Healing hands and a knead to palms

Again down the straight dark street familiar,
holiday periphery red, white, and greenish
mere distractions, if that, so breathless bored
until a left turn where a perfect waxed car sat

once was a double lot there smooth and grassy
a little coupe slept in two-tone taupe and brown,
gave rise to a fantasy of cool. Wanna date, baby?
My tranny is push-button, Plymouth automatic too.

Three houses now where that grass once grew,
three more blocks along cookie cut white capes
and a right turn into memories: a youthful flu outta
cigarettes causes a feverish walk to Jack's deli for
some cool mentholatum smoked waist out window,
grey ashes on pitted aluminium frames an only clue.

Slow the drive and smoking menthol still to pull into
a patterned macadam drive past it's black prime,
some lonely cracks on blocks where a wind blown
screen blew Suzanne right off the porch untrellised;

now a cherry Camry driven was a wish once
in heavy purple purple flannel, tomorrow we
shall move you to a bed where the snow can
be seen, gone drifting in a dream grown white.

I would love

I would love to sit with glasses of wine and you
if for no other reason than to study your face,
no other reason than to drink your idle patter
into lips languid lips while you go on amusing.

Say what you will, I'm in a you adoring mood-
each little stridency, each charming blush, excitedly
brought forth by the ruby rush of warming Malbec
only serving to hasten my silly dreams still within.

I will listen to your words of course all in course,
all but totally slayed, your face flush with beauty.

If a prolonged hesitation between sound and sense appears

so must it be as a lamb's sweet foot is offered buttered
and a memory riced rheumy is soul taste toasted cumin-
within that taste a wide taught waste crosses shuttered
with puffy-eyed dazes down under daisies tautly shoed in.

When frail male hearts fail it prevails non-denominationally
and larded hard. Oompah, a blackened band puffs to grieve,
while a glance at belt bulge widths wilts to discretely deceive
a secret wanton scream over the tone-deaf wait, intentionally.

See what I mean? Say yes to me liar, I am no blue sooth
and neither and both are true at the solemn end of words:
a triangular pumpkin filled fritter dropped tray to booth
strays beyond salvation. Back to a kitchen, kitsch absurd

in days of dancing. Asked too soon to dray the grey pall,
why eulogize this long? Why wait? Reply. Folks, that's all.

If you have to ask

If you have to ask, ask. The answers are already no
answers hidden alone in a musky pose velvet green,
but that was a go where was a close shave unknown
and a muddy spot on boots was normal not obscene.

Shave you say? Yes, I like that well enough where
lips exposed can be wet and moist and red enough
for play. Guess there may be a graying question there
but I forgot to ask if no was rough and yes was tough,

forgot to reconsider whether the simmer of the mole
would last forever or just one afternoon on low burn,
whether chocolate and cinnamon was a prelude play
or if the sun's low arc might birth, seasonably, a turn

to speaking to myself in tongues that only I can hear:
asking again, double dumbly, in grin that you are near

La Morte de ISON

You can't count on a clump of ice and rocks
when the sun gets involved.

The sun removes all tears by heat or worse
so crying is worthless but go ahead and do.

Motherfucker burns and is pitiless too,
being just a self-consuming furnace,
it's all it do. And it melts chumps too.

Clumps unaware will transit
in frozen glee and whump:

Wake up! Time to die!

If you need compassion as a comet
don't trust Apollo, he's kind of a dick
say the whispers cowered in shadow.

Vapor in vacuum makes less
sound than an orbit gone bad.

Searching for Quiddity

The cheese on the plate no longer has a sheep attached
but a paddy so lush and warm lingers in the ricey cracker
so sheep and rice in a single breath are quaintly matched
on a coddled Sunday colded for a couch-bound slacker.

Is the bite into the curdled sheep's milk really real or just
a fat filled joy that brings back memories of soaked fields
where little lambies suckled at a perfectly muttoned bust
laid down with cloven fours outstretched to slowly yield

the golden dream of sampans in an iridescent harbor now?
The combining of East and West begins to mouthly meet,
the brain harvests riddles that are woven finger-traps, how
is a thing that was a puzzled thing not so ontologically neat?

The silly why, the endless search for a perfect pull of quiddity
dissipates into rice and milk and an imperfectly tasted lucidity.

What looks like easy prey defends

A fuzzy place on the old rump brocade
has its place in autumn bliss, couched
when the low arc of the orb now white
gave away to slow breaths in and out.

Ears pulled back, eyes slack grey and
white on a perch of stained red birch
never meant for wings but wings now
lifted by regular breaths seem birdlike.

