Everglades (Flamingo), 2010

Spiny cirrus crystals over Florida Bay at becalmed sunrise
drifting wispy, the soaring fossil wings of feathered flight-
today the wind retires, royal palms are royal still beside
black vultures flocked and jostling carrion in dawn's rosy light.

White pelicans soar in formation with black tipped chevrons
riding warm thermals that rise from this prairie coastal strip,
a synchronicity unspoken controls the swooping squandron
on a blue canvas under the drooped mahogany's mossy tips.

Mud clay banks bunk over a beach strewn with swollen reeds
where footprints slide to gush at tides but never to stay at all:
no trace will ever tarry for the pert killdeer's feigning needs
nor save the brown splash of the proud pelican's swift fall.

The rustle in the bushes that made you freeze and turn behind
is a snake that slithers, mostly, in the mangrove of your mind.

JD State Park, 2010

A coney lolls under cooling shadow of aluminum bins,

sniffs the humid wind blown through treeless hillocks

ignoring the loop of shell roads shorn of saplings thin

as when sight adheres past scrub pines and simple forks

to a swampy place where gators wait in carnal silence

and feral pigs bristle brown under fronds in rustling rut.

If always a pond in the sand it's a masked green suspense

while the river still swirls with tawny fishes schooled but

in the temporal buoyance of trolling on mirrored peace

the glass is broken with sudden rolls to a grassy shore.

A man yells Quebecois into a pay phone at river's beach

but the concessions stand will tender hickory as before,

so rest tonight, eyes heavenly as the cypher face of Orion

creeps from east to west in his glacial chase of setting suns.

Wekiwa Springs, 2010

Born to churn opaquely, the circular headwater spring's

constant warmth respires in rocky black and sandy aqua

where a fuming rises under igneous prisms of mossy cling

and a darting mirth of minnows quicksilvers the grotto spa

near a drained lantern's orange glow in fast fading light.

Scant promise from a sandy trail though beige meadows

where the orange blaze on gnarled pine fades to white

and leads a squint astray under the coniferous boughs.

An arc of bending darkness mistaken in creeping fog

skulks crackled under the foot near grey palms in line-

heard by a black paw a scratch on the fallen bark log

under the swirl of Ursa Minor and a sky dimmed pine

which float overhead in a glass from reflective remove

and, in tracking the stars, you can sense the earth move.

in the still of the

Dancing so civilized with no recourse to fail,

she bawls with blanket clutched in woolen sweat

where, under a darkened porch, the play reveals

a paisley counterpane of ghostly pale barely lit,

her crystal d'arc of thirst a shadowed octagon.

The opaque prism is fast gulped clear of passion

and the night's caffeine pulse that greeds upon

a mattress flopped is the restless turning ration.

Vertical blinds quickly turned too dusty creaked

for the woolen blanket's dreaming seams to settle

against a random chance as rising dawn is peeked

with orange streaks dimly bounced on colored metal,

these slats that fail to seal a frontal vision leaked,

his leering spiked by turns of sharp edged nettle.

Shadowy Salvation at Rest in Transit

The fluted profile that greys in shadow

over the imaginary Ionic column,

who sighed at sin for grinning over

the rumble of cracked macadam,

he utterly changes every time

the light bulb flickers in the creepy breeze.

The roar of the glasspacks is the wet fiction

that has been prophesy

in your purple tense of every instant instant

that might never even happen,

not unless in a thinly minded white conrer

just behind the flowered pantry door.

You're in good hands, he said,

it's only the squeak of a mouse.

Zouave Ghost at Antietam Creek, 2010

Across the wispy creek with vast fingers of mist all grasping

and braiding the twisted boughs whose leafless remorse

looks moonward to expose a stare at pitted metal rasping

and blankly downward on a slowly moving reflective course,

where perfect steel reports echo and pierce again a perfect day,

the muscles that no longer ache shimmer beneath the tatters

of once buttoned epaulets over an open jacket's scarlet fray

in moving mist both blue and grey where flesh has ceased to matter.

