Laughing Sneer

Death comes in a cloak that is hard to recognize.

I was walking near Azalea Park when I saw a spray
of blossoms that could've brought some yellow  joy.

They did not.

In the coal towns of Pennsylvania a man
has the crazy idea that his bowels will not move.

Surrender in the alley where Milton went down.

The laughing sneer of evil when it thinks

it has you caught.

The Language of Sunset

The language of sunset describes hieroglyphs of light
which, wisely, the palm fronds ignore. Watched from
a distance on high, through grey aluminum uprights
she walks unaware, metronomed by a creepy thumb.

(mist forgiven is mist forgotten down by the river.

there was that time when a bad thing happened.

the door to the chapel was rusted in a season when even melting could not be forgiven.

maybe in the light green spring a small salvation is born.

maybe under diaphanous blooms he will offer empty words devoid of healing. )

The language of sunset swirls down swirly orange
despite the mistakes of that word. Well, here goes:
what beats on a mapled uke is a homily on a range
strummed from a subtle D-major's humbling tones.

Body found on beach at Sea Bright

A body found on beach at Sea Bright turns on sand
and breathes: coughs a tangled seaweed at the tide
and saves his soul: what was alive on a fairy strand
left him sole at night, his trench coat dry drunk tied

with its belt in a loop like Bogart, a way to justly sleep
on the slippy giant jetty rocks after a fey roundly night
of joyed carousing: with a kiss unanswered he creeps
down the wooden drop of wounded stairs, takes flight

across the darkened road, dark store under the stairs
closed but unlit merchandise points the drowned way
of escape: denied, salty now with surf spattered tears
he seeks tidal release in a far weedy sea green spray

of midnight. Off the tide in a hollow is a seaside dawn
lost to him in a leaf strewn blind as he stands to yawn.

When the grey rain comes drowning

When the grey rain comes drowning though pastel,
washing a turquoise bench near two curved palms,
sadness. A numbness in hard red hands and sandals
streaks the blinded window with moist rinsed songs.

Many's the picture that curls in a cork-board frame or
gathers dust in an obscure drawer, recoverable only
when, in late August, crickets can be sensed at dusk
or black passerines fly headstrong into thunderstorms.

There was a photograph of you I almost missed, a profile
shot in late summer when the smell of leaves turning to
crimson begins eclipsing the promises of spring. Winsome,
you shyly teared, but we laughed about it later over wine

If I died right now, I'd have to say it was a pretty fantastic life

Big cursors want very badly to run your life
for in you value exists the nature of which is
lost today. When a cold rain wafts grey grief,
and pebbles a little dampening puckered kiss

it is possible to forget life, if only at the punch
of hazy late afternoons. Haze and cold together
remainder deep pockets that should be scarlet
and free. But should but really hurts your heart.

A Small Crematorium Can Only Burn Little Things

Upward facing leopard is a pose that few attempt,
also the schoolyard will seek to hide its red bricks
behind old charcoal stains that rise over hard pent
rust iron doors. Tight shiny coils, a cast door thick

on a handle that requires you to lift. Here was fire
applied to damp papers that needed to be hidden.
Peels lifted by flames curled every dried leaf higher,
each lick hiding a lie in letters. The pale boy bidden

by black habits rakes after days bygone in cool ashes
looking for raised capital alphabets in the palimpsest.
There was one 'A' that outlived fiery janitorial trashes,
left exposed on red brick creases squaring, now best

remembered as a curse. Up to facing a leopard pose
it's the hardest part to face, even just now, I suppose.

Joy

The joy I felt when you bent your warm neck on mine
in the curvy aftermath of beige pillows happily tossed,
and your sweet deep snore.

It's the only joy I will ever need.

Draft of a Poem not Written

When the window broke with a wide teal shatter,
a lattice pine painted in this world, but strained,
burst into a wet torrent. Hurricanes arising matter
when, unexpectedly, a blue frame is broken. Rains

misunderstood wash away squares looping green,
but yellow bleaching on a toothy tin frame, swells
when the weather turns drier. A sneaky desk seen
as elder mahogany had no shallow bluish inkwells

but two creaky drawers. We ran ourselves silly
in a shallow concrete bowl near the graveyard
in anti-gravity glee, slipping on the moss willy-
nil in green defiance of the dead. Sanctus hard

blew when a storm came and left with cool grey-
ozone in my nostrils flared, a sparrow flew away.

Chapter One

Off-key melodies show the genius in the rhythm
of austere cold in the yellow shale neighborhood
where the cute doctor shaved downstairs. Ahem.
Yes, doctorates are awarded to the expected brood

Because dark blue courses lay down a bonded way
that will not, for a gold chance, be easily forgotten.
Up the stairs a landlady starts at a pale green May
coming through her window not uninvited, but then

reconsiders. A child's short bark is only the start
of a correspondence that will haunt a generation
that is yet to be born. Yellow letters often marked
by the pale man late of radio did birth the notion

of a halting voice that still quakes to speak. What 
if a block from the cold stones a quiver arose but

To call it swimming is weird

The day I overdosed on anchovies was a cloudy day
with winds from the east that purple and lime green
blustered while a lame purpose from the east swayed
twin palm's golden birthing into that dictionary scene. 

