Your fine eyes and lively wit
first caught his attention,
your light, lush figure
he discerned upon closer inspection.

You then had the audacity
to speak your mind,
to tell your unwanted suitor
where to go.

Nonetheless, what did he find?
A young lady brimming
with charm and intelligence,
a country girl of unrivaled specialness.

And hither came his letter,
an eye-opening missive,
a charitable benediction
that proved redemptive.

Here your prejudice began to be
worked on for the better,
its constant hold relenting
until it unfettered altogether.

His agony of rejection
soon warred against his pride,
his ardency for you
could not be denied.

A chance encounter
and you were
at once astonished
at what your heart did reveal,

his intense stare warmed your cheeks,
his kind words
and acts of goodness
then sealed the deal.

You could love no other.
And in this blissful denouement
you agreed to become his wife and lover.
Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy, Mistress of Pemberley...

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

step right in
where commodity and fiction
are deliberately blurred,

electrostatic dust collector,
after-shower body air-driers,
a spatially disconnected
from the world roll-on wife
complete with a dining table
that sinks into the floor;
don't tell her she's an android;
just don't.

she is captured
and ever ready,
she was a stenographer
but quite unsteady,
her mouth a spark of vowels
when her far off places
are aroused.

repeat this soothing motto — space, place, memory.

outside is scenographic sensation:
lightology. unbreathed air. porcelain skin.

she's the soft electric assurance
of a better life — the life which rests on device alone — a strong, sweet poison which infects the blood.

she is "the light of any home"...

In the clearing
where lambs graze
our daughters also
walk at their leisure
toward school
...
there are no fences here
the shepherds allegedly
keep watch in the darkest of hours
but when steps from
an intersecting path
lunge forth as
the unsuspecting wolf
a twisted creature
upon our precious girls
these herdsmen are
certifiably blind and mute
neglectful staffs
striking the air
...
listen closely now
to the gathering winds
their transformation is actually
echoes of our own children's
eternal cries

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

calm seas, restless lungs

breathe it in
the mournful breath is out there

skin is numb

the words are too

holding still
hidden under the tongue

holding
hidden

one more dies before he gets there
(what did the letter say...?)

holding
hidden

what did it say...?

I love you I need you I want to do all sorts of things for you to you with you and only you

keep the photographs
the city is overexposed again

take more walks in the nearby woods
the world we knew as children

watch out for frogs and detonators
mind the wires

new aerial boundaries at dawn
no one steps inside by choice

adapt to the proper order
and no sleeping under tables

the reflection tower is a good place to start
tourist trap, a certain approximate

bring the thing under the couch
in case of an unexpected visitor

more nightmares cut out of the newspaper
what is an Astra 600?

three different hat sizes
Hannie says yes to ménage à trois

the joy in discovery
the joy in forgetting

like God without a compass
not a lot, just forever

When it comes to time,
many of us are fair-weathered friends.

In one brief moment we can save it
then turn right around and **** it.

Still, time is a thief,
so I guess we're even.

~
So where did you go?
Where in daydream tarnation are we?
     If only you could see my exodus
     and relent

Where are you now?
Matters of blood and connection
forming at the mouth
we are the fabrication
      --an image apart from ourselves

To break is something sacred
in the Morse code of brake lights
     through time stained windows
     through a thousand contractions
the dead are getting younger

If only you could see me
walk into the blackness
not to build a fire
       but melt, wander, disappear
       and relent
       relent
       relent
~

~
I.
Killing Mary Poppins
with a spoonful of sugar,
the sugar from the medicine
on the other side of town,
the town called Silent Hedges
And A Bit Of Fluff.

II.
Only a display model,
her name is Marmalade;
skin white like the moon,
she wears her ****** stranger dress;
one of her sisters is dying,
the other never lived;
God is a far off concept,
the fuchsia colored ball on
an overhead power grid
points her way to salvation.

