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.