a bearable sadness

the nervous quiver crescents
her infinity pointing finger,
frames a slivered grin that rounds
a silver bend of no remand
to question the crook that beckons.

a paucity of proud ferns
governed by a cyclic transit
waltzes a bearable sadness
into the ephemeral forever,
neither controlled nor understood
in the stiletto culture of cut stones.

the swift paving does not matter,
points of elegance are discarded
into the dusty bins of then.

bad trump and leaky skins
thinly flashing, flashing, flashing:
a fanfare of loneliness
wetly queued by damp embouchure.

a misty sadness only bearable
exquisitely barks from piers of gray.

we bow to bovine competence

the lowing now complete,
in the depression of the dew
we are freed of onyx grimace
and the jeweled greed that cuffed,
unexpectedly this,
a sooty halo of clever slavery:

it asked of us a trembling throne
unwanted by sire or throng
and muffled by the why:

resurrected by milky tides,
forced from the warm blue melt
into the green of trembling dawn.

the low again will echo home:
a rescue from the herd of circles
and the smell of trampled grass.

crumbled like the walls of when

the feet are still curled impatiently
outside the down filled womb,
mooching a cool that will not blow
in a tomb beyond encumbrance:

shadowy etchings shudder doom
and there is no horn to shriek,
despite our brassy confidence.

this sense of autumnal coldness
is not thawed by rhythm springs
that creep but cannot squash
the mordant bounce of echo
or the freckled swell of tears:

we both deny retarded sleep
and force the deck for giggles-
gray swabs wash a tidal grief
that is terrycloth and tearful.

when the seasonal leap is readied,
only the wings of the wasp do sting.

visions of Ruthie

in the ocean where I took her,
she was early beyond the breakers:

from the probing waves that tempt,
foaming in the pleasing salt,
she was fractious in the spray.

somehow trapped in sea glass tides,
I could only hold the strand-

abrade the grains of fingered beach
to ease her drowning image
from my cloudy sail of hours.

oh sea! oh beach of swelling seasons!

she clawed an eight piece scuttle
in a season strewn with minor wrecks:

far into sunlight the waterless ocean
carelessly lapped its bony diet.

the brain unfolds like mobius

i. the fever cops a heavy dream

denseness is birthed with a twisted cord,
a procession of blue pines that chants weight
and perversely collapses into seedling rust-
finial density that kills conviction
and smugly fevers the physics of crush,

a vernal notice that pushes breath
and pulse to the purple of freeze-
nothing compressed completely
can last devoid of gravitas
or a gloss of verbal trust:

it's not the sweat that matters in the humid night,
just flanneled pajamas with pockets that cling.

ii. the sweet irony of singular redemption

generally mounded into cairns at poles,
out of the icy north we twist,
in the hoary south we spurt:

we bark, we crow, we cluck, we bay-
renewal is beckoned but suspect now
in the spreading of our malty grain.

the ruler embossed with gold ticks is useless,
and censers only panic the sweaty scream,
mystery flayed away from normalcy
as the second grace is offered thirst:

around again the carnage first
and the weight and birth of pain.

it's all happening at once

in the static waiting moment
I think incessantly of your ring,
trying to seize each breathy moment
that crosses the frosty line
hoping the ice will freeze this yearning
that is then and now and when.

to the graceless eyes of passing hints
the rhythm of your form is lost
in the flutter of wind-blown litter,
blinded by the climate chaos
of handbill bark and paper cups:
heads down and hands in pocket,
your spectral moment breezes.

I see you in laundromat abstract,
tumbling in space that morphs to time
in a front-loading gurgle of foam,
ending in rivulets near the wash of cry:
your eyes inked upon papyrus
as the dhows pass with striped sails
curved against the racing clouds;
even then it seems I loved you.

did my chase continue
through the colored clocks of carousels
where nocturnal spins are normal
and stallions bare their frozen grief?

was that you pounding linens
on flat black shoals
under the flowering quince
with its orange promise
of tart speckled fullness?

I sense no tearless eyes
or dry loins or barren deltas
on the shoals of our slick issue,

merely hints of did and do and when.

the sacrement of territorial markings

now in shadow honey silhouettes
are each a metronome of dripping passion
roughed in gray face by gentle flames,

waxy licks run from saline tongues.

the stained glass is marked in shadow,
a rainbow chronicle of lust and waste
where martyrs are mortared and tasted
in the dewy sip from a piquant chalice.

statues flicker in the fire
that naturally claims
the sooty sweating brick
and persuades the pulsing vault:

a crypt of tongues lashes the mossy seam.