The banquet's in the first bite

The scent of a cigar smoked long ago addagio
wafts in a library with blur pages never unread,
erects at dusk a craving for blue grottoes lost.

They have come again late to prep the fountain
for the season, scraping the chipped azure paint
from under the sickly ice of winter's deep sleep.

There's pain in April when the water begins to sputter:
when above a crouching tiger below the torrent rushes.

You can get your life back

Bearded pansies grow in a thick explosion of bright violet,
that throwback yellow to when many winks wore beards.

Throwback no more, though some would hope to seek
for a wet beard whiskered in place today on chin or lips.

Three vultures and an aeroplane set sail in silent prayer
reaching up against blue sky fingers bleached to white.

The last tilt on the round-a-whirl is not always bitter

Make mine lemon if a fruit has to be squeezed
with godly hands onto any of the mounds I eat,

always forward to maximize a palate pleased
when yellow dawn leads sweetly to a final seat.

Death comes like a meteor that reminds you of yourself

My innocent search went obit black guilt
when a real gone mistress dead one year
was in read white news a ten years ghost,

but I think only of her self-absorbed spouse,
who was an awesome sage of software
but not of her,

who was an audiophile who listened
(as if the messiah was in every groove)
to everything but her.

After codeine, bone, and rum
she said I was the best fuck ever.

I was not the first.

The genius of what is

If there was nothing to be said
for hot red heat and deep grey pressure
every pebble would be a gem.

Pebbles everywhere searching
for red heat and grey pressure,
waiting for a hard god to cut marquise.

I'm glad I made the box before the box made me

When I was sloppy lost in a hollow echo dry,
and loping, laughing wolves heard me howl, I

saw another wolf chomp on a dry yellow volume,
dripping scarlet teeth onto a marble spine chewed.

I watched in steely coolness a stone hard chisel
cascading sawdust from a cornered rabbet too,

chewing acid volumes sprayed in breathless sparks
over me, grainy chatoyant with a sly, sheepish grin.

It's black and brown on a distant hill

A prayer for gray ablutions early made
with soapy green shoots of silky tease,
some too tender for the frozen hardness
that harrows brown in hard cheat spring.

An early spring not messiah called -
born to wash again is born too late,
only when the watch on your wrist
stirs a plot with glowing hands and
henna paint beads with lost magic,
a lingering saint in post damp rinse.

So many ways to be fooled
and mine is so often forecast
in a veil of endless drizzle in
that cool wet fog I must prefer.

Every day I ask the question:
what if everything I believe is wrong
and I am really just an asshole?

A man in a long black coat
told me to chew on thyme,
a sprig will turn to lemon
and leave a nice aftertaste.

For a moment, he was right.