With no lost home warmth longing in winter snow to pretend to

it wanders adrift in memory's aching realm along the lonely banks

with no needs from its drained and scattered flesh to attend to

searching in vain in the moonlit mist for its blasted missing ranks.

If it turned to grin the beige chill would freeze your core:

those hollow eyes that once saw yellow now see no more.

Hogg Rock Vista, 2010

A notice of runes carved by worms under the bark

of a stripped and fallen trunk is the first sneaky clue

along the mild ridge-line that a forest has hidden marks

that are easily missed in late autumn's leaf filtered dew.

Distracted at first by the scenic view of fog ruled tides

made by white mist in the rippled murky vales below,

it's hard to tell the blue sky from blue ground, besides

patches of bright hiker nylon then rise and voices echo

not as humbly silent as the voiceless creatures underleaf.

Working sideways sans the fussy serifs of civilized noise

but slowly across the rotted and wooden hole-filled sheaf,

the runes are a sonnet where no clock wound and poised

is ready to rudely tick and tock the climb to something new:

atop the crags of Hogg Rock, under heaven, with nothing to do.

Snavely Ford Trail, Antietam Creek, 2010

There is a place so oddly named though bloody stained

it does not roll easily from unschooled in local history lips

as other embattled places that have been less sadly drained

by a curving creek that perfectly mimics an unplanned trip.

What rolls behind is green, brown, and pastorally sound

and the trail from the bloody bridge to the bubbling ford

is quiet and sun-dappled from the banks to a rising ground-

silver pools leave half-leaved trunks through mirrors pored.

Walking noiseless as possible despite the autumn crisps reborn,

still no way not to flush the rutting stag to quickly sprint uphill

or cause the sleek grey owl to spring and sweep across the corn

as the nascent oxbow turns against the muddy banks and spills.

Around the yellow bend other magic may suddenly appear

but, ahead and alone in hazy fall, it's wonderfully quiet in here.

Wolf Rock, 2010

From the clouding gray of leafless endless branches

it bursts into view along the timber sprawled borders

of a hushed path where a rock wolf on granite haunches

was what was most guessed to prize the image hoarders,

a suddenly there dramatic cliff that yawns with height,

an immediate rise of quartzite from soft brown sponge

and green moss, the scattered snowlike sense of white

that catches the eye's corner and, almost deja vu, plunges

into self a sense of something to be scaled and divined.

There is no sense of the wolf in likeness to apprehend,

only the makeshift joy of hewn thrones under scrubby pines

and a crevice table spread with apples, cheese, and pita bread.

The faint sliver of a crescent moon over gray veins diurnal

is the howl of a wolf that stays a howl though mutely internal.

Harper's Ferry, 2010

There is a door just up river painted green

where two white torrents clash with spray,

inside where wispy rope fray curls unseen

that bound the wool wrapped corpse that lays

just down river in the bent autumn reeds

with black boots and face turned downward

looped with sisal and gauntly hidden needs.

Who would dare to turn that grey face skyward?

Behind the quiet door that is painted sickly green

the deed completed as the candle's scarlet dripped,

the pierced body wrapped and silence dragged unseen

to the rushing river with rough wool shroud unripped,

hidden until rosy springtime when the flood

will rinse the clues without a trace of blood.

[Note: I really don't care much for explanatory notes re: poetry since

I believe the poem is just the poem but, in this case, I will allow for an

exception. At Harper's Ferry, while strolling along the river, just at the

point where the Potomac and the Shenandoah rivers meet, there is a

corpse shrouded in a woolen blanket wrapped in sisal rope. I suspect

it's part of the exhibit, but it was shocking to see and there is still a

nagging doubt in my mind.]

