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