There was a place called nice before the bells

Rosy pink limbs contorted at grotesque angles
the hound of bells lopes in circling arabesques
narrowing the confines of a dark heavy prison.
The arms and legs are leaden, the air trapped:

A pot-bellied man with one crossed eye under a trilby
smokes, self-satisfied, a foul and cheap cigar, smugly
confident that his disfigured wife will always obey-
a melted duck ornament fell from the festive stove
and burned her neck and shoulder. Childless she remains.
He walks the blue streets alone, out of place and grand.

The hound of the bells brooks no dissent in pink
limbed contortions, their wet snarling corrals all
the heavy inmates into a tiny inner hellish grove
where blinded the baying echoes from the blank fog.

Those Locrian chords bellow distant. Thin man.

From start to

The darkness feared is the darkness pursued in claret's
deep scarlet legs sanguine, a stemmed bowl also light
and shimmering stands collapsing in reflective sunset,
gray smudges heralding the inevitable escape of night.

It's hard to remember there was a meadow passerine
when everything is broken: the maiden corrupt in blue
and the crone coruscating in a thread-bare robe lined
with tissue shreds. I had once had dreams uplifting too.

I want to ball my fists hard into my armpits and fly away
or gnarl my hands and play the gargoyle cloaked in nice.
In soft breathing she dreams of leading the child to play
through sleet snow in a grey granite quarry clothed in ice.

Bring me the Russian hat lined in fur, my head is cold,
and I'm worried about the marinade.

We laughed, she didn't

Purple purple hills rise above the daily quotient,
little peaks of man-made spires grouse through
bare trees in winter just past white solstice now
silent still like an old song promising redemption

but there is no redemption now only icing white
on a cake that will soon collapse upon itself
complete. Not as bad as it seems, celebration
often lifts the mood, always creates a moment

of noise profound in its distraction. We blow the
noisemakers to confound the laughing children
in a closet with two sliding doors, mayhem from
the packaged diapers strewn on floors, blowing

a cheap plastic horn to torment one gleeful sleeper
on a tan bear stuffed, a purchase that annoyed her.

Healing hands and a knead to palms

Again down the straight dark street familiar,
holiday periphery red, white, and greenish
mere distractions, if that, so breathless bored
until a left turn where a perfect waxed car sat

once was a double lot there smooth and grassy
a little coupe slept in two-tone taupe and brown,
gave rise to a fantasy of cool. Wanna date, baby?
My tranny is push-button, Plymouth automatic too.

Three houses now where that grass once grew,
three more blocks along cookie cut white capes
and a right turn into memories: a youthful flu outta
cigarettes causes a feverish walk to Jack's deli for
some cool mentholatum smoked waist out window,
grey ashes on pitted aluminium frames an only clue.

Slow the drive and smoking menthol still to pull into
a patterned macadam drive past it's black prime,
some lonely cracks on blocks where a wind blown
screen blew Suzanne right off the porch untrellised;

now a cherry Camry driven was a wish once
in heavy purple purple flannel, tomorrow we
shall move you to a bed where the snow can
be seen, gone drifting in a dream grown white.

I would love

I would love to sit with glasses of wine and you
if for no other reason than to study your face,
no other reason than to drink your idle patter
into lips languid lips while you go on amusing.

Say what you will, I'm in a you adoring mood-
each little stridency, each charming blush, excitedly
brought forth by the ruby rush of warming Malbec
only serving to hasten my silly dreams still within.

I will listen to your words of course all in course,
all but totally slayed, your face flush with beauty.

If a prolonged hesitation between sound and sense appears

so must it be as a lamb's sweet foot is offered buttered
and a memory riced rheumy is soul taste toasted cumin-
within that taste a wide taught waste crosses shuttered
with puffy-eyed dazes down under daisies tautly shoed in.

When frail male hearts fail it prevails non-denominationally
and larded hard. Oompah, a blackened band puffs to grieve,
while a glance at belt bulge widths wilts to discretely deceive
a secret wanton scream over the tone-deaf wait, intentionally.

See what I mean? Say yes to me liar, I am no blue sooth
and neither and both are true at the solemn end of words:
a triangular pumpkin filled fritter dropped tray to booth
strays beyond salvation. Back to a kitchen, kitsch absurd

in days of dancing. Asked too soon to dray the grey pall,
why eulogize this long? Why wait? Reply. Folks, that's all.

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