The Brunswick Line, 2010

Squeaky ache of squat wheels on cold steel track

departing near dawn with breath amber haloed

by vapor light from green poles of an earlier time,

a journey begins on rails ended by bolted plates:

there is only one direction in which to travel now,

south to the city of mausoleums and white stone.

The posted grid announces a three departure limit,

there are no good clocks for leaving smoky warmth-

all three hands are dark antique before the sun,

blue vinyl seats split in spots to soiled foam,

frosted cornfields grazed by shadowy deer

near grey tracks bent by the crescent moon.

Assateague, 2010

See now the yellow finch of bullet sleek and

flitting over a steep place of rocks and scrub

where against steady white crashes so tightly cling

tufts of aqua sea grass washed velvet by rhythmic tides

in a place where blond ponies strut and breed

among dunes with crusted sap loblolly pines

bent by constant wind across the salty marsh

where the storm has cut an inlet to be sure.

thirty-five measures, one wrong cut

There are certain sighs for which no gestures yet exist

signed the hushed lady in red and blue, hedged near

the small plump aubergine pokeberries about to burst

from dark and stormy silence into the rain drenched

psychedlic bursts of oily autumn pavement swirled

again sweet thrusts of summer to cloud sniffed dry,

a crisp paisley of turquoise, canary, and rust whirled

arrows and pesky sprays measured in neon blue pulses

highlighting how quickly the most effective incision

will enjoy the muffled comedy while it lasts as

an unholy trinity flickering with black flecks and

fiddling about with things quite gloriously taboo

through furtive curtains passed the frost glaze then

it was the morning of the rosy cirrus dawn,

an epic in which the bald Titan weeds his garden

whistling an etude while reseeding the bare spots

notes morphing from chance brown to fortune green

in the summer turf that was parched unseemly when

I distracted you from seeing the dead cardinal

knowing it would upset you so only in the mind

and I was teased by every red car that was not yours

but prompted me to think of your flourishing utopias:

athena on the half shell with flamingo escort

a pink pulsing speck in the periwinkle mandala.

We left in October with the calculus of tresspass made

before the down tumbling leaves came drinking then

an elixir made from pokeberries burst with scarlet

which might repress the breath's reject of healing air.

That this perfect slice of reality cannot not be the one

that we really deserve:

Those are just lines from an old grimoire.

the stuff that dreams

Was it in a nightly rite of purple pique

that the wobbly stanchion light was lit

and gilded with a thin taut elastic strip?

Perhaps this was only light for quiet eyes.

So easy to be fooled by the early rings

of baked and boiled dough, day old moldy

but flash frozen first or so it's come told:

kinky perks, smoky karaoke in night's pane,

she tapped with evaporated paint exhaling,

that it's its own guard for an evening stance.

At Last was echoed through the rabbit count,

sweeping, dissipated, with incidental focus,

prone with one leg straight, one knee akimbo

to sail past yesterday and tomorrow's swirl,

unafraid to mark that evening sky as brilliant

in an inner teeming puddle of startled starlings,

where certainty is assured by uncertainty

and that feeder flock full of noisy finches

brings ripened grains fully chocked of nijer.

The slap of time that excites the nose

whispers go, little redwing, flutter past

the bales of dried grass that seeded winter

through the squawky radio static of geese-

it's hard to really see with eyes sewed shut

there is no way to crisscross court the warmth.

A good-looking man in tan pants and a blazer

enters the hive of commerce briskly strapping

with our Mary of the holy sporting harness

in the middle of a sacred sandwich half and

half again you can smell the perfume of ecstasy

and rejoice and let us squirt, again exhausted.

Thinking of dogs and a blackbird appears

prompting a peripheral pump of adrenaline-

this was not what we expected in early race

a chignon of meaning that almost teases time,

the roar of the manila leaf bag drifts into sky

past where is parked the crap-mobile this time,

not lashed by hair outside the serene call of nylon

repressed desire resolved in tinting windows rolled

begalia pollen a mark that is always washed away

it starts to get interesting right about now-

done in by ruminating ovine, moon equipped

and no longer sanctioned by a state of grace

he officates from two wheels screeching rust,

available inside delivery and liftgate service

sensing movement where there is none, whoa,

and a feathered fight for the last french fry.

