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.

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