a frame in time saves none

ruby shimmers through the green mirage,
the hummingbird in iridescent hover:
can you capture time?

it becomes

a magnet that draws ferrous thought to fore-
a lesson in the tricky rates of hidden change
the bald clown is bearded with spiky chance:
back then, your weapon was merely a pen.

my, how you've changed, says a vacant friend-
your steadfast mirror lied day by dripping day:
fuck that mendacious glimmering sycophant,
lies, damn lies, and ballistics.

it might have been the beating wings
flapping into spinal clouds and dreamy chakras
or just the blurry haze of Euclid Avenue:

this is blinded now by greeting cards of pink and lace
and the perfumed memory of shocked receipt
in the gone horizon where the lick was expectation.

the certain demise of an ill-kept orchard
can fool the eye with a sudden blushing bride-
the failure to prune concealed by orange blossoms:
part the white curtain to reveal
the studious gift of kaleidoscope planting:
a lovely shoot that trembles the ribald god.

from the scary stumps of winter,
we get the herbal tendrils
of a wet and luscious spring
and the shampoo of eternal youth:
oh green, take me to an ice-pop moment,
the sky-blue ecstasy that surpasses all understanding:

can a brother get an egg cream?

each pulse of the heart tells a tale
that is muddled in its capture,
only the stills have meaning.

a sleepy march towards the hearse,
a pattern watched through faulty clocks
becomes the measure of a certain lie.

worship can be smaller than you imagine,
unless you're a special occasion.

an uncollectible invoice

i. woe to incur a debt

a physical generosity that is purely visual
is a scrappy way of giving blue cheer to the poor-
the strains on ribbed and purple silk
reveal a promise of transcendent exposure:
the shopping cart follows the minty grail,
inviolate chrome on the squeaky, sticky tiles.

collectors have an exact way of mounting:
clear hinges that mask the damage
with harmless opaque wings barely clipped,
sleek pins that map transgressions
with tiny orbs of red and blue,
that track, with oblique mirth,
the subtle smirks of the bon vivant,
the inner masks of conquest joy.

the split between the assumption of the real
and the dreams that masks reality.

ii. still we ask for service

when the flushed landscapers arrive
with their buckets of gaudy bronze
and seek to fix your patina fountain
with a box of fixtures beyond your call-
from a rusty dribble into drains unknown
to a complex address for a likely bill.

eyes closed, ears silent to the mad dream,
slipping into the sweet smell,
the murky scent of fresh clipped grass
and the bass hum of drums of expectation:
close your eyes and breathe
the first breath of verdant spring.

the unfolding of the swollen creases
begins in sacred earnest:
monarchs, moths, and pea-hens
with turquoise, shrieks, and gray.

the dwarf's vision of a setting sun

in the aftermath of a comfortable madness,

one can flip the striped hammock into a swirl

that equals the strident carp in the orange pool.

a candied leap from the aqua wash of pitted dreams

is refreshing in the humid curl of wilting leaves-

sweet scales can measure and cover the splashing

in a way that offers a coy disguise of hidden gills.

the wave of fin that says hello 

is magic in its greeting.

live like your brain is small

before the tiger growls,
it is fair to request an epiphany-
a minor something to balm the rips
that unexpected claws might cause:
it is easier to blame
than to cage the beast.

a clinging vine is sure to kill
in a way unlike the tiger-
one a swift and bloody gasp,
which is acceptable in its kind,
a sort of slipping oozing end
that is not without satisfaction.
the other wraps and compresses
the lungs into a deadly gun for breath
that is too slow for flesh to grasp
and causes greater torture.

some days you think,
some days you feel,
some days you turn,
drowning under the water wheel.

outside, the finicky twins
ride the twittering tailcoats
of turncoats of irony:
the neglected lawn chairs
stand mossily opposed.

there was a turn on the road to Damascus,
that seemed to do no good,
if you look at the unturned history.

when the chartreuse ozone
comes tumbling down,
smart rodents seek the rafters.

peel your onions and try to stifle weeping.

idle tears of fractal grey

i. when weather had a hierarchy

one might think that the tubular rivulets

would bring a kind of silver exurberance,

driven downward by an eastern mist so cold-

a washed forgetting to force away
the gray urge to seek a fetal grave

in the crushes, quilts, and bays.

downward, yes, these graphs of life

that mock, with only lurches,
a quirky stream that conquers all-
vertigo merges on the liquid pane:

sash tombs that quaintly slam
the dreamy fluff of merely ermine.

this crown is hard to fathom.

ii. now and then can tango

not a missing of the past,
but only what it meant
on aging sheets of blue then,
and now that now is now.

outside the ash-framed plane,
a season of yellow diffidence
framed by current daffodils
and clusters of purple hyacinths,
exists in a time that is neither then nor now.

it is possible to watch this twice removed,
in a subtle kind of trickery-
a blur of blue that nets the eye:

the window streaked with gnat buffets,
a certain proof of lonely primes-

or recovered views that weep in rhyme.

the separate streams make one,
eventually and inevitably,
but why does it take so long?

the pulse of low fidelity

a percolation of two penny nails
that seeks to pop from wallboard landscapes,
a festive fleck of paper paste
brushed on a pastiche of filthy seams.

a stroke of misfortunate aim that reddens
the pastoral view of neon, with sweet alarm,
into an afterimage of chartreuse revelation
that compromises the chill of no vacancy
with a vagrant rub on borders brick and white.

the pink hammer and velvet stirrups
form a sneaky pact to breech the act-
pressed so perfectly on bitter drywall:
fleshy prickles on the flocked blossoms,
no tumbler striped of frozen cubes required,
concentric rings of primal tones suppressed-
not the lemon grimace of the leering spy,
or the progeny of the wall-eyed stud.

in the aural embrace of furtive squeaks
the rumble of the rusty springs cries blue
or, perhaps, a long lost periwinkle hue:

it's just a joist away in the secretion of dawn,
he is always there in your moment of surrender.

a charlatan with best intentions

beneath the overhung silver of the birch strewn gulch,
there seeded the brawny moss that gulfed our spray;
there beneath the ferns that craved a sense of metal
we separated the vanilla branches whose swollen pods
encouraged the enshrined urn of verdigris towards burn:

there in the sinuous incense grasp of smoky fingers
we became the zombies of the lily rites of spring
and took no fear from the pinch of fervent buds
or the reverential hard caress of a haunch gone astray:
a scarlet preparation for the harvest yet to come.