To be the possum unloved by many at sunset

with a slinky tail that can prove delightful

but only when it's crepuscular and easy.

the prospectus is inscrutable

There is a smudge on my glasses

inside the dreams of the flower nod

which provides the landscape I need

as I imagine a foil scar on my left cheek

to enhance my appeal with the court

in a rebirth of the cool that occurs

three hundred years too late.

A model lighthouse in the front yard

of a Cape Cod fifty miles from the ocean

does not make me smell salt air.

If you want to get all brass tacky about it

I don't really care.

I practice the high art of giggling

at a point far removed from the whine

of pool filters in the morning.

The touch of my penis feels good in my hand.

I am a semi-animated object

barely aware of my own motivations

unable to escape things that are black and yellow

and all that remains is a figment

to be pawed and prodded in imagination only

no less visceral than the now

littered with carcasses at regular intervals.

What the mockingbird told me

is good enough for me.

The prospectus is inscrutable.

A bird chirping once is the sound of eternity.

I am the faint cosmic giggle of an unproduced producer.

a near catastrophe in mild blue

A burlap bag taut on a bony rack

awful parched and scratchy brown

jonesing for a warm rain's slake,

he was a sisal sack of unhappy tack

when I chanced on him that summer,

his pithy brick grafitti combed over

a stenciled canvas of regular weave

with a misty green branding muttered

through the gone meander of himself.

After calling for the quench he craved

overlapping ripples from silver drizzle

plinked on a puddle in the shallow rain,

and I looked down at my own damned feet

scraped leather telescoped a mile down

splashed clean despite roccoco splatter

in the muddy district of stucco walls

where two brooding chalk eagles

proudly guarded the cute nausea

of embracing faux patina twins

tinkling on kissed pink blossoms.

None of this was or is to scale,

he was a bitter pill in a bitter shell

behind the kitchen curtains daily

a shadow hinting at the blackened sheen

of biscuits from the oven crumbling.

Which was mystery and which explained?

Be happy, be joyful a mantra

of another kind of scarlet death

in the data points that mattered

through the rasping of his noise:

and I never crossed with him again

except years later in a buzzing dream

while dozing on a warm park bench

when I chanced upon that beveled glass

and whispered three short phrases.

Can I get a witness?

A rearview mirror with silver reversed

so motley reflects a bald-faced ride

of forward lusty sweaty rolls, reet slide

and how those sideview lips are pursed-

arisen, a crispy vision might have sunk

erect when almost stopped traffic

genuflects, a feast this scarlet trick,

ash ridden sackcloth firm in trunk

a purring look at me growls fantastic

preached as con jesus the holy way out

squared from grave to holy roller doubt

two short arms boxed grace cast plastic-

ask a mirror's imperfect glass to reveal

a savior's perfect hidden smirk unreal.

pounding a yog on the ammo box, 2 am

owl vibrato

over moonlit cockade blush

mimosa blossoms

a bolus of dried cranberries for coney

Bungee corded cargo caught between ditch and

the river drops into rubbery knocking rhythms

on a gravel path kicking red dust that coats

sharp oiled sprockets and chains to a province south

of brush strokes flat and grace notes rhyme:

the periwinkle glow flattened laughter

on the banks of newly sprouted fescue

calls and draws with fingers curled

hinting foreign ways in blown clouds

and thorny pink hedgerows close

near ash felled trunks mottled white,

poached giraffe hide on bank chopped

a fractal map of bark design mimicked

in bits and pieces and pieces and bits.

A gape faked for brickwork fades

and chipped red is just unpointed

mortared oil, anointing aromatic grief

with a grey feather flipping in the mulch-

scarlet leaves worm-eaten loose today

but not the sun whitened log noose hung

by denim fingers frayed in unskilled blue.

