouraged the enshrined urn of verdigris towards burn:

there in the sinuous incense grasp of smoky fingers
we became the zombies of the lily rites of spring
and took no fear from the pinch of fervent buds
or the reverential hard caress of a haunch gone astray:
a scarlet preparation for the harvest yet to come.

a translation gone askew

coded messages in the boxwood,
hierographics in the snow on mulch
draw a frozen portrait unlike the scream
that etched last night in lively harmony.

one was livid, the other strangely mute
in an umber canvas of sweating melt.

lurching towards a foregone preference
one imagines tumbling in explosive red,
desired but orchestral in a mutely gated opera:

here the strings that soar,
the brass that drones
and the surprise of this prickly season:

a quiet soprano.

you can repeat the past

a cardiac freeze repressed by the past,
not the now, but sludge in the pipes
and a falsely coy regression,
conceived of white and purple shorts
that waltzed on the shadowy veranda,
reeking of bougainvillea with sinewy vines.

could we distinguish the pinks
of fallen petals and mammals?
they both screamed in manic falsetto
that rose to white and mocking notes:
go to the beach and die,
go to the beach and drown,
a sweet and savory release-

we worship the quiet now
and the gentle weave of sienna sighs
that rasp against the creamy chest
in a dreamy reversal of portents.

back then there was haven in the hunting,
a dry hand that snatched the vernal bud
in a season ever greening in the blush
of your unexpected polka-dot giggles.

settled accounts can be misguided
when absent robes now bind anew
into the strings and clay of slavery.

it is a strange mask that hides adultery,
the uttering of a bovine charm
that sounds so much like heaven.

opening night resolves to morning

i. a night of diaphanous candor

no silver blade tempered

in the sweat devoid of season

could clasp this catch
of the opera glass
that peeks by chance

through window lace
on the purchase of a gown.

a moment of steely entrainment

that is a lonely bark for now.

this evening hangs
on a steamy salvation,

occludes with beads

a dreamy condensation,

that flies unchecked

on draped white panes

and drips and joins with clarity:

merely a devotional lapse,

left to dry on ashen frames,

in the season of peeking trees.

ii. an ancient way of reckoning

no frisky spring,

the bud that scared us,
poking through the mud
with beige equality.

no patient summer lushness,
that shimmied green
with breezy, leafy flirts
on the shortest of the nights.

no autumn glamor-
that gaudy harlot

of auburn waves

dropping to the floor
when the ceiling is the groom.

no winter gray,

the frosty prick

exhaled in whites of jest,
while the arc of sun is low.

perhaps a plinth placed just so
will recommend a plowing.

iii. every moment of the clock is morning

then, all at once,
a parade of awkward snaps
has fallen from the stairs,
a frozen spray of moments

that crafts a spiky dance

and drifts among the chimes.

all at once

the sliver drapes have parted
for the entrance of your seasons.

the persian weave
predicts the slope,

and just for you
the riser rises
just for you.

imaginary comfort to the dying

as he flares to vandal skin
and my each breath blows ripe,
he gives no rant of outcry,
no face of who knows gloom.

there remains a sparkling parody
in his eyes of mostly doom:
how blame his gems of barrenness
for grasps at lashes past?

if there was a failure of carpentry,
I would be the last to plumb his truth.

the inverted chalice seldom drips

passed the burning bush of sadness
where the bleached grail has dried
and easy tears defy nocturnal dowsing.

where is your water now?

the forked tongue falls mute,
barren to touch or taste,
the lying ear to false alarm
has cocked a waiting pitch:
coated pets endear at times,
but stroking has its downside
in the slither of the night.

things change, so sadly surely:
weave a nausea from sandy shores
to the oasis of the storm-
can a saint preserve a lemon?

never strike more than your god has requested,
once should be enough-
else the desert will never recover
or provide a burning bush
to calm the pocked scirocco.

a dearth of beasts of substance
emasculates the sword:
await a potent trickle,
a rebirth of foreign gold
to strop the blade to true.

the red sea will part in time,
so sit and sit and sit.

maybe the geeks have a word for it

if there were a method

to inscribe the golden shower

that makes a polygon

of oblique intention,

I'd be happy to comply in rays

graphed against a common good,

but ohms against sweet mathematics,

parabolas of misunderstanding

and formulae of greed:

in this trenchant lapping,

there are trouts to calculate,

salmon leaping to infinity

on ladders of defunct mortar:

welcome to a sense of variable glee.

