I have been trying for that mountain top tranquillity
whilst eating salted dinners and flicking the channels.
The rain stains the plastic patio, looking out onto the
garden fence, the concrete perimeter; the brick wall.
All indoor furniture orientates towards the television,
my family now but fellow spectators, instead of blood.
The fruit bowl holds post-its and tangled earphones
instead of pomegranates, clementines, and apples.
A writer's worst enemy is not her depressive vanity,
more the ivy creep of boredom and lack of taste in life.
We are running out of reality with each passing hedgerow,
through soap operas, wallpaper, and that halogen glow.

Revolving in oval loops of solar speed,
Couched in cauls of clay as in holy robes,
Dead men render love and war no heed,
Lulled in the ample womb of the full-tilt globe.

No spiritual Caesars are these dead;
They want no proud paternal kingdom come;
And when at last they blunder into bed
World-wrecked, they seek only oblivion.

Rolled round with goodly loam and cradled deep,
These bone shanks will not wake immaculate
To trumpet-toppling dawn of doomstruck day :
They loll forever in colossal sleep;
Nor can God's stern, shocked angels cry them up
From their fond, final, infamous decay.

some dogs who sleep ay night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you drank,
your hair coimng down you
wanted to explode out of
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a
rotten
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you've been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
the rest;
you were the only one
who understood
the futility of the
arrangement of
life;
all the others were only
displeased with
trivial segments,
carped
nonsensically about
nonsense;
Jane, you were
killed by
knowing too much.
here's a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about.

Death
is
the
home
of
maggots.
I
am
its
carrion.

I become more erudite at night.
I feel a sprite within me ignite words,
by candlelight I feel the old masters lift their quills,
place nib in ink and nib to paper.
I invite their words and imagery to suffuse me,
use me in this modern world.
Make new what once was old.

Where nib would glide I touch my screen,
watch avidly as sentences appear,
magic symbols transformed to meaning,
like runic stones of old, or bones thrown for reading.
My words by candlelight enfold and embrace me,
in the knowing language of the poets, bards and storytellers.
Tonight, I delight at my copywrite scribed by candlelight.

Ruby red slippers, rich with passionate love
for you, dear state, as I search your land,
grazing the colors, the life, and the mystery
of weeds choking gravestones, tangling the dead.
But you, dear state, yourself is so gentle.

Kansas, you stretch to ****** my curls;
to stroke my tender cheek with a
flock of sunflowers, blooming vivid gold and
a mizzle of musicality, too high, too loud for me.

Your screams of country overwhelm me.
Why you, dear state, never treat us to
tangles of concrete nor mazes of glass?

Kansas, your heaven gives me migraine.

unscrupulous
candescence
disconsecrated
by designable
conspiratory mimes

self-reverent
desultory
and disguised
between
horizons

an infinite
regression
is a step to take
so leap beyond the edge