Dear Mom & Dad,

I won't be coming home quite as soon as once thought. I have found a place where they really like me; a place like no other. Instead of being shunned and despised, like most places, I'm invited to everything:
parties,
picnics,
and parades,
my neighbors even welcome me with open arms. Suffice-to-say, I finally feel like I belong and plan to stay a while in this country.

Your Son,
Covid-19 Coronavirus, III

Let men burn stars out from innocuous lightyears pulled through the vortex

Like needle and thread, sown by centuries of sparked, graceful union

(Their strength and vigor found in the cross-stitching)

And ever gently unfolding like outer reach, like inner *****

In the garden of our senses, flowing with milk and honey, by means of forethought or afterglow

One thought of ecstasy, one thought of infinite parable taking new light to bed

The sacred beams bending to form a crescent, a lunula of utmost happiness

~
"Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement."
~
A mixture
of sinister and sweet,
smoking gun at your feet.
Reclining dead
in a meadow,
or wishing you were
as you gaze out your window.

Bottling undecided dark,
catching keyed-up light,
in random, misleading angles.
The uniform hour
holds Grace, Grant,
and the mystery
it entangles.

Don't look directly
at the camera,
icy blonde afterimage.
Everything you need
is written on the page.
Number 13,
Mrs. Peabody?
Don't you know
all contemporary
escapist entertainment
begins by turning your back?
Lingering on what
suspicious minds track.

The migrating voyeurism
sits as the crow,
wired and unfriendly.
The method is an organism,
an implication, a crossbow,
thought, but unseen.
He will push the girl,
until you succumb
to dream sequences.
It's snowing humiliation
at Winter's Grace,
for out of the male gaze,
invading your space,
you become gifted
at doing nothing well,
in sheer
under-things,

(for inner circles & triangles of fur
are all the rage in Europe).

Yes, he hates pregnant women,
because then they have children.
So leave him
to his work,
to analyze your handwriting,
and build that ramp
directly into your trailer.

His larger than life silhouette
will fill the silver screen
with tension,
trip wire,
and a ****** ambivalence,
that ends with
the violent sound
of someone
packing a suitcase.

He enters by virtue of this door,
and you leave through another,
and another,
and another,
until the final scene
alters your state of mind.

Your pretty little feet
dangling precariously
over the edge...

The space between.

A time to sell yourself.

A time for passing.

Sometimes I touch the right.

Too much, the wrong.

Resplendent deterioration
we live by.

With casuistic slogans
and closing doors.

D'you know disembarkment
leads to land sickness?

It does.

And who can then make
heads or tails out of
the qualms of tolerance
and his cousin, ignorance?

When it's said,
They threw the book at him
That can be rather misleading.

I mean, was it as harmless
As a flimsy graphic novel?
Or something far more frightening,
Like an unabridged dictionary?

Shipwrecks
and underwater ruins

Dressed as shiny
moons and stars

That shimmer
for the sandpipers

When the sun drops her guard
and shows a little skin

Beneath the arch,
        among the branches,
      the maunder of her eyes
           finds noir in an afterimage,
every reflection is unique,
    explicit and indivisible,
        every reflection is her,
      there she looks close
       for gracefulness,
            in the essays of her skin
               and their brazen transparencies,
         she enters into her body fable,
      the shape of her resembles
           the tenor viol: where it widens,
                  where it narrows,
                where it digresses
              and monochromes,
           she reflects a fragile geography,
             a soft cargo, but
               an inkling of hurricane,
             rendering the fault lines
          beautiful and strong,
       in supplication tomorrow's explorer
will disturb the patterns
   until she's become her own lullaby

Flowers lost in measure
At an outstretched hour
Born sightless in the once
Sacrosanct hedgerows
Picked belatedly

--And invisibly so--

Taken from their family
To unconditional surrender
Upon a cold stark table
Where those assembled
Finished off love with their meal

--And invisibly so--

~
The day was orange
The word is yellow
Out like a light switch
Teeth a steady glow

The projectile's
Crisscross trajectory
Is no kindness

In the catacombs of this mine
Watch it leak
Watch it settle

What remains is
Subterranea, urania
Built to last
A moment to inhale
Before fade to black
~

~
Two minutes of perseverance
two minutes of curiosity

Seeking out life
returning with ingenuity

It's all about surfaces and thresholds
and winter hemisphere

Each of us wants so badly
to be that next satellite

Or at least be allowed
to dream we're a small dark spot
moving across the Sun's face
~

Hello happy hour!
I see you're now reduced
to fifteen minutes of
soft drinks and
smiling depression:
simper and wine.
check that...Sprite.