A recall of how few things are known but

to the common wise so obvious a nucleus

is small sun calico on a cool steel guardrail

and there's a perfect rock to break the black

and sink until blue under the foamy spillway:

a drowned name on a granite bench carved,

a bleached burst of plastic flowers timed

to mourn the rainbow that one arced breath-

the price of tossing that burden is somewhere

being shed enough for tears and laughter both.

Let the mind prattle to exhaustion

and you're left counting rabbits in a morphine haze-

look, there's one over there.

It's beige.

A gift of green mussels gone

Flash of blown snow in August

an aural blizzard driven wavy

as memory mirrors one lined

lost lane to hard cracked two:

drifts mounded to sandy dunes

of seaside grass that trembles

near curtain slats partly open

five hooked fingers pull shell

to split full lips from beardless

sands tracked on nacre floors,

cooled by paneled ocean breezes

doors swollen down to aqua sea

and a sticky lizard laughs beige

at the gravity of stucco walls

gladly not to sweat the beady

orange tricks of salty summer,

the pink necklaces of blush

that fritter in the mangrove

provide cover for the titter

of bashful larks as the scrub's

unexpected scent of raspberry

envelopes an unplucked flower.

The scene not too unseasonal

to offer wry spreading frost

webbed silver in spun summer

causing flashed peaks to stiffen

with the surprise of early chill:

to trace back crash to Wednesday

in the boney script come please,

penned in aqua ink the day before,

imagined blue flats a foundation

for the invite shy of bas-relief

the wet release at lost belief,

a delight to the slippery slip

a worn cloth belt champion grey

on the frayed white damask sofa

and sliding on pearly puffy drips.

One last peak at tawny tight skin

a museum quality veneer covering

fictions and histories and exits,

one lasts as the mirror glazes

ice forward glacier white

a straight-jacket yardstick

from an under blaze heard

the swoop of three egrets four

is white down in eastern sky

and just back from the stars:

a gift of green mussels gone.

one day your jellyroll will

One way to be in the world

is to live jerk furtive

in the quick store carpark

squat behind buick wheel

scraped and all banged in,

hungover unshaved erect,

with no pony tips to play.

Mocha big gulp balanced

on vinyl dash cracks with

your beige savior upright,

one gloss ring per bored day

making a coaster extra luxe

while spitting your dribble

onto seedy shifting carpet,

rubbed off brake and clutch.

Sneaker tongue shot eyelet

worn through daily rhythm,

enjoying only in your mind

white sweats stretched elastic

from damp plastic into trash

when the lap becomes the thighs.

Ritual light and sweet

a morning queue wait,

flapping brown packets

of sugar bulging pre-tear

next to spills of coffee

and ashes from the suck of now:

an ask never even noticed

glimmers into wasted guilt

from the gimlet of your eye.

Death wish goose limping,

invisible to chrome hoods,

tries to reach the wood

wondering how much glass

is really in this world.

it ain't why

with no keen counter to humid flats

rose of sharon mauves in mid-august

burst in the eye's betrayal legion and

under gables feral a longing drenches

poured down panes flapped lead peels

mixt and ridden by unguttered rain

curved up on wetness sweet at splash

to poke in furtive quiet an arbor hid

of unripe grapes climbing scaling blues

unfixed to picket and pecking lark

from rolling front behind her back

chopped bug tagged his rust creep box

red caboose with curled black arrow

lined blue and green and it was good

the sprayed art of him spiked in flats

black white moonlit that snapped away

skirt stuck paisley intact from quickly

licking came pale the same curved thigh

clanged iron recoil from a pearly quiver

balled up panties by the engine track

a nacre nib in fiction so perfect fades

recorded to a wrinkly black book

in pocket shady ink on onion skin

culled smile over donuts plated plain

and peaceful rings of cooling coffee

on gray speckled veneer chipped thin

to plywood dusted sweet and low

scratching the dawn he went up swiss

got on the china horse near needle park

and not returned through alpine drifts

less days ahead than behind the bark

what happens after fade to black

is just what happens now

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.

when sparrow faked eight to cover

There was an eyebrow of cirrus

stroked black above the sun,

black over white morning,

as I stared at garish clouds

and watched the soffets drift

under the steady clairvoyance

of two sage and observant crows.

