The silver lining
of her otherwise fuchsia
underwear, was in its ability
to sense danger.

The gray area
of her otherwise rosy
lips, was in who they were
allowed to kiss.

The red alert
of her otherwise bronze
thighs, was for what attempted
to get between them.

The white elephant
in her otherwise beige
room, is what happened
to her prized possession.

I saw you for a brief moment
  Yesterday
Your hair was the length of
A football field
   And as dark as the pigment
Of my imagination

Even in your evening gown
You could kick
    Like Trinity from The Matrix
And give your favorite
Retired thong
New life as
     A slingshot

You are everything I can't
    Remember
    -- Or at least a little bit of it
And I could love you maybe
    Or at least like you

But I know you're not
    Real
You can't be real...

Like Mac N Cheese
You are just another
     Honest-to-goodness
Disappointment
     Right out of the box

Alcohol.
And train schedules.
A commuter's tightrope.
The last stop, Hpnotiq.
Where it rains sadness.
Where they're numb
To the moment of inertia.
Preferring instead to
Live on the rim.

Infected satellite

Quarantined transmissions

The gory story is one whale of a tale

Turn up the volume

And hear it flatline

Or wait for (doctored)

Film at eleven

Janus-faced, she sits in her
Sinister bathing tub
Cleansing herself from
Fallen lovers

The very ones
She devised subtle ends to
Lest they should claim
Her heart for a kingdom

Vandals of her plumage
Whom she allowed
To drink from her stream
Once or twice

A god of vengeance sent her
A message in a bottle today
To prove the origin of her flow
And remind her that time is

Fly-by-night

He Waits for his wife
Sitting in her lawbreaking bra at the bar

These days she goes by
Kathleen

Something odd is brewing in the kitchen
Even the dog is howling

One mouthful is tempting
But better not swallow

Otherwise, it's a certain trip
To Little Red's recovery room

Where have the great games
of childhood gone?

Father and son
tossing the grenade

Little sister skipping
over ***** traps

Somehow, someway
we reached a cease fire
in the "eleventh hour
of the eleventh day
of the eleventh month"

Not sure which of us
was gaslighted
in the eerie orange
of shoreline blood
and the unsettled darkness

"You were right, I was wrong."
read the treatise

Somewhere, someway
an airplane missing
for nearly a century
descends from the clouds
and touches down
in an empty field

The fallen souls
of weaponry
unload on the tarmac

Let the games begin...

I'm trailer trash
And you're the tattered wheels

Run me over
Vilipended shrew

This place is full of
Rabid raccoons
And collect calls

Someone's got to pay

Maybe we can milk
A cash cow
Or plant a money tree
Between grandma
And the shed

A game of miniature golf
Always helps my mind
Get back on par
(More or less)

Then it's back to the bus stop
And be done with you

I. The Boy With The Cuckoo Clock Heart

Born with a frozen heart,
abandoned in
Edinburgh.

One kind physician
laid her hands upon him,
in a bit of medicinal salvation,
by placing a cuckoo clock
inside his chest.

Now an orphan,
among peculiar friends:
tear-filled flasks,
eggs containing memories,
and a man with a musical spine.

There's but one catch
for this boy:
his heart is fragile,
he must never, ever
fall in love.

Existence is undoubted.
But without this one emotion,
can he really live?

Love is a bitter token.


II. The Girl With Glass Feet

"It was a humid night,
later to become a hated night."

Upon an island sound,
feet first, she is slowing turning
into glass.

By sheer happenstance,
she meets a shy boy
who lives there
with an extreme fear
of being touched.

As she slowly disappears,
she untethers herself
from self-pity,
by teaching the boy the value
of interaction.

Inchmeal, he begins to reach out
and feels everything
she has lost to the night.

Love is a bitter token.


III. The Snow Child

"November was here."

A married couple,
in Alaskan remote,
suffering from one great sadness:
no child of their own
and unable to talk of it.

He's buried by
the weight of the outer ice,
she's crumbling
from inner despair.

And so on a rare
friendly day trek,
they built a child out of snow,
outfitted with mittens and scarf.

A day later it is gone,
remembered only in absentia,
yet there appears
a beautifully arrayed
creature of winter,
a little, lissome girl in the woods,
hunting with the red fox.

In wishing to understand
these encounters,
the couple come to love the child
as their very own daughter.

Yet will she ever accept them
as they do her?

Or see them
merely as snowdrops?

Figurines frosted over by
the harsh landscape
they each wander?

Love is a bitter token.

Into you

learning to be
a divided
submersible

once so perimetric
on the fringe
of all that grows within

we thus fall
and settle
much like Sarajevo Roses

colorfully resting
in the lasting drawn out
places we made perish

now
here
am I

into you

the ******
connective
entirely dependent

upon
the quotient
of two integers

the way we love
is a method
of mixed results

Sun-rimmed
& splendorous
this afternoon of us
barefoot in the grass
...
Noontide escapade
& pageantry
the mural on the wall of your heart
says you agree
...
Loving outside of ourselves
constructs the nook
I feel what you feel
Sehnsucht
...
There's an au fait air
between this man & wife
bound in codex
this breath of life

Sometimes clouds
Sometimes rain

Sometimes a little gray
to wash away
the inhumane

Look closer...
the winding trail
is baked to perfection,
bearing the scars
of a caesarean section.

