Down one side,
Up the other,
The kids have you
Climbing up the walls,
Count me out.

Say it isn't so,
Words along the way
Spell it every kind of wrong,
Take it easy,
Life is a merry-go-round,
Learn-as-you-go,
Flip of a coin,
Shop of horrors.

So there's no need for panic,
It's a moving picture,
Just keep your extremities
Inside the vehicle at all times,
Otherwise limbs may fall.

~
taking sides
picking flowers
dead and buried
on the surface line

counting hostages
trading stamps
extended infinitely
at right angles

cozy spaces
married couples
perpendicular
legs and mingled stria
one over the other

It's all conjugated
hyperbola
a tourist trap
with zero interest
for a year
~

They fought with swords and shields in sorted fields

of acrimony, declared life and limb to a barren kingdom,

bowed to the royal crown and wooed its fairest daughter.

They won her heart, graced her walls, and worked within them to produce an offspring

—a love child forged with the will of iron and a random, but possessive eye chart.

It nearly took the death of an empire to bring this passion to birth,

and here it so rests upon her breast, pleading an allegiance to her tattered flag.

Why even a thousand years of war demurred to her letting down her hair.

But whose army crossed that wanton bridge and stroked her into carnal submission?

Who kept watch at the crossroads?

History tells us c'est la vie was the culprit, and détente the better angel.

Sometimes it's useless to be useful...

Amaryllis in the Spring
because it's a pure & innocent thing

before a summer of rockets,
debris of hope—

              the Age of Discovery,
              the Punishment of Lust

an intravenous poison of decline forms
the new math: eye value minus itself

in waltz-time the body is radio-active,
there is no such thing as labor saving machinery

ask Garbo or Monroe, very happy one moment,
the next there was nothing left

their machines did the heavy lifting,
but one was not the loneliest number

Sun comes up,
she goes down
on some upended main drag,
if i were an archaeologist
i still wouldn't dig this place,
every other day she dwells
in tedious, empty cafés,
but on the weekends she flashes
her "license and registration"
to oncoming traffic,
hoping for grifted furlough
to wear as silken, shiny beads,
and so we ride
this merry-go-round,
because moving in circles
is far better than being trapped in a square,
we've stopped climbing the calendar
in search of higher elevation,
she used to pour it on thick,
stirring drinks inside my head,
i used to shake
worries from her hair,
now with bitter orange marmalade
low in the sky, and stacked against us,
it's home before dark,
lest our eyes open wide to see
we are nothing more
but strangers at sundown.