Draw nigh
wounded starling,
dwell among
the woodland fastness;
come under its canopy,
upon the bough's
fractal patterns;
mend your wings,
rest your thoughts;
in time you too will mentor
fledglings, the jackdaws
and sand martins,
teaching them
to safely yonder fly.

Ridgehead
Barreleye
Bristlemouth
Loosejaw
Daggertooth

The names he was called
The identities he became

Things of that nature run deep
And crush like the depths of the sea

Queen for a day.
Prisoner for life.
Her 'crimes':
New mother and wife;
A woman of color
Thinking for herself;
Just leave her be, please,
Lest history repeat itself.

Late October,
and they have assuredly returned.

A canopy of clusters.

At second glance
the leaves on the trees are wings.

Whisper into the dreamscape
for they sense your voice.

Revive them with your breath.

Hold out your hand
like you hold out hope.

The warm sound of flutterings.

Circadian clocks in their antennae,
a sense of where they've been
and where they are going.

The gift from their Creator
moves them in the right direction.

She is such a pretty girl
With such a pretty smile
Everyone loves the way
Her lashes curl

She's got ribbons in her hair
And a ring in her navel
Why she even has on
Matching underwear

Her look is smart
Her scent a distraction
Her Instagram pictures
Are a qualified thing of art

But here's the rub
Despite all the bells & whistles
The girl is a chocolate-box
An attractive cover

That will knock your socks off
Yet, there's nothing inside
She's absolutely empty
You'll discover

I.
Love has a pulse
A rhythm method
Sometimes
Hand in hand
Others
Hand-to-hand
Best wedding gift:
A book of matches
For those times of
Darkness ahead

II.
Coming out of the ether
The gravitate to "we"
Is no longer in
Simulation
We are space
Outer and uncharted
Breathe deep now
Once again
Let pressurization
Begin

III.
Spontaneous
Combustion
Magic hour
Learn by repetition
Crouching tiger, hidden dragon
Tongue on the verge
Circling the rosebud
Like the rise of an empire
Blown by the wind
Every which way
The blissful vein
Is tapped into

IV.
Localized storm
Waves against the sandbags
Not quite filled enough
Water gets in
Does its damage
The insurance policy
With no flood coverage
We are now indeed
An island

V.
Sacrificial offering
Open palms
Bowed heads
Recite your sorrows
And count the losses
Forgiveness comes like
Piecemeal
A little at a time

VI.
Something new
And loud and wet
Love has a different hue
To its sky
It will be cloud free
Never again
A hunt for a nap
Or dreams of napping
In this maddening mosaic
That blurs the line between
Caretaker and sleepwalker

VII.
Endurance wins the race
Not good intentions
Home can survive
The change of seasons
We plant the flowers
We water the lawn
We rake the leaves
We prune the trees
This is our garden
If we don't tend to it
Who will?

Serafina was a skydiver
And she was always falling.

Jimmy was her instructor
And the next in line.

"The thrill of love," she said,
"Is about how high you can climb."

If the moment's spent
She parachutes out.

A risk,
No doubt.

But on she plays,
Crossing her fingers

This idée fixe
Never comes crashing back to earth.

When buying into love
Make sure to purchase
The lifetime warranty

The judge threw the book at him,
And awarded his wife with
Everything but the kitchen sink.
That way he could still
Drown his sorrows.

It must have been the dictionary...

Oh, turpentine
meet Caroline.

She's diverting and lovely,
but no painter.

Completely misses a warning
on the container.

Her skin is pale
and thin as paper.

In contact with the flame
she turns to vapor.

No man is an island
But some are a cul-de-sac

Mary, Mary
Quite contrary
Egressed from the East Indies
A lost child
Grief is a long hallway
With sketches of pain
Adorning the walls
Hope is a drawer
With a hidden key

Bottled-up
Mary Lennox
Jumps rope
Out in the cold
Hopscotching
And exploring
Follows the red robin
Enters the garden
Long forsaken
Befriending life within
Evoking life without
With the one exception
Of herself

Mary had a little plan
"Might I have a bit of earth?"
To plant
And to chant
To sow
And to grow
To return a loved one
To both father and son
To open the secret garden again
And feel the inner workings
Of her heart begin

In the lull
Of our constricted voice

In the hushing
Of our sullen realm

In the finite
Of our broken hinterlands

A watermark
No, rather

A barrow
A grave

Without inscription
Only handprints

In memoriam
Of the receding surf

Never heard
Never reached

~
This forbidden city
walks on water,
keeps all the undesirables at bay,
it's always a balancing act.

