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.