The bliss place is you and me and him
in the desert or in the now of silence

and we do not know its name.

Pax Novella

If you're gonna give your life to a book
make sure it's not made of sand the
grains become inscrutable when you
turn each grain in your leather hands,

scratches formed a million years ago
now truth etched in creepy green;

I am no longer sure what vellum is either
but the word is nice as a begin to believe.

Yes, I am quite sure now that (gasp!)
you should find your truth in vellum
and seek a bookbinder who can emboss
an upgrown bloom curled in leafy gold.

An Arctic hare might leave a trail

When a rabbit thumps its bottle
against a brittle cage it's rattling
hard to lodge a plaint at matins
because you know they know
a thing or two: with ears alert
it's unlikely to surprise me.

The forecast calls for snow
but I don't believe in maps
except, after the fact, when
I've already been in place.

Then I can pore and bore for days
over an unfolded map pale green,
trying to recall a place I've been.

Canada creates the northwest
wind but Canada must be an
illusion, for a pale yellow wash
has no color on my strong map.

I'm sure the clouds are cold now
in whirlwinds a flake sore I saw
and winds have not yet begun.

Something has the power in wind,
deaf, I cannot hear its name.

Nocturne

Under a dome of pulled cotton hiding star lights and moon
she said stop watching. I didn't think I could just then,
the dome illuminated from below by a faint orange glow,
the night air cool and still. Silence was my master then.

Soon, I will watch the sun must rise on russet leaves-
and endlessly watch again.

When the hushed chimes tolled

On the boards under the autumn rush of russet leaves
when, in the distance and hushed, The Joy of Man's Desire
tolls from a steeple I dreamed of once in pure white under
the weathering pale of grey-haired pews sparsely filled,
that steeple weathered too where once belief was felt.

Paint comes in rounds and the collection box is square,
draped in purple under candles a long black box is there:
I don't know who comes around anymore or why-
I don't know what they're doing here.

Boys kick a ball that's sap stained worse from leaves
while a toddler in pigtails hugs a wide tree that rustles
and the drawn greats wait for their final cake reward.

I struggle to understand the nature of things baroque.

When the bare vimens show

When the bare vimens show their true spidery self
and the crisp inner tuck of oak leaves is only an else
of sweet green shoots that spring left wryly behind
a hinting of freeze comes blue, and ice enters the mind.

Eight vimens are barely enough to finish a failing scene
but tangling right, tingling in October, to drop and scare
from a broken web the long lost girl who enters there-
she says she'll not dress again, sad to say she just means

the end of artifice, the end of endless chatter, the end
of stories of birds who flew from Christmas trees fast
in the hazy winter of red cocktails crazed warm bend,
when laughed icy green laughs are impossibly icy at last.

A bald head preaches slowly with a mouth totally gone dry,
in coughing begs for bags of masks from one too tired to try.

When a burnt sienna spray

When a burnt sienna spray calls into question
the demonic as a matter of recognition white,
a risen pyramid hirsute frames a sweet vise in
a  mind that simple waits a yardbird screaming

mean blues harp matters when she she she goes
goes goes apeshit 'cause her red shirt blinds you're
already blind and recognition is a small compense.

She stared she scared in Pythagorean angles square
and solids were, well, another golden matter then.

Wrinkles for sure but also endless love unending.

Sometimes the mouse has to dance

With hoary crusted feet on the coldest concrete
doing a beauty treatment to scrape crack heels
while a major key warms up for the debutante,

a ball where waltzes fade to country two-steps.

A wild ride pulls and shatters stiff  faux candelabra
and we sway sway without tuxedos into a dream
of photo strip bad joke thank-yous that fold on
a cheap paper inviting a ribald door into drama.

Went out last night to take a little round
I met little Sadie and I blowed her down.

It was gingham, gingham all the way down
and sometimes the mouse just has to

After the Beginning was the Lie

And lies made flesh flamed into hard tongues
unable to resist a purple crocus not in prison
putting its gentle truth behind bars of locution
for the simple crime of blooming mysteriously.

Thus flesh made words, no poem is innocent but
a shadow flashed, itself an enslaving lie that casts
our goodly yearn into a belief that words are real.

The purple crocus poking through the snow
is its own excuse for being.

I don't even have words for that.

Do not read this poem.

Counting On Time Has Its Own Challenges

A face of purple flowers bloomed at quick once
from a petaled bower confessionally esoteric
with buds surprisingly glas and gorm in season.