I could smell the pitch to come,

a pitch that would hide the cones

under a white diguise of freedom:

if I had been halfway smart

instead of dumb all the way

then that downy woodpecker

would not have guessed right then

that I was smug and thus unguarded.

When I watched the flock

from the hemlock boughs

the traffic of wings

was appealing at first,

so ripe and bold and bracing

in late spring when wild beaks

peck fragrant nuts on bleak bark

and the mating flutter begins,

so behind the green facade

to mount eight pleasures

was almost numbing to do:

but in striped joy red ploys

were fadged in cackles

or plotted with a catlick

before the feathers bloomed.

A clam shell luna of night

illuminated her solstice of flutter

but a wet bird never truly flies:

when the new eggs hatched

they were tiger striped with lies

and I was not amused.

There will always be a bird

to fuck with a sparrow's head

if the blue jay is there

to bribe with timely trinkets.

There was only one truth she chirped

amid a burst of later trilling

a trilling never ending.

there was also water too

she handed me a card

but it was not as funny

as she had lead me to expect

I did not use an opener

but it may have been in a dream

where I was suddenly growing older

she wanted to be bedded

I was quite sure of that

for she told me so herself

collecting bling for the Ondines

I was also quite sure

that I was not intended

what the mocking bird said it's just a little

Some time after that season of keening rain

blanched the bleached slats of blue-gray siding,

the gutter's low scrub bloomed shortly once-

just before the blocked and frosted jalousies

shuttered the lime-streaked porch for life.

Inside the nod of flowers drifted away

drowning out pool filter chlorine whines

behind dapples on dry buttery siding

where once the rain had flowed in sheets

over a withering brown oak's low branches

and vibrant figs coaxed from depleted earth.

A table plated with unfinished eggs gives

a circus of coffee aged evidence of lift

in a place where nothing uplifting is left:

no mouth in the greasy skillet entices ears

with a low sizzle that has long since passed

into a torn curtain obscurring cloudy skies,

ripples form on the pocked aluminium shore

of lidless guardian service with steamy

gradients of starch under the striped rose

hanging a shadow over the newsprint news.

Puckered lilies would rather smooch the moon

than greet the apricot rise of morning stalled

long since a quartered acre of silence arose,

arose for a sun that only after stabs next door

and only after an early breeze shakes uneven rain

from other sun-drenched leaves of maple.

sang a ballad too

One item filling her arms

when he yawned the door

was the umbrella opened

when she left in afternoon,

an umbra begun in breath and blue

under a dome of breaking spines.

There was no salwar kameez or sari

even in aqua and ivory to meet

when she crossed the lintel,

her pale and ungainly jog

in the journey away from ash.

There was no magic in the candy wrapper

nor three-chord punk in sandstone places

nor copper rounds meant for flipping tails.

His mistake indeed.

The flat husk of a crushed toad

was sad baritone to his eyes:

the candor of found objects

easily embossed in giddy flock.

The pointing yellow markers

painted by an unknown hand

marked out a route in henna

that he already knew quite well,

for the want she imagined in him

was meet for her when peaking,

was only a blossom tip where

floating in a cloudy dome

the blood orange hollow rises.

a mondo of transcendent sorrow

Rounds of bubbled slag-iron

spread as ersatz cookies

under day's pale crescent

and nimbus frowns at play

to soothe the porcine boy

who only watched while

the moony boy became the moony man

standing on that sown strip of grass

between the same curb and sidewalk

observing the cars chrome blur

nonchalant with pot-bellied grin

year after passing year

the lawn sprinkler's syncopation

only worshiped by happy chance

with the rotation of each breath.

