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.