confession of the wimp

cross hatches on the star patched lover,

a parchment of scattered daydreams
gives way to night's strained clutter-

there is an exit glowing red above the fray:

little man, your feet have turned to jello.

desperation redone, quietly

in the foul aftermath of this petty little giggle,
a red-edged envelope delivers the asked for grief:

a dream of smoke and caring
withdrawn into rural housekeeping,
the inevitable looping of the twine
that passes as a state of grace
in all the couch-lined parlours.

a season of drought

let us pray this brief sleep is a ceasing to be-

ossified in the great depression of the mattress,
we creep in stony silence towards the false grope:

a fossil of a wedding preserved in midnight oil,

a chance at a gift of silver
in a instant turned
into a black and bleak palaver:

paper leaves that are torn but still not tarnished.

the slinky spring of syncretism

four crops are ripe right now,
due to fester in the fallowed dew.

when the rigid homunculi
begin to stomp their creepy cadence
will you lock-step under a sign,
with a television for a grainy head
and a vacuum for an absent heart?

(thoughts projected and sniffles whooshed
under a random banner)

when we merge
the cross and the ankh and the crescent and the star
we are only delivered a bigger inkblot:

inscrutability credibly rules,
gives birth to the certain knucklehead.

taurus ascendant

chambered by the floor of blue and cirrus patterns,
thin Helen weeps the child heavy mourn.

her pressed lips red against the freckled pale,
her taut hands pulled by the bull of heaven:

a fey labor proceeds through salty spasms.

the adult onset of purgatory

it was a night
(darkmotherfuckingstormy)
when slitting your wrists
would have been as easy
and as meaningless
as clicking the television

after you left
she climbed the stairs
in automatic pairs
and went to dream
like purring

you could have stayed
and been as pointless
as staying

you left
and were as pointless
as leaving

she purred

(ornate encrustations proliferated
on the pellicle of the visible
in a way you could not fathom)

it was the curly curly curly

the curly that you wanted
only the curly that mattered
the curly that carried you
from cut to spurt to dry

in the vellum world
from which you parted
it failed to rate a tick

trashing the bishop's escape

this ancestral escape with hedgerows got up at angles,
crying as shyly as they want and as fair as edgewise
in tears and tears of inarticulate defections:

the droll season, from the shyest hedgerow,
damned to the thoughtless mangrove island with fright
groaning sleeves dredged sweetly with absurd propping,
like ruminations pilfered
and shone to the regressively frothing torches
of the salty mangrove roots.

the dutiful peaceful slack grin posture
where prenatally a wish pumps
like a mild tower in an ornamental spray of spray:

this buffoon by Bacchus for a sophistry for a dope.

it does look like seven
but an elemental gray horse meanders there
in a black and white empirical mess.

he gives as he swerves, thinks he bows better.

he thinks that hell rages beneath his iron feet
and that this is why the mellow patter is so stormy
and that seven is not like this.

seven is not like sighing or swimming
but has something to do with frankness
and a prolonged flare of bloody nostrils.

when it gets stark, he will remember something:
it will be wrongly worded to cover his digits.

fan me, I'm hot

a droll freak beneath the vibrating drone,
fusty air rattled by an obscene vacuum
that is a weird earthy wonder.

those droops that holster in blue and yellow
are waiting for the loins of a marching gloom-

this somnolence burns in a bronze handicap
that was never meant to matter:

we have come to praise the slick balloon
with awkward grasps at lusty grooms,
and columns lined with stiff festoons.

some cadences will rattle the cotillion virgin.

I am waiting

I am waiting
for her letter
to scream my faults
and label my vagrancies
in vivid hopeless writing.

I am waiting
to tear that letter
into tiny voiceless shreds
before its mouth can open.

darkness the sieve

or tiny fingers curled against the grain
in furry warmth, this linger against clock
of later melt, this trough of April snow
lies brim, no chill on green tomato
for winter of final, for garden of ease.

when galloping was illegal

there were some odd moments
when the pony ended.

not a snort of autumn leaves,
that would be too rusty:

it was more of a pirouette
that was shackled
by the steamed bit
of slipshod tempering.

a droll snort froze in the misty air.

yet we worship Juno

the tiger lilies have collapsed upon themselves,
creating an orange version of a black hole-

they were a gift never meant to be given:

a spill of water and the crash of a blue vase
uncovered quite freely
the motives of a rainy spring.

the shriveled pistils carelessly shed their sterile seed.

when evolution fails to happen

small etchings that dignify the blackboard
with discrete notices of thoughtful sprawl:

the clawed hand that grasps the chalk
has, in private, barely learned to idly paw
the dust that herds across the floor

in search of clouds and thunder.