Not many choices but the haute septime attempt
when the mosquito bites your cheek so piquantly
and the best laid plans are south abandoned now
to a sanguine reposition of racing red corpuscles-

When I ascended into heaven I descended into hell,
the reality of every living creature plus one and you
spins in blossoms and fortuitous bites ground earthly
like trying to explain a silver mirror to a blind person.

The pattern yesterday was maniacs in courtesy cars,
tomorrow it will be something else that faintly mars:

today the blossoms drifted up like snow.

Weather Report

Silly as naming fires or counting acres

there is a blue door that might open
at dusk with oiled hinges as redolent
of autumn musk as the vibrant voices
bespoke of late, faint Teutonic love.

Hind legs always attract in season.

You can hear them best in late October
then it's all gone mute come November

Dragonflies

After the red goulash with pork and sauerkraut
came floaters tiger striped with a show of wing
sour in the grapefruit sky but with uplifting flits

that demanded palms lifted too in supplication
to a funny green moment joyous and wordless
when the dragonflies dip and mystify at sunset.

What do children think of when it rains?

It's only water falling from a grey sky
which purple striped umbrellas make
funny in a summer warmth when thin
shirts call awake that slumbering sigh.

Going for a smoke in the wet grass when
lights tend to flicker & deny a needy feed
of the monkey, a graying annoy that now
crashes in a minute by a then pouring sky.

In the blink of an eye a rainbow appears,
split by the pale jagged flash of lightning,
when moments earlier in the black crush
excitements seemed a more pressing joy.

Brushing a ringlet one, two clasping a goldfish,
what do children think of when it suddenly rains?

Nothing Was Explained

Nothing was explained about the overture
or anything about carpentry, else melodies
would have been rabbited into harmonies
and a proper house have risen rafter pure.

Tophats garnered in a graying church yard
spoke little about the sand that chucked him
into another silver place where cycles shim
cry into galaxies grown past reddish beards.

The black fluttering arises out of a long mirage
of ice that shimmers in the heated desert land,
reeks of diesel that, seeped from ancient sands,
brings dry vibrations that, deft, deflate his visage.

Chiming zills are struck until from nubs a riches blood
flows into a dry wadi where his ooze alone once stood.

Old oak cannot easily flex

Ain't gonna fake it as white seagulls fly are
flown into black vultures that turn on high.

Seen a caterpillar blue reaching also for sky
back legs stiff poised, feet in a grasp unmet,
poignant beads seeking, widely, all the rest.

(A butterfly poses in yellow and black for
a red-headed girl born to speak to it best)

Better use new hickory, old oak cannot easily flex
when quanting a punt across the cold morning dew.

The shoreline is only the clouds

The shoreline is only the clouds of where you want to be
in the pink and orange dawn where rocks mark dark shores.

Later, when the inferno also rises burning red and pitiless,
a watched pot most certainly boils.

Where is the calming thunder?

Signs aroused by curled pale fingers

Signs aroused by curled pale fingers asking what's
this ghost most risen hard in a handless hoar mist,
a barely heard mute static of 'maybe' or 'yes' or 'no'
or a bit lowly muttered about onions fried to crisp.

A recipe blown down a foggy street in tatters
as it mostly seems a page or two were missed
or hid by blue stone cloud burst cobble shine.

Chop or mince or dice or slice, it hardly matters
now. Whatever else just watches peeling dreams.

Dreamy, pungent smells, whetstones glisten,
thin white wisps, pale sapphires, water drips.

Watching through the cardboard tube haptically
turned, the colors are fantastic signs aroused by

Chimin'

To plumb the rare earth metallic way
in a sweat of silver beads profuse,
in a dark smithy with the huffing
down ceremony just pearl hidden,
to feel the bell as slid to the hot left
and cast round right so best to sing:

chimes ring truest in a morning wind
calling again through wet white birch
begging free limits of sinew, a drawn
dawn breath ringing shine bark tones.

Chimes ring clean in quiet harmony too
when white is a here now silence carry,
a chaste escape echoed over noise tops.

Metal too is hammered to chime again
when speech fails under noisy times-
but the breeze speaks quiet truths in
the white past if only you can pause.

After the green god called

What you call the screech of redwing
I call harmony.

Where yellow claws might rip flesh
I feel a tender hawk.

Far from the black tarn of human eyes
I stand rooted in soft fog.

In a white breeze blown upwind
I find a tickling that, finger funny,
ripples through my uplift leaves.

Chartreuse Then Becomes a Lady

Chartreuse then becomes a lady,
on the domed throne she waits
wondering what the calligraphy 
about an itchy silent etching is-

a pipe glows quiet red from our
sticky sweet scoop of black pod sky,
where there's only here and there 
and there and here and only now.

A peacock might be coming soon.

