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.