But I'll drink to
nagging doubt anyway.

Cars are now a kick.
Who knew gridlock
could offer such joyride:
the drive home each day
my ******* sabbatical.

I wrote 3 letters the other day
(the handwritten, paper kind)
and feel a little
like Jane Austen.
I think she'd like Dr. Pepper,
but not Mr. Pibb.
Too foppish.

Then there's this:
the wax and wane
of life between the bed
and the couch.
There's six degrees
of separation
through the five layers
of this reusable face mask.

Speaking of masks:
"one for the money,
two for the show,
three to make ready
and four to go."

And somehow I know
I will never breathe it in
that way again.

Random curtain calls:
I'm so starved for someone
to talk to; the mail lady
had me at "hello."
I offered her a soda.
Mail order catalogs are king.
The Saturday Night Special
from the burglar alarm brochure
was my final good buy.

I'm almost positive I heard them talking

Talking in their protective, yet complaining manner

They say, they only get to interact with the weak

They say, they're all too often held responsible for the bond between others

What's the matter with them?

They're the ones full of chemistry

They're the ones who can escape scott free

While I have to stay inside and act positive about it

Just once I'd like to not be in the middle of everything

~
faded mauve
butterflies
fluttering along
defeated
selenitic walks
the sound of
abandoned ship bells
in the far
parlor north
but the guilt of
wind is silent
like Venetian whispers
from motionless lips

us, then
inward and upward
one step too far
a house of strangers
tipping like boats
seaworthy as sleep
oars divide
the ocean
but framed pictures
and love letters
unite the walls
to this unstable floor
then, us
always, us
~

The blue boat,
white ships,
dissolve,
wash
into pastel houses,

                    sea foam,
                    evaporation.

The light passes through
the pigment,
reflects from the paper,
and passes
a second time through,

                    luminous, see
                    transparency.

From the windowsill,
a reeves box,
a splashing of color,
a loved one
in nature's hue,
drying her hair,

                    sight-seeing,
                    undressed rehearsal.

The painter,
walking his pathos home,
reaches for china white,
sprinkling his soul,
religiously
translucent,

                    murky sea,
                    christendom.

Waiting for his muse
to disrobe,
move into a pose,
make her body
an overwhelming
curiosity,

                    in a sea of watercolor,
                    naturally!

~
Hand and needle,
weapons of mass protection.
Mending day called solace,
bitterness in every stitch.
When all guides disappear
the hand begins to tremble,
that is the material point.
Listen to the water,
the sea is full of memories.
It knows everything,
it feels nothing.

A rage is building.
The sails unfurl,
the wind follows.
A hundred years of
traversing the deep
on a ship full of opiates
and other distant mermaids.
This blood vessel,
cresting the heart of the wave,
you will never completely cross
this body of water
until you learn to trust
the hands that hold back
death and it's squall.

Even now they drop anchor, singing
into the starry sky:

"Gather ye fishermen's wives
As thy men roll out to sea
Pray one and all
Thy sails hold strong this day..."
~

Kinetic energy
Without equilibrium

A fixed star
Collapsing in on itself

There she stares unblinked
At stellar remnants

Sprawled face up
In the dry aqueduct

Holding her breath
He won't return

~
Who can circumnavigate Avalon's depository and the palpable swoop down toward earthier terrain?

Yet, here I am.

Where is your gravity taking me, Kahn?

This building is an invitation, and I am humbled in this sense of arrival. The books are stored away from the light. So a man with a book goes to the light, the serenity of light.

And therein lies the hidden meaning.

But you won't let it become just a building; you want it to remain much a ruin; it's all somehow sinister in its celebration.

Occasional distraction is as important in reading as concentration.

And I'm reading between the lines in a corner carrel, looking out at academic crop circles; I grapple with each texture: it's this combination of imposing austerity and weathered familiarity that you seize upon to make your current landscape hospitable.

This building is an instrument, creates a sound in my head akin to music; and this music remains a glowing source of solitude, all driven by a desire to be hidden but sought after—a celebration of all things lost and unnamed.

Here I find closure by opening a book.
~