Burnt Korma

If, languidly, the afternoon was lost
in a celebration of the sun god and
the simmer of spices and coconut
left too long on the burner burnt, it

could not be said that all was lost
for some sweet juices remained
to be licked from the boiling pot.

If there was a veil

If there was a veil that diaphanous mattered
it might be true that blue was colored wrong,
but if blue is colored wrong all hope shatters

so, down to the swamp to amble around frogs
stepping over mucky sucking pancake batter
finding in green cricket mud a choral throng.

The long blue days

The long blue days are starting to yield,
whisped away by orange fingered rises
tracking to a north unborn dawn meld
with eyes blackened by night surprises:

tracking transits of sherbet not melted,
eyes behind our earth see Orion belted
when only a silver moon seems to glow;
the jagged line is still pine dark though

a brief trill in darkness brings chickadees
unsettled by a sense of dense fever coming,
with puffed feathers brown hid come to be
a shrilling harbinger for nascent numbing.

The cheap chair unfolded once in squeaking
a platform for

This afternoon is quiet

Boreas has ceased to blow his chill wind
and our seething Notus sets to sun warmth,

again dragon toes flex hoary yellow claws
free from fresh buttery youth feet but, gasp,

there is sadness too when leafy greens hide
the truth that grasps on every private breath.

Looking for a leafy vein that explains it all but the
pavement only throws up joke cracks at this time.

There's always a repave when macadam crackles.

Sans les Mains

I was trying to relax with my mistress
in a little beach front the cheapest dig
but it was a shared rent beat suite not
locked off to suit due to ratty chewed
french and rounded angle hinged fault
when the little runts parent worshiped
intruded as we wanted to grope alone.

Offered ribs a skinny premonition but is
that really the perfect answer to the glory
of sharp surf cuts on blue waves against
a mossy row of suburban garage doors
when an eave buckles over apple floors?

I found a piece of aqua seaglass that
was sanded near to smooth wash before
a tidal rumor came upon our demiurge.

So many things are not like this

Thirty mile an hour winds blown
into high sky now plangent blue,
but blue is or has to be happy or

those dimples will run bloody too,
and who will spike a palpated mess
to rush a hot pulp of lotus through?

Love meanders circus maximus
sieved to only find a golden now
or a lost ivory comb implicit too
in a farce arcade gone minor blue.

Collecting dryer lint is not as
crazy as forseen post tumble,
weirder spawn of major fray
tumble through a dry land too.

Minor things tinged with purple
point the way to weirder realms,
a meadowlark at cicada dawn
trills a flushed song either way.

Seen in the meadow with curved concrete, brought home to be tried

A thick stalk dandelion impostors a white halo

chucked up in the fraud of an early spring grim

with nose poking into a fake grimace fractal,

a lame asparagus false passport trying to win.

Nice try picked a mugshot in a common jar.

The banquet's in the first bite

The scent of a cigar smoked long ago addagio
wafts in a library with blur pages never unread,
erects at dusk a craving for blue grottoes lost.

They have come again late to prep the fountain
for the season, scraping the chipped azure paint
from under the sickly ice of winter's deep sleep.

There's pain in April when the water begins to sputter:
when above a crouching tiger below the torrent rushes.

You can get your life back

Bearded pansies grow in a thick explosion of bright violet,
that throwback yellow to when many winks wore beards.

Throwback no more, though some would hope to seek
for a wet beard whiskered in place today on chin or lips.

Three vultures and an aeroplane set sail in silent prayer
reaching up against blue sky fingers bleached to white.

The last tilt on the round-a-whirl is not always bitter

Make mine lemon if a fruit has to be squeezed
with godly hands onto any of the mounds I eat,

always forward to maximize a palate pleased
when yellow dawn leads sweetly to a final seat.

Death comes like a meteor that reminds you of yourself

My innocent search went obit black guilt
when a real gone mistress dead one year
was in read white news a ten years ghost,

but I think only of her self-absorbed spouse,
who was an awesome sage of software
but not of her,

who was an audiophile who listened
(as if the messiah was in every groove)
to everything but her.

After codeine, bone, and rum
she said I was the best fuck ever.

I was not the first.

The genius of what is

If there was nothing to be said
for hot red heat and deep grey pressure
every pebble would be a gem.

Pebbles everywhere searching
for red heat and grey pressure,
waiting for a hard god to cut marquise.

I'm glad I made the box before the box made me

When I was sloppy lost in a hollow echo dry,
and loping, laughing wolves heard me howl, I

saw another wolf chomp on a dry yellow volume,
dripping scarlet teeth onto a marble spine chewed.