A little cow funk evaporated through the clear divide,
enough to color my now room from a cool white vibe
to something more like blues ascension in crazy time.
(When salty little fish grow wings you'd better sigh.)

Skipping, skipping, New Morning and only had groove
enough to smell the chocolate and crave salty legumes.
A taste is sweet enough when the skillet starts to move,
little black specks in your roux: a solemn hint of tombs.

Bass lines make no issues with glass that so easily slides,
down in a crypt I hearded crimes from crispy fins inside.

One Afternoon

One of the greatest pleasures in life
is to lie skin to skin with another human being.

To feel hot breath on your neck or
to breathe hot breath on the neck of another.

To feel your hairy legs wrapped around hairless legs
or to feel hairless legs wrapped by your hairless legs
or to feel your hairless legs wrapped by hairy legs
or to feel hairy legs wrapped by your hairy legs.

To feel the flat red flush of a heaving breast.

It's just a little longer, is all

First in the barnyard, I noticed the brown:

When the young pretender entered it was bad
but the blood was already washed away. I heard
the boss scratching, ready to crow at morning sun.

I looked up at stucco, a shadowed swept low arc,
hands soon to expose every crack and the housing
of legs that despised the sun, seeking a fey succor
before the rays bleached a little joy away for good.

It's just a little longer, is all.

When mother came to town

After the leaf filled pool had drained
there was still the linger of her smile
for the rotund boy attempting to sun
in a day of intermittent showers that

threatened to ruin her coif into damp
grey curls redolent of Grecian ruins.
He was a gladiator once, pride of her
loins, conquering all that she loathed.

Now her blue deck shoes curl and she's
chilled in the shadow of a low arc'd sun.

When she moved in feline grace, the mind
only thought of nails, orange came normal 
against the brown drift of floating leaves.

One Purple Iris

Blah blah would be a cogent way to blah
but whose mind doesn't tire of it all the time.

But I heard something about a mud bubble
which mattered greatly. The mud swallowed
everything. And it splattered everything too.

To crawl out into the warmth was to view
a miniature purple iris opening at dawn.

The mud swallowed everything but a crawl
out mattered. A dewy iris purple in the sun

was all.

Sometimes in Autumn

Iconic in the autumn breeze, 
she smirks before the train. 

If another leaf falls, 
a rake would come in handy:

good gloves on the handle 
might protect the tender skin.

All the Faces Shaded by Evening Maples

Checkered blue curtains undulate in the light spring
breeze, carrying twilight kickball screams sore from
macadam shins skinned up to a second floor screen,
taunting the feverish in close quarantine whose rashy
grasp implores but cannot hold a tiny pine that stays
deep with inchoate needles pale green and yellow in a
hidden hole drilled some days past under swirled teal
tile pried loose where the glue was hastily misapplied.
The brown scab innocence within its safe grey circle
is absent-mindlessly flicked. A pale sharp half-moon,
it surprises with a red eruption right before bedtime.

Somersaults

Little flowered dress will not go round off
where bare soles find solace in pale blades
of green. Gospel scales under the umbrage
of prior hammered drums still soar despite

the drifting solar influence. If clouds bluing
had souls, and maybe they do, then drifting
would be this innocence. 

Something I forgot to say

A check from the ice and snow covered north
signed in purple ink that I cannot in faith sign
arrives into the temperate zone of my palms
waved in a slight northern invasion of sunlight.

Once, in the freezing rain, with breath expired
in an aspiration of slippery delight, I closed the 
shiny door of an emerald car, mirrors befogged
in anticipation of a warm slide into icy blackness.

That icy blackness never happened despite the
false certainty that grows in winter that spring
will never erupt in green shoots from the black.
A wee leek curled in slumber can be coldly cruel.

Now, the winnings from another life unwrapped
scream from a previous scratch that left little
crumbies on the quarter and the oak marbled
table, marbles gone but the crumbies remain.

Let's call it square

So much happens in the window within a window
when you believe in glass and northern pine frame
rectangles for the view. Look away if you can start
to see the curliecues of paint painted long enough
ago to white curl in the autumn mist. Outside, the
maples turn so fast from green to red and orange 
that the frame cannot be frozen even if your own
breath was misting so. White frames be lying too.

Looking for an echo

Play some doo-woop when I close,
earth angel a cappella into sixteen
candles overdose, looking for one
echo reverbing into soul complete.

Sweet sounds soar off subway tiles,
a white and grimy womb for rebirth
scrubbed by angelic harmonies neat,
little Frankie's tomb is not plumb yet.