I'd like a shopping cart 

of Greek letters and Cartesian proofs,

a sweet vindication on crusty wheels,

pushing a truth both graphical and golden.

aries blinds one of four

petulance projected as virtue
on a sunset autumn day.

in this glow it is easy
to forget the purple crocuses
that fooled us, poking,
through the goat white spring,
mocking the melting snow.

no so easy to forget:
the maternal hands
that grasped me so.

only the leaves,
in their quiet drift towards mulch,
enjoyed the leafy grimace,
welcomed the crispy collapse
that bedded the laughing corps:

in the quiet, with eyes closed,
we heard their joking games.

only the trunks had their say,
stoic despite the glamor:
they alone barked a pose unspoken
with gray and grasping tears
and stood alone against the glowing leaves.

the deep sages only pondered,
terribly alone,
hoping not to make a racket.

it strokes the fear of isoceles

i. the freak of the early dogma

the holy ghost of Mrs. Blau
scuffles over the damp macadam
in thread-worn puffy slippers,
bargain bins the blue light specials-
forced to shuffle she starts with wailing
and crumbles into soul-eating markets:

a house coat in the pinking wild
where, indiscreetly, rainbows ring
and the sneaky drips of pan
freak the rim of speedy cyclicals
in the pre-dawn greasy glee-

here comes the pun:

she has been banned from triangulation
by the brocade hats of pointed decay,
but learns to worship the disappointment,
for she has birthed an anesthesia.

ii. jesus is missing one point

he with the fatherless fentanyl eyes
is a memory incontinence away
that the mother cannot triangulate
due to previous incantations
from cranky doges with freaky beards.

oh, the irony on the stoop-
newspaper grabbing
that offers no salvation
beyond garage door openers,
a palm full of sacred ink,
and a clunker up on blocks
behind a rusty orange hoop-
go deep, frisky pointer, go deep:

enjoy the mahogany newel
entombed by a peck of dirt.

HA ha HA HA ha.
HA ha HA HA ha.

a bearable sadness

the nervous quiver crescents
her infinity pointing finger,
frames a slivered grin that rounds
a silver bend of no remand
to question the crook that beckons.

a paucity of proud ferns
governed by a cyclic transit
waltzes a bearable sadness
into the ephemeral forever,
neither controlled nor understood
in the stiletto culture of cut stones.

the swift paving does not matter,
points of elegance are discarded
into the dusty bins of then.

bad trump and leaky skins
thinly flashing, flashing, flashing:
a fanfare of loneliness
wetly queued by damp embouchure.

a misty sadness only bearable
exquisitely barks from piers of gray.

we bow to bovine competence

the lowing now complete,
in the depression of the dew
we are freed of onyx grimace
and the jeweled greed that cuffed,
unexpectedly this,
a sooty halo of clever slavery:

it asked of us a trembling throne
unwanted by sire or throng
and muffled by the why:

resurrected by milky tides,
forced from the warm blue melt
into the green of trembling dawn.

the low again will echo home:
a rescue from the herd of circles
and the smell of trampled grass.

crumbled like the walls of when

the feet are still curled impatiently
outside the down filled womb,
mooching a cool that will not blow
in a tomb beyond encumbrance:

shadowy etchings shudder doom
and there is no horn to shriek,
despite our brassy confidence.

this sense of autumnal coldness
is not thawed by rhythm springs
that creep but cannot squash
the mordant bounce of echo
or the freckled swell of tears:

we both deny retarded sleep
and force the deck for giggles-
gray swabs wash a tidal grief
that is terrycloth and tearful.

when the seasonal leap is readied,
only the wings of the wasp do sting.

visions of Ruthie

in the ocean where I took her,
she was early beyond the breakers:

from the probing waves that tempt,
foaming in the pleasing salt,
she was fractious in the spray.

somehow trapped in sea glass tides,
I could only hold the strand-

abrade the grains of fingered beach
to ease her drowning image
from my cloudy sail of hours.

oh sea! oh beach of swelling seasons!

she clawed an eight piece scuttle
in a season strewn with minor wrecks:

far into sunlight the waterless ocean
carelessly lapped its bony diet.

the brain unfolds like mobius

i. the fever cops a heavy dream

denseness is birthed with a twisted cord,
a procession of blue pines that chants weight
and perversely collapses into seedling rust-
finial density that kills conviction
and smugly fevers the physics of crush,

a vernal notice that pushes breath
and pulse to the purple of freeze-
nothing compressed completely
can last devoid of gravitas
or a gloss of verbal trust:

it's not the sweat that matters in the humid night,
just flanneled pajamas with pockets that cling.

ii. the sweet irony of singular redemption

generally mounded into cairns at poles,
out of the icy north we twist,
in the hoary south we spurt:

we bark, we crow, we cluck, we bay-
renewal is beckoned but suspect now
in the spreading of our malty grain.

the ruler embossed with gold ticks is useless,
and censers only panic the sweaty scream,
mystery flayed away from normalcy
as the second grace is offered thirst:

around again the carnage first
and the weight and birth of pain.

it's all happening at once

in the static waiting moment
I think incessantly of your ring,
trying to seize each breathy moment
that crosses the frosty line
hoping the ice will freeze this yearning
that is then and now and when.

to the graceless eyes of passing hints
the rhythm of your form is lost
in the flutter of wind-blown litter,
blinded by the climate chaos
of handbill bark and paper cups:
heads down and hands in pocket,
your spectral moment breezes.