To polish in smile that door

with cut prism facets

and beveled oak galore

and prize a routine portal

into shallow self-reflection:

having been all things

being again one more

was barely a hair's ruffle

tickled by a light breeze

that hinted of rain

only later in the day.

psalm for the

A barely legible brownstone hand
on a weedy fenced garden tomb,
a weather bleached picket fence
draped with inky newsprint folds,
wet smears of that christ be risen

then

nickels arced onto felt-lined baskets
meant to wick away chance fears
with an ironclad smooch of redemption
from the pale and lined cadaver
whose son now landscapes mortuaries
with the stench of black mulch
and white and pink impatiens.

Backing with a warning beep
through the labyrinth
of every possible reality:
the manly joy of a perfect weld
painted and worn in blue,
a warm wash of diesel
exhausts from the autobus,

then

honeysuckle sweet crushed ice tea,
heather lane and holly court,
the patience of water
and the gluttony of flame.

There's nothing civil
about the nubbed ball
with a preteen idol decal
deflated in the gutter
laying limp and beached

but to blissfully piss
in the still of the night
while listening to satori
must be something just the same-

go at them with clippers
and your body hairs
find their own groove:

not always for the squeamish,

this life.

now we fade to green

When the snooze button breaks

only a drift from the dream

there was a chapel in the pines.

What I had called the marker
was really just a hallway light
to let me know you were coming

spring when promise blossomed.

That never really happened

because we were only born

a few brief moments ago,

triangles of narrative memory

etched in missives of moist clay.

The pastel dress of blue and lime
that I dreamt of lifting high
over your head in ceremony
to mark your privet

with mad muddy wails,
a vitrine before you sighed
in shatter on flat ground.

Many spoons of downing stew
sanded hunger into burnt tongues

of catty chatter bored in grainy doors,
leaving just enough browned sugar
to invent hallways of tongue
but not enough to sizzle brains
into a final spasm of lust:

I had already fucked everybody
that had ever danced
dances still
or will dance into the future.

The authority was you.

The Mysterious Topology of Knot Formation

What with his egg-shell skull

and red beard full of demons,

discoursing on at the wake

just below the broken mirror

to a table full of tear-stained relics,

his disagreement almost convinced me

that my perfect idea was lame enough:

but fat and squat and supremely certain,

he surely would have been uncomfortable

under a tent in the endless rain,

and his snort of sure derision

only served to steer my head,

to make my path that much clearer

after being almost kissed by Jimmy's axle.

(There's a possible context for this

for which I have no name or address-

one of the places where there's a shrubbery

on every goodly trimmed and godly corner lot

and a licking tongue for each steaming greasy pot,

where a perfect photo has yet to be taken,

in which the sneaky mouse cannot be seen.)

Suddenly a great truth dawned upon me-

that hippies can be assholes too.

His seed no match to man up man enough,

I made plans to see that house with the mansard roof,

with inside delivery and liftgate service,

because the claw that holds the bloody ball

has a ticking face on each grasping talon.

I had started to count before the true beginning

and almost missed the truest end:

Towards him, I just smiled and said of course.

unsolicited (and possibly lame) advice for two transcontinental lovebirds about to meet in meat-space after a whirlwind telephonic romance

Cry a little at the beginning

and also at the end

of your spell together,

and laugh as much as you can

for all the time that lasts between:

you already know it will go too fast.

Split and reappear just once with passion,

so you that learn each others patterns:

but do not confuse the rabbit with the hare.

What you at attempting

has a high degree of difficulty:

so cut yourselves and each other

a whole lot of slack

for all the time that lasts between:

and laugh as much as you can

for all the time that lasts between:

After all, in the end,

Omnia vincit amor.