Oma watching
television downstairs,
while blue room sheets
squared back in peels,
& honeysuckle's ladder
up the brickwork
reached like spring fingers
towards my window,
where in brown shadows
I saw foxes steal over
the crumbling drive,
& clouds crashed trees
atop deer eating lawn
where uncle's autos coruscated
in the tall wilds.
In that bed I came of age
with thoughts of women naked -
New candles ached
and led the way deeper
as they dripped
all across my adolescence.
Years bloomed inside me,
stones fell from the sky,
hard as ***; fox bones
slept in the wood,
the televisions all sat,
idols on the lace,
flickering presses
that touched every wall.
The moon a wet thigh -
something sang,
& burrowed beneath the pillow.

I hold out my face
to the society of her gaze,
while a dusk erupts
to a three day blow,
& chapels of snow
jilt into soot knots
beneath a cruel
broadcloth dune.
I hold out my face -
but now to an absence.
Thousands of miles
sway in the poplars
before flying away,
away from me.

Her eyes, posts
of bare hazel clique,
survey me in this chair.
Her hair gathers in rude
thunderheads by the ear,
black about the field.
Her engraved mouth
is crowded with oblivion
and serendipity, beckons
a foreshortened hand
that warbles with filaments
of anticipation.
The aspect of her neck
brims with motion -
a swan on flat water
chases the smeared
crumbs of evening.
The beach of her *******,
her cheek, her blush bough brow,
Her knee, in repose,
sustains a milk leg - 
Her face, gathered 
to watercolor thought -
And behind it all, a mind
rejoicing in the sun-
O portrait, be glad
you have no memories -
with every new pair of eyes
you have a new lover,
a new lover, a new lover.

prosecco wasps
drift on claw songs
for roots of hiccups

Frank takes another ****,
& ribbons of condos
emerge from the hills.
He leans into a rustle
of unwrapped rain,
waiting for it to slip off
so he can fly fish again
out at Michael's Mill.
He's been cooling heel
for hours, but he makes
a good point:
the river yields bluegill,
the kitchen table yields
bills come due.

Drinking four hours now
in a pool hall, Larkin folded
behind me as a I draw
back the cue. Distressed,
lines snap the stroke:
The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.
Not tonight: clouds crawl
on sick bellies to an Alka-Seltzer moon.

But drink gone dead, without showing how
to meet tomorrow – is molded
perfectly to this blind drunk, thawing
beneath breezy transom, getting dressed
for a ride home after going for broke,
drinking anesthesia and losing all finesse
early in the binge, kindly corralled
by patient friends deaf to last call's croon.