I see you in laundromat abstract,
tumbling in space that morphs to time
in a front-loading gurgle of foam,
ending in rivulets near the wash of cry:
your eyes inked upon papyrus
as the dhows pass with striped sails
curved against the racing clouds;
even then it seems I loved you.

did my chase continue
through the colored clocks of carousels
where nocturnal spins are normal
and stallions bare their frozen grief?

was that you pounding linens
on flat black shoals
under the flowering quince
with its orange promise
of tart speckled fullness?

I sense no tearless eyes
or dry loins or barren deltas
on the shoals of our slick issue,

merely hints of did and do and when.

the sacrement of territorial markings

now in shadow honey silhouettes
are each a metronome of dripping passion
roughed in gray face by gentle flames,

waxy licks run from saline tongues.

the stained glass is marked in shadow,
a rainbow chronicle of lust and waste
where martyrs are mortared and tasted
in the dewy sip from a piquant chalice.

statues flicker in the fire
that naturally claims
the sooty sweating brick
and persuades the pulsing vault:

a crypt of tongues lashes the mossy seam.

freckled exurberance goes dark

i. the rule of pimpled privilege

when the eye-liner clique has snaked its orbit
from the pale water through a wan puddle:

(they were distractedly birthed
into a storm of thudding vacancy,
then mollified and pimpled
by sugary bursts of pebbly toast)

when the delta burst, black and prickly,
they pumped into the shaved paradise,
the end of cutesy splashy in yellow slickers-

the lost lash of false photographic glee
faded to the washed-out colors
of hazy dysfunctional memories
captured in scattered snapshots.

then the toy horn squawked annoyingly
and moistened, through the Manhattan afternoon,
the flowered shifts of graying aunts at play.

this we term awakening.

ii. when the pecking is paradox

devoid of magic, their end is marked,
but the chosen, bored, seek prey.

they mill and swagger and sweat and smoke,
birthing milky emotions of imminent doom:
their stomp is weak but artfully crass
against the pale of subdued classes
whose pronounced freckles telegraph
the innocence of speechless normality.

their styled screech of fake hurt is mirrored
in matte kohl and drama insipidly Gothic,
enacted by the coddled loiter.
an epic grasp climaxes with the eye roll
against distracted masters:

in private, they cry from heartbreak
and the streaks require Kleenex.

weep not, their metal too is chrome.

iii. the ivy league disgorges

here will strut the hallowed issue,

emitted from a line of chromed behemoths
piloted by efficient haircuts with spiky shoes,
braking in dried crotch day-planner overload,
rushing to a suck that pleases no-one
but masquerades as titillation in the suburbs
when the Martinis overflow into honesty
and labored raises conflate with nylon grins.

there are many ways to live.

iv. long in the art of suffering

in the way preferred by anatomy,
hierarchical submission is a tribe insane
despite its perfect grooming of hairs and suits.

it births a cruel that wilts a blooming smile
and crushes too the seeds of why.

when Apollo shot a bad load

when the sun's higher than the sky
and a massive liberating pulse
tongues your cheek's brown stubble
with dancing licks of constant fire,
replacing any trace of equine travel
with the kestrel screech of downed surprise:
here, you might forget your youth
and grin toothless at the dawn.

a less ceaseless flame might offer thrills:
a peck of dirt from blossoms long away
pushes through the bloody fields,
erupting where khaki is nourishment
and caravans amble from the Hindu Kush
to the plateaus of green-eyed wonder.
where arms are made from scratch
and shooting is normal and eternal:
you will eat this peck before you shrivel
and are shroud wrapped into kicked-up dust-

this is a form of salvation
that is lost on repeaters of chants
and builders of chanceries,
unrecognized by watchers of the circle
thumbing beads of Chinese jade
in the stifling market-place:
there must be some escape
from this bitter white dust.

these are only hazy dreams
encouraged by the silent crow
flapping wings against the black,
following a dusty course to finality
and oneness with the gods of imagination.

to burn you not this rush cannot,
when the sun's lower than the ground
and you beneath the ground still yearn:
sleep, my lovely, sleep.

the thrill of missing meters

if you played the inker
in a latticed leafy space,
and gave tattoos with a grave
sense of silky weaving
across the web of arms and face-

if tatooed skin you also spun
like gems revolved within a drum,
the pearly polished discharge
would leap in arcs electric,
the shadows and flickers caught
in gray-green mezzotints-

if savagely wet we also pressed
against a cushion of yielding moss,
and worshiped in a moment
the issued scent of slippery dew,
grown musky from the green blossom thrust-

when sweat trickles but ink persists,
caressed by twigs but not released:
who could doubt our verdigris?

one way to grok your leave

you take my spurn so lonely hot
when like my go you ought burn not.
spot me stay if you might lean
but debt me then a dearth of seem.

look under the fern you urban pagan

crossword picture puzzle blues evolve,
rushing from the elasticity of solve
headlong into the pulsing green and silver:

a long aura lost upon the retina,
where recovery does not matter.

(if paradise were due,
it could be used for recall,
but control is not the motive)

dare to stare the wavering sun
and the gods will slap you fickle.

(do not let that stop you)

a chorus of love that boils with truth
might dry this heathen measure.

(their joke is not forgotten)