I watched in steely coolness a stone hard chisel
cascading sawdust from a cornered rabbet too,

chewing acid volumes sprayed in breathless sparks
over me, grainy chatoyant with a sly, sheepish grin.

It's black and brown on a distant hill

A prayer for gray ablutions early made
with soapy green shoots of silky tease,
some too tender for the frozen hardness
that harrows brown in hard cheat spring.

An early spring not messiah called -
born to wash again is born too late,
only when the watch on your wrist
stirs a plot with glowing hands and
henna paint beads with lost magic,
a lingering saint in post damp rinse.

So many ways to be fooled
and mine is so often forecast
in a veil of endless drizzle in
that cool wet fog I must prefer.

Every day I ask the question:
what if everything I believe is wrong
and I am really just an asshole?

A man in a long black coat
told me to chew on thyme,
a sprig will turn to lemon
and leave a nice aftertaste.

For a moment, he was right.

punctum caecum

Somewhere above long orange leaves
that have lounged onto the black river
to pretend autumn carp in playful sun,

where downy hints of swan lost white
flutter crisping  in a come winter wind

an explosion of blue lays bough hidden
where the blind need not roll their eyes,

where the landscape makes you weep.

A Repudiation of Sorts

i. Order drives what's plausible

That the clock ticks give us comfort
while we push the hot dose that makes
a cardinal sing while rainbows shine
as our mask is anointed into heaven

whether over a grey glee dying face
is beside the point, a point of order

in the hot sweat night of black terror
someone comes and says it's all right.

That lie that makes all things possible.

ii. Play makes all things timeless

Yes, the ball thrown into the blue skies
in childhood suspends wicked disbelief-
forgive me father, for I have sinned.

A cardinal chirps in wonder at the red

scarlet pity that his white clock has struck stop-
and his still hallowed ground a mysterious reach.


Perhaps the ball will fall at last, perhaps.

In either case, tissues are salvation
and a mask is just a mask.
and time is well forgotten.

iii Humor divides man from heaven

The gods laugh over a hard shit
because they too remember
the burden of the flesh.

Still, we look for praise.

iv. Damnation is a noble goal

To be good enough to be damned
is pretty damn good
when you're judging yourself.

I didn't think you'd do it but you did
and it was the right thing to do
when you locked that time.

I would have done it too.

It was all prearranged before you came.

Were you warned by the myths or repeating?

It's a rough question to answer.

No-one knows what happened to the corpses
and no-one knows if it matters,

but it was all prearranged.

When the down turns downy

When the down turns downy snow in white fluffs,
drifts climb to blanket his check comforter gripped-
winter time to buffet over seasick wrinkles that, cold,
wheeze the red black blocks back to spring despair.

Over the quaver mirage a narrow turquoise tile lifts
and, under the cross-eyed wisps of grey and black,
a bit of childhood drilling is revealed, just one inch.

What did he hid beneath the curly sawdust?

An evergreen seedling so heavy in hot wetting fever
drives a terror hand dropped from his down pillow,
dank in one last swollen supplication, too late gold.

I wonder what they'll do with his clothes.

A pebble rolls down

A pebble rolls down with a purple rattle partly drawn
from the bouncy bouncy bouncy joy of slate corrupted
with shallow pocks from years of hard rain and freeze-

down where streets drift downhill past yellowed weeds,
its horizontal vein of cancrinite turning orange cartwheels
hypnotically (and now you are in another time where)
past bare white houses where breaths are rarely taken

seriously if you want to cut a fresh hard roll than arch
your thumb and pointer and keep the blade underneath.

The bread is white soft and you are so courageous
when a pebble rolls down.

thought there was a difference

I only realized lately what a lie I am.

It's easy to discuss truth and lies
when it's only the weasel tongue at stake.

Masks to meet the masks you meet, indeed.

In the miasma of self we wish

to fuck
to kill
to love
to lick
to thrill
to worship
to thump
to lollygag at will.

Hide the executioner's face, indeed.

Oh you pretty things, indeed.

A billion realities contained by lies

I am

an animal and a god.

Dream a Little Dream

Blue mold on veined cheese is a wet salty delight
evenly tongued by a saint robbed of artful memory,
memory remembering dreams of a soft blue spread
on a crispy cracker so recently parched desert dry.

To salivate onto a velvet tongue and meet a glass of malbec
is not so hard to take on an unseasonal winter afternoon, when
the damp clouds are high grey and amber and mild warm wind
dry floats across a blinding windy white post-coital mellow drift.

Hoping against the stoneware platter,
the chrome blade cries again for clatter.