When Aqua Went Missing

Upon runes of sandstone scratched by gnats,
unrubbed and legible through a rubber sole
the squealed aria of high pitched muddy traffic,

It's always by the shoreline
that these dreams twist and turn.

where byssal threads of mussels cling nearby
and sing the opera of a soupy sloshing tide
and the primordial blunging of man and water,

caught by fear only half-remembered in fear,
where brazier toes were orange embered
in the burning embroidery of a cast iron grate.

As I reached for the white skirt
at midnight it seemed to come alive,
flouncing scarlet and rusty frills
with dental and gnashing intent.

barely noticed in the trills and wash of tide and song,
the flutter of the shadow of the tissue that cleanses:

I heard urges at which you feigned surprise,
though it was only the burnished lead
of a bass line thudding the spirit
that thundered in the night.

there's never none of these demure boys
that comes to any proof.

Once a melody conferred

I saw a girl brush her hair there, once-
but became rushed into the sparrow's eye.

A refracted patter from a rise of pine,
marooned to pining with sawdust filigree-
to cling to twist to turn to needles
in the sappy knot of walking away.

Something since has sintered the evergreen
into a sinistral stump of weeping silence,

from that dust up to a musty pedigree
I have grown aphasic in the orange muster
of a lattice sun and ovulate cones.

I saw a girl brush her hair there, once,
or so the sparrow seemed to song.

Nausea at Moon-rise, Re-Birth at Dawn

During the brief run from a spinning light
to the brass flashed plate of a keyhole tide,
you could feel the tunnels of fictions shrink
and freeze the geologic laws that govern stone:

black veiny marble with frothy pearls of clot
bled in gothic red on the funnel's twisty script.

Did I mention the ticking palpitations,
spiking along the cold wrought fence
with odd aspic medallions of even hearts?

Yes, it was a pocked marked sweaty frolic
that fashioned an image in the curl of your locks,
pursued though we were through the cycling spin
by moon kissed slurping through the lesser ferns:

we were feeling that fear that distracts from fear
if only for a fleeting clock of silvery breath.

I am speechless and yet I speak,
guileless and yet I beguile,
thoughtless and yet I think:

man, that is really boring-
one of the many days I often die,
in that place before the dawn.

The pin-prick mantissa of the visible kiss,
raised only a fraction of what was possible:

an orange blossom that unfolded in a bowl of broth
and slowly spun the hairy prayers of multiple birth.

Then, we ran into the gray creped mansion-
the laconic one slurped yellow bile,
eyes down in a library of musty footnotes
and dusty bindings muted in velvet rays
while the clever one spun of glee from fusty skeins
a dramatic green gift for the loquaciously visored.

Whether it was the ruby ink or emerald glass
we could not tell in the pre-dawn light,
trading the silver breath of tomorrow
for the baffling tongue of acid now.

wait a minute,
wait a minute,
wait a minute-
the sun's about to rise

Perhaps there was no illumination,
but there was a cirrus palate
that almost licked the sky.

three smudges in the puddle

Whispers From a Rose

All voices hum now:
each murmur a perfect poem,
vibrations blossom.

Quantum What?

Infinite X's-
life's linear equation:
whatcha solvin' fer?

Concrete Paranoia

What if
half of you

got big

and

half of you

got small?

In Search of the Spectaculous

Lifting an exhausted sock with prehensile toes
from the counterpane side of dawn's downy rose
is the minimally primal use of quintuple digits,
greater is savagely ripping a ripe papaya for musky seed
with sticky juice on warming fingers and frisky wrists,
and licking the thickening syrup with a simian glee.

There are seven ways that are less than prime,
all secretly scratched in clay by a whiskered few
and here we only lightly tease by noting two-
three through six are partly dusky and void of rhyme
but number seven, of necessity, involves a clue.

The clue is that little miss misguided Moffit,
made a u-turn and couldn't tough it:

Charmed by crystal and the spectrum produced,
she glittered through aqua and orange and spruce,
neither cowed by refraction nor sunlit but chance,
she spun through the motions of an anodyne dance,

At the bitter script of cuneiform prophets
she began to, leeringly, just peek askew,
coaxing brass music from ethereal bracelets
and waiting for clouds to razor the moon.

The clue is a little miss misguided Moffit,
she made you turn and couldn't rough it.

Murky bowcups indeed.

an almost innocent haiku

saplings bow to sky
oven mark now passing nine
salt and peaches pie

Turning left for the milky way

The chrome knife of a yellow fossil
is your cut bone that cuts me too,
entangled neurons silver buffed
in the jungle subways humid brew,
prior to shrill and before the blade
basalt scratched the sankofa thrill-

we were engraved by comrade baby chrome
into a goosed cadence of pablum clumps:
from the stomping argyles of pedantic hue
to the saline paths of washed-up krill-
a tidy nexus of etiolating fuck-ups ensued
before I left my sun-block out of reach
in the sandy bunkers on the washed-out beach.

Idle graphite scratched on wordy grout
their tack itself a talismanic snack,
hinting at the facial rituals necessary for
protection against sardonic maps of melt:
long in the sun but not long enough
I needs some heat for my feets please.

When hurtling and huffing on a sunset train
in a westbound carriage of terminal sun,
a bad pun in Dutch about cannon fodder
does not stop the pain or cancel the jones
of watching unpleasant seasons tick through time
a wrist for which is overkill, limping into stardom-

when the pillow cut meets the fossil bone
birthing a little flutter in the licks of distant stars.