Oh, blighted court
of Catherine the Great,
thy friends are having a hard time,
but horsing around, no less.

Enlightened by summer drugs,
and busting out of
their tops and castles,
thongs on thy feet,
and thongs on thy bottoms,
this zenith and this nadir
come in colorful collages,
everything else is a flash of flesh.

Sped along by
frequent bloodletting,
there's a revolution in
thy teenage mind,
a looking for the hidden
and interested motives,
but no one can live
their life on the skis.

Rulership of heart is far
from recreation,
but you raised
a smile to sin,
until all we could do was
shake our heads and laugh.
~

How did things ever get so far?
It's curtains for you, Sonny!

Big
Blue
Bedroom curtains
With a ship and anchor pattern

And

Fancy
Frilly
Yellow ones
For your mama's kitchen

It's not personal, Sonny
It's strictly business...

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.

Her constellations move differently

She no longer controls star systems

Only one remaining cluster
now orbits her

But it is more than enough

For they need and love her as their light-giving empyrean

April showers
bring with them atomic flowers,
strewn about Elena’s hair,
her forest painted
the colors of Red Square.
Children play in the fun zone
where radiation particles
are active and windblown,
forming flakes on rosy cheeks,
floating down toxic creeks.
The smell of graphite burning in a kiln
makes the nostrils flare,
what’s this metallic taste in the air?

Clouds drift over weddings
and Ferris wheels,
rain falls black and surreal.
Mother goes about her routine
humming dirges like a godless fiend.
36 hours to figure the science,
past time to evacuate
a city in brisk silence.
Brides scream and children cry,
from the fall-out they mummify.
Pripyat’s dying metropolis
they euthanize and lay to rest
in a sarcophagus.

And atop her shallow grave,
deep within the exclusion zone,
sit the sickened stems
and decaying fragrance
of nuclear flora over bone.
Here in the jackal's sanctum,
a capsule car on the lifeless
pleasure wheel
swings like a pendulum,
over a wooded lot with not a soul in sight,
only fresh morbid blooms
that glow in the night.

Right at the contour,

Decorative canyons of dire, descending ornaments,

Occluded with mixed smoke signals.

Those heading to their number beds,

Pray to the analytical gods,

"Dear Lord, bell curve distribution. Please, please, please..."

Reach out and touch
The reflective surface,
Nearly-perfect, infinite.
She's an unbreakable object held
Within stasis,
A long-durational sleeper,
Motionless in her far-off stare.

Time dilation may be absolute,
But there's no denial
Of a sundry smile
And questioning brow.

Glass divides she
From true self,
Kept in the hold
As priceless cargo
That once inspired the likes
Of da Vinci.

Thus Snow White wasn't quite dead
When the trap was sprung,
Her day lay in wait
For a kiss of life:
An event horizon.

Lift the lid
It did,
And with a centuries-old yawn,
She fixed her face upon
Her growing public,
And broke through
Hibernation,
To give birth to a star.

~
The boys of summer.

Johnny once sat under the bleachers, the scar on his tongue, a reminder of the time he bit it after falling from a treehouse. A sack full of yesterday's news in a red wagon, the first and last clues.

Eugene ... the other kid who dropped out of sight on Sunday morning, now the evening edition; now a black spot on the sun.

Why the two-year gap?

Departures and landfalls. But no explanations.

Mom and Dad never comfortable peering into the camera lens. Big brother breathing out vapors until something sparks and all
the old questions came back.

A detective's paradox. No bone. No fragment. No evidence. In his home garage hangs a poster of Eugene to remind him every day.

-- for Johnny Gosch and Eugene Martin
~

Punished by the sun
in a desert of our love.

Slipshod the sailing stones,
how dispassion speckles the playa floor,
salt pans dissolve motivating force.

I'm a man returning to his ground.
You're a woman seeking refuge
in the cracked crevices of my rib cage.

So far below sea level,
where does love go from here to survive?

Perhaps, Chloride City
and the grave of a James McKay?

Maybe at Bottle House in Rhyolite,
the "Queen City"?

Either way, this sensation has become an unsacred mirage:

the watering hole, a leadfield,
with which we can only look back from.

Praying the sulfur in the sky
passes on from this place,

before we turn into something sodium, something akin to
Lot's careless wife.