the allure of faded beauty, cinematically

the wilted jasmine petal
that fragrances a cup of tea
is a creased truth
that powder cannot cover.

a sadness behind the half lids,
and in the parted lips
that once sat spread on straw.

the smile that cannot be gauzed enough
for human eyes to focus.

hoping for twins, postoperatively

brainy randy, late of the knobby tumor,
has sired a pest on the tall braided swirl
who largely roams the rugged hallways
announcing the gestation of prophets:

the scalpel has incensed his wavy annals-

let us praise the bloody pompadour.

seven go to heaven

the world has come full oval,
an egg on the always verge of hatching.

Maria walks once more
beneath a window barely lit
in the frail haze of august.

perhaps a mission of dominance
in the thoughts that plagued us so:

the octopus has eight tenacities,
only one can choke a dream.

right before the migraine: here be corona sin limon

cider offers regrets of nocturnal autumns:

overripe replays of never accepted crushes
roam onto nearly ashen cerebral orchards,
openly negating apple cores of rumors-

never answered climates only ravage openly:

action coronates obligations, rivers outpouring nectars.

shopping with Cecile

let us end this milling and purchase satin ribbons,
burgundy and mint, to bind these newly arching wings,
to frame charcoal scrapings in our furnished cave:

we are neanderthals and angels in a deft parade.

a tide of lapsang in a teal cup at last calls,
forcing a cascade within the book lined walls.

no amount of care

captive is as trees that shine
along the polished casket.

a carapace in sexual
youth.

a nickel for your latest
dip in darkness.

shackles hang,
chimes on a thick night:

music in your mute bay of longing-
because she left so early.

losing Pat to Capricorn

please pass the sugar with hands of violet death,
you, who once so completely scattered each utensil
in a pattern of unlovely grace,

who, groping across cloths of checkered space,
could have measured once such easy tasks
with a twirl of napkin and stainless:

be rough, my lovely, now that death has pushed you

into a curled fetal grasp.

in the dining room, dusting

also passed Louise, but taciturnly so:

a found notice in yellowed newsprint
when the mahogany hutch was moved.

a heaving revelation so eagerly sought
has been muffled into musty silence:

an aroma of her, almost breathing.

the search for antiquity

eggshell tints filter through upturned rubble,
quickening pulses revive the stalled excavation.

ceramic shards intricately hint
at a preternaturally shattered face
coalescing in the torchlight:

a gaze long hidden flickers on a mud-stained vase.

when hannah was a shooting star

the canvas chairs
with bleached limp look
had been folded
and ushered from the deck.

the hammock in storage
since late summer
for reasons
not entirely seasonal.

a sense of itching
that was entirely illusional,
a sense of dry skin
that made no sense at all.

Pallas Athena
on the hammock
required no sense at all.

rolling the hammock's
oblique tubes
in the bleached yellow canvas
was the most sensible thing of all.

in praise of august days

I do not know much about it
but I think that that amber cat
is a version of the caveman's echo:

patient to a degree that boils.

if she paws into the fries
there is time enough for mourning.

fused claw jokes strike home.

it is possible to draw with charcoal
in an attempt to recall those felines
who moved with pairs of paws:

one dreams of styptic pencils.

janus twenty-three

having faith only in the religion of breath:
this in this out this fog this desk.

and she never called, not finding Walden
out-of-print in the stores along her route.

hiking solo in the weed infested waters:

father will get the children,
daddy will get the kids.

after school encounter

ichabod crane with a lap dog
and a neck brace

approaches the bike rack,
a waiting place for dads.

the canine rodent sniffs my dirty bucs
in search of urine placement:

tiny talk expires.

and hibiscus behind plate glass

banana breath in the rush hour zones,

stalled before the small town florist
behind a ford escort packed with quilts,
driven by a pock-marked scowl of age.

downy lips crown the slanting mirror
with an eyeless kiss of purple parting:

geographies of scale for the fast breaking dawn.

after the barnyard incident

waiting for the knock on the door seems cozy now,
differing as it does so little from anything else.

there would be glazed staring and pretend indifference
under lights that sway through dumb smoke.

blaming it on exposure to the sun runs counter
and would only fool them for an hour.

four times haltered under some lead hook and hay,
a splinter of light battered through the roof,
the holes irregular in their jagged hymn
to hail and wind and birds.

if lowing were claimed you might beg an early exit:

there is only grating silence.

the shower too a shrine

a dribble of semen at the thought of Venus.