Only the snakes
dare travel along I-8,
one-by-one the seasons lie prone,
in heat this sun will castrate.

The burnt aspects on faces
don’t smile or frown,
they peer out as residue
to places perished in the wake of
a cityscape’s head trauma,
calling out to the heaven’s above
as they await her to rise
with wings from these ashes,
in anticipation for a day ne’er to draw nigh,
even the steady fall of acid rain
will fail to wash away such genocide.

A favorite haunt transmutes
into a ghost town,
burning into the ground
the heat seeps into the soul,
and the procession begins again
for whom the bell tolls.

Towers of steel melt
as popsicles on the pavement,
the sun’s punishment
is constantly transcendent,
the noise of sparks and hums
rattle the spine,
today’s forecast is a good chance
of saturnine.

Eerie colors at dawn
make for a spectral scenic view,
picnic lunch in the park
is categorically taboo,
the hunters of men
swoon in subjugation to this tyranny,
weather’s wrath was everyone’s destiny.

Live a little, die a little,
pretend it cannot happen,
but in the end we all windup
as peanut brittle...

Blindfolded in the center ring

The crowd wants blood

Everything forgotten
to pandemonium

The bell rings

The round begins

If nothing else
one thing is certain

We're in for the fight
of our lives

Jimmy had a dog named Barnaby.
He was just like one of the family.

He did what most good dogs do.
He kept Jimmy company, even ate his homework a time or two.

But no matter how hard Jimmy tried,
Barnaby would never, ever fetch a ball.

Oh, he typed, he vacuumed, even mowed the lawn,
Yet, wouldn't retrieve any stick at all.

I see waves
and candy-filled holidays
I see beach *****
and florescent seafoam
I see barely clad soccer moms
playing in the surf
with their children
I see Humbert
eyeing the teenage girls
I see the beauty
of an Asian sun
I see bikini ties come undone
I see predilection
and his friend, ignorance
I see the same social distancing
by the color of one's skin
I see newfound paranoia
I see the old pleasure
and pain
I see a broken whole
in a mere afternoon walk
on the shore

Welcome to
the empirical sand

What you see
is what you get

Matchsticks
And a little wind

Are

Hearsay
And the coming blasphemy

By the numbers

The sign says
"Open for Business"

Opinions are mixed

As are the numbers

Let's give the world a spin now and see what burns

Channel all your pain
to the summoned fields of my sun-baked heart

let me be your long-suffering, xeriscaping soil
--once rain-fed by this love--

now as parched as
Atacama

the plateau where we bowed our heads
and pleaded for mere drops of forgiveness

I remember when I first saw you
in such a state,
shifting with the direction of light,
viola shaped,
the boudoir door slightly ajar.

Rings exchanged,
veil removed,
the bells had chimed for us,
and then for
ships in safe harbor.

The pitter patter of
surf cascading in
from an open window,
otherwise hushed,
turnt and *****,
dimples showing
whether you smiled or not.

Turnabout was fair play
--azure hues in moonlit pastel
caressing the folds and ties
around midnight’s chemise
--the lure of velveteen
and vast soft canvas of pearl
--areolae circles and quaint triangles
in the thick of things,
gift-wrapped in elegant fur.

Belle-chose, under
the waxing, waning crescent
of dainty omphalos, yawning in chiaroscuro,
red-faced and piqued,
quite shy coming out of the shadows.

The batting of lashes,
the lingering scent of bouquet
--like the seduction of flute song,
I followed and followed
until thoroughly lost within you.

Are the pedals on a piano
There because it once was a vehicle?

Are there long lines tonight
At the nudie fish market?

Is that a ****** dressed as your wife
On the Lord's day?

Is your depression building its own
Glorified bomb shelter?

Do you pray for what wilts
As equally as for what blossoms?

Did someone ***
In your sandbox again?

Was it you?

The hunter child
Born out of fear

Shed of its skin
Along a feral frontier

Hold the low note
And feel the sting

To feast upon our hearts
Is the primal thing

It's a small world
for some girls. They live

in shadow
of the Himalayas,
and other assorted mountainous
peaks. They daydream

of being followed
by the camera eye,
adored for the top heavy
weight they carry with
a grinning bounce. They want

to be a cruise ship,
stacked to the deck.
They want to be
fashioned with torpedoes,
a bombshell to
reckon with. And so they lie

on a table
to become a sculpture in plastic
for a renowned
architect. A mad scientist
in his own right,
experimenting with his creations
on fragile psyches, banking

on insecurities,
giving them a deflated hope
that what God didn't
bless them with,
his derangement will.

It's a mind game.

A mantra to "she who sends up gifts":
if you feel as good as you look,
all is well.

There's no harm in that, right?
Let's ask Pandora...