seven beats while the metronome joked

You know the clock's not real

but still you ache its ticking

tricked to notice movement

when it is only painted still.

While a skull grins in icy clouds

leaves flip silver to wait for rain

if that's when low you look to see

the pink globe at sunset swollen,

ersatz precursor to a steady diet

of dry brown acorns easily plinked

and eventually served as charcoal

despite the awkward faux pas style

of clasping with fingerless gloves.

A concrete angel bows to the azure half-shell,

her dry lips foaming a pink V for wanting

on a granite stand trimmed green for sorrow,

after a limousine chase for the widow in black silk

and a rural hearse with no juice run down fresh

to a moist entrance dug from angled mounds.

A bebop version of circumstantial pomp

causes greedy tears to mark this turf

with clinging spray cleaved to flesh,

requiem high-notes by a monkey sung

hirsute y muy simpatico y mas,

the girl in plaid is walking beside

deep set eyes and squeaky wheels

under the rising limbs of linden:

it is not gold but cork that floats

safely lined for carriages of loss.

A monologue of normality

from a desiccated carcass

that simply loves the disco,

the soutane above the fray

if the legs had feet instead of glide

by the sacred sign disguised.

Under this sad hymn of high summer

(crickets strumming rhythm

led by cicadas syncopate)

only plain birds sit the sizzling wire,

the dotage that never blinked downhill

rolls from neon crying time's suspense,

the frozen bauble to never flash again.

For something to believe in pink

the pearly globe grows up in size-

we only die each time we notice.

more than music is grasped that

When tumbled in a puddle of musical pace

the aural infinity of rosewood and brass

is a gamelan curry grooved sweet with beat,

a pantheon picked a whole tone to chose

than can be fingered away in blistered grace.

The fingering of the work crew sprayed

as graffiti glyphs cemented on yellow mark

a squat pallet of ash stacked by the elms

and hoops of tubing wrapped clear in blues

to slicken the slippery frets again rained

away from a silver string devoid of beads

towards the bird chirp surviving night,

plump zombies in baggy shorts and gloom

with no RSVPs pending for this party of twos

cerebralizing the rarity of death by weeds.

There is a fear buried so deep

it is no longer a gate to bliss,

a brown handle filigree

ruined a hint of orange

that leaves it just short

of the rust that squeaks

by the OM scribbled in tar

on the road by the creek

near where that real gone man

rose sheep in quarter time beats,

long bleats after the subdivisions

evolved into a sharp fungal creep,

a twisted rim and rusted frame

a caution chord for the trickster

on the sunbaked concrete isle:

pink of must the blossom drops

and the miller sails away.

when the orb finds pause

when it spits at midsummer darkness

the killer rests in the porch lit damp,

nothing in shadow on wing tonight,

nothing to prick in the sticky moist

and nothing flits to wrap in kisses:

brief para-diddles of windless flash

stroke the rushing clouds with silk.

swirl one knit brow

The blueberries in the saucepan

said yes but the bowl's metal flip

rising said spew char into blains

and the tragic arrival of ointment.

Everything takes you back

to some recurring dream

that is a constant deja vu:

couched in the louvred porch

symmetrically opposed at pairs

in red corduroy and ocher throws,

spirits gathered to haunt in silence

wondering what you're doing here.

The carpet stairs are worn there

and no repairs are scheduled,

the green clang of the dumpster

is a lifted chapter already uncus

in the window behind your ear.

How did that pine tree go

so unnoticed so lonely so long?

Intonations for a spell of virga

in a season already pluvian

go unanswered in the swirl,

the flirtation of the hanging squirrel

has coaxed the lettuce to seed

and the maple from Japan

is dying from ants under bark

and antic slapstick collisions

from the trampling of hounds.

A green and yellow garden glove

flattened with navy wristband

half in shadow and half in dust

awaits fingers of light to spread.

In the cry of the catbirds

I am summoned as a god

but nowhere else I turn:

it would be of no value to you

but it has great value to me

because of milky magic

in a molecular rumba

invisible to the naked eye.

Wondering if I should prune two branches,

I want gold finches and I want them now.

and ye shall lie in the bosom of Abraham

The wheel tuned out dry clay carved

and red splattered at the weedy edge

of a rumpy drive come to a tuning end

when the dream stop potting screeched.

I saw that with my own two eyes.

I did not see the giant that soaring dream

crushed in the oily distance that saw these

phone pole legs kicked and pine pitched

and still all possible sawn is listening still,

tarred to the dawn birds at the bare apron

of stubby grass gnarled at the car park edge,

an abandoned bottle label obscurely turned

into sinister maps that are deciphered black-

now all pain and all joy eternally gold in me.

An eight cylinder dose of splatter

just over heaven's yellow lines

heaves salvation when it matters

becoming then just memory of want

then just a memory of memory of want

that happens at the end of memory

when the neutral bits that mattered then

then are rinsed in pink and swiped away.

The sphincter of a smoke ring collapses itself

into a candle of Rome that whispers the night

in a rainbow gouache behind gray lids,

a lone maple barking its perhaps lesson

brazen unaccosted by chimes of leaves.

The surfaces of a Toynbee tile

wear away to reveal its cut scroll

left handed jeweled facets coal black

finger crude cuts of dancing hands

that cymbal between the tropics only,

places in the chiming rhyme of solar night

with the ritual pomp of a secular madman

at the year's worst time and all that matters

just implied by the glare of dust on goggles.

Collecting offerings discarded or often lost

by others to deliver to a streamside chorus,

a chorus barely worshiped enough to weep

yet feared enough to arrive obsessed

in the fiction of a continuous cycling mind,

the most common of these being things

that have fallen in transit and things

that have been washed through the gutter

by a twilight rain that rose up skulking

and auburn strands caught in mirrors

and storm drains clogged with leaves-

twelve cents worth of grimy temptation,

two pennies and a dime trumpet

a halt to running washed to source

by the iron grid of unlucky rushes.

Though it often seems that way at first

the miss of silver that plinked the rubbish

bounced off from there is your pleasure

in the gathering of fetish for water idols-

plastic bus stops are barren of breath,

but with candy wrapped and flat air blues

ragged pine tree shapes easily pass

through the extra ripe of lemon bitter.

The girl with the mandibular grill has gone

to ground leaving an endless roll of box cars

to rattle frame a dry and dusty boredom-

the convenience store is hardly eponymous

though it might seem quickly enough at first-

when you have to come right out and say it,

it probably isn't true.