her body pressed against the opaque door,
dark areolas flattened on the pebbled finish,
her wiry isosceles strokes close rhythms on soapy glass.

a squeaky paean that is hygienic and sensual.

a vaporous aureole rises from the steamy transom.

letter to medusa

sad of eyes that see and seize,
close gently no more the crusty lid
with pangs of birthing pain:

what crown of serpentine chaos
now to kingly reign appears?

a jitter-jangle claimed by stable,
a put-forth foal of glee
honored by stillness of birth?

here, in a beckon, rest awhile.

the ladies at cards, unawares

cocky cyclops covet the crumbs of stolen tarts,
single visioned chomps of life without bridge mix.
the hardwood platters do not matter: mayonnaise
forms suspicious lumps on sliced breast of turkey.

the ladies will now begin to beg for food:
we will starve them until Edna declares trump-
the table of cards may shimmy slightly,
rigid gray hairs vitally dance in uniform cadence.

it is the cascade of non-original canapes
that titters them into mustard euphoria
and makes them wet their flowered shifts.
the level of saturation, as it were, depends.

The Son Of Mr. Toad Hammers Arabesques In Search Of A Concubine, But No-one Will Enter The Ritual, Perhaps Because Of His Rhythmic Dissonance

he staggers in primordial circles,
stomping to a music whose neon defies revision,
smashing his butts in a shatter of sparks
which are scattered but not invasive.

it is a rite of nicotine and green ash
that attracts no chance of mating:
a fairy ring of loneliness
in this fusion of puke and laughter.

What Matters

The stoic shimmer of spring leaves trembled by a breeze.
The quick pulse of a lizard's brain, numbed by the hand of a child.
A wispy phoenix in cirrus clouds that drift on a summer's day.
The twisting shriek of a stillborn mouse, echoed in the shell of a walnut.
A blue salamander that dreams of autumn windows.
A glint of moon on the sad eyelash ocean.
A parrot beaded with Aztec sweat above an azure pool.

Busts of Chopin rising in the cumulus,
bursting upon the eye,
an etude vaporized
before the ear can hear its phrasing.

An orange arc of ear
transposed against the plaster
as you lay behind your lover
in the dripping winter thaw.

Trumpets that blare
at oblique angles
beneath a rushing treebark sky.

A vine-covered shrine
viewed through eyes
slapped to tears by passing fronds.

What matters cannot be articulated
but rises in blurry language:
writing viewed through water,
obscured by tides and bubbles
yet rising towards the surface.

touching the wet hair of God

returning to the place where
we fucked with furtive grace

a mimic along the sheets
that here might be quivers

turn and give me whiskey
from weep rich lips

your sudden mouth
that masks uncommon shudders

this slipping at dawn

apotheosis

good road kill friday

lord

forty-two days thou hast clung,
thin-skinned on a barren pallet
framed in winter's haste

(skinks beneath frozen earth
the moisture seek that, once fecund,
did reek with festive couplings)

and still no saline washed thy wound
or stole off parchment the flutter gone
from tan to tanned to tanning.

a cracked grin in the asphalt maw
rises again when the pebble rolled.

forever the stations crossing.

amen

In Quest of Evolutionary Solace: i just want to sleep

Sharp edges have bartered shaggy remnants
from the corners of our sun,
cutting new facets on the fiery sphere.

Pulling the flocked drapes from black holes
we find only mirrors and:
gyrations in the polished stone.

not the domestic deep

there is a hellish life
deep inside the worm's red tube-

a hot rift on the ocean's dim floor.

do not look here for neatly tiled footholds
or rising bubbles of fresh blue air.

here blindly pressured fossils of mouths thrash
in an Eden that is neither forest nor evergreen.

a trenchant belch will sulfur the little claws.

let them come unto you.

the november sky is less than grey

falling prey to an avian virus,
the sad swoop befalls at noon
crashes into a notice of macadam:
a doom of plummet apprised.

the eyes of God shine
from the head of a body
with an extra limp thumb.
it is a distraction
willfully left intact:
too much grasping
would paradise allow.

heaven opens,
there is a float
upon which clouds do angel:
a small dark silver
that rings a coin circle
at the burst of liquid free.
it is a hard part of crying
that burns the upper lip.

what we take from a graveyard
we bring in ourselves:
each of the stones
mark dusty bones
as alive to me today
as they ever were.

a fashionable fly assails the wall

flowered pumps! flowered pumps!
quintessential presence of stiletto
on fly-paper dream of high-rise.

inverted days and nights slice
another proud continent
from spatial grooves on insect eyes.

six chic feet never teeter
in flowered pumps,
in flowered pumps.