Too many sirens

After tales of brave Odysseus passed, too many sirens 
still blown down Central to pass Magnolia, silent again 
at Rosalind. Some poorboy called the mayor before I 
bought some wax to plug the only way I hear. Heard 
one sad guy after the blues had swept the clean streets 
clean again: he was going to shit in a cup and leave it 
as his legacy, on the street. On a one-way street, one 
of the sirens, piercing loudly, said no way, go south.

Just when you thought it mattered

Nothing, she said, could be further from the truth.

The orange of the sunset owes you nothing
despite your claim to fresh air and heartache.

Once when you dreamt of a glorious future
the pointed hands seemed frozen in time,
starkly arced and black on a face gone pale
in anticipation of things to arise and come.

The ticking resumed but there was no reward,
only the rhythmic reminder of time passing
and the sinking sense that growth had ceased.

Nothing, she said, could be further from the truth.

Too many grails

So many wooden cups with long stems and chipped lips
scattered where the trees are green. Each cup real, each
cup a mirage where the trees are purple, each a mirage
where the trees are green, each cup real where the trees
are purple. Shadows dance near the dumpster and the
shadows play within the mist. Shadows are still and the
dumpster dances with the branches of that purple tree,
with the branches of that green. So many wooden cups
with chipped lips and long stems from which to drink.

Jonesing for an impression

A white chorus out of focus in a shadowed hallway,
a chanted cadence creeping out of dun but seized-

hymn singing sealed in search of hanged man ferns
beneath an ecstasy and a blurred floor and between

two walls. The mode is mysterious under soft ivory
arched ceilings in three dimensions this is only two,

so which face is blurry and which the sharp invert
so framed. What is done so hazy is but frozen blue.

One late autumn afternoon sings its own silent blues but it was morning too

A brief walk past the now that vanished
under leaves not quite curled to orange

leads to a plaza where cold statues trick
wet eyes by merely sitting. Weird to rush

by at sundown, trying to elide shadows
cast by yourselves statically unchanged

in movement. A whisper says you only
live thrice, a rushing lie turns to stone

on a brief walk, passing the vanished now.

A Romantic in the Tropics [sic]

The lower clouds scowl by with a grey alacrity
scooting under a white grim cirrus stasis. If an
explanation is desired, a stiff froze front claims
to say what's wanted to be said: a gecko's shed

will have to do, dry skin on a concrete and taupe
brick esplanade is its own excuse for being sunny.
Quick now! There is oleander for hiding but only
if you hurry: a proud red bloat is paradise enough.

Kandinsky in a mirror

Red candlelight blown
by frozen air, window snow.
In mirror: Kandinsky