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.