III.
Morning became something else:
bright decline,
cold things start to burn,
tragic saxophone
among the beckoning,
everything's a symptom:
tax exiles, imperialists,
girls talking nitrous
--mouths full of soil,
Virginia Reel around the fountain
(do-si-do),
ready to buy up impossibles
as the dominoes fall.

IV.
Memory is a chemical
to the girl who cried champagne,
like ceiling stars
during the prodigal summer,
she played the game
on all fours,
and found a drawer
full of quarantine polaroids,
some with blood in her mouth,
others, of rain on her birthday.
~

Grace under pressure

She is pyrotechnics, feux d'artifice

Her northern light due south
Where the wind dies

There's trouble then

She swings in
Emotive orbit

Her hang time sabotaged
By lack of resistance

She is free-fall

Every last documented entry
Every bit of her composition
--The fabric of her

They fall from Grace
And onto the floor of new imaginings

What used to fit
Neatly into a box
Is presently a bitter pill to swallow

Down the hyperventilation
Shaft she goes

Where she lands nobody knows

~
Moving beyond the sun
to where our minds
are a fraction behind us,
believing they've found
the other-side.

I am glass shattered by redemption,
and I am now the shadow
of a mirrored divinity,
for somewhere out there
is a god resembling my face,
and its nakedness stares me down.

Raising eyebrows at the moon
as if this is love's culprit,
yet, opening arms and minds welcome
the thereupon lust as if
some devoted era:
bow and arrow shapes
of you and me,
falling out of love without travail,
but of constant ease.

I look better in black and white
than in vulnerability,
my exploitation of
private earth looms casual,
though I'm well aware
of the vibrations it sends.

Manipulators of love and war
were all we really wanted to be,
cheating destiny
by falling for the future.

And from this side of our mind
the sun was always cold,
just a vague old relic in a fresh grave:
a princess ruling among
the ruins of past decisions,
and happily she gives
a stagnant kiss of consequence.

Recommitted wind breaks
through, like turning, burning
pages desperate to speak.

But I'd rather that her white lies
take me now, than a waking grasp
or a skirmishing wave
terrorize me,
as this black [media] plagued sun's
desecrated heart bleeds
and recalls to mind
the coming blasphemy.
~

The cube, the sphere
and the triangle

Building blocks, visionary shapes
that brace wind, cut clouds

Industrial smoke goes against
the grain of architecture

Maybe we can find where
they breathe tomorrow in naturally

It will be opaque and after breakfast
arrested by cantilevered thoughts

A ripple in the calm
whirlpool above the falls

As Liliane enjoys swimming
in the **** and collecting modern art

By nightfall and before the uniting
there's a solemn dream to be had

Haunted fragments
within the libretto of a Shining Brow

The contents of Froebel gifts
form organic steps, and led us
Wright to the water's edge

~
On a clear day
I can see my sister

It's between six and seven o'clock
and a beautiful expanse of water, reflecting her cultivated shores

a nod, a smile,
through the vapor

castles in the air, ruling over
the available light

then in a moment, she's lost
half her height

and bent into arcades, like those
of a Roman aqueduct

evaporate before me she will

the fading of family, a returning
to cold white at the dawning
of an unfriendly expanse
~

See you everyday
haven't seen myself (in quite a spell)

my brain is
an abandoned building, a dry well

I traced your phone call
to some viral spiral

I'm connected to you
in a spider-like way

--webs, phobias and decay

the essence of life is
reproduction and mortality

see you everyday
in shivering downloaded depravity

your starry smiles
your synthetic ciphers

and I'm all alone again

this body is a safe house
this fear, a panic room

but the enemy within
is always right under my skin

~
Saturn Jupiter Mars,
three blind mice running
up the clock to find freedom.

starlight stairs in abyss,
cities of the interior ring
carry a dangerous cargo: citizens.

t-minus one/this is fear

I am no astronaut,
I'm a refugee, bleeding hands pressed
tight to the barbed-wired fence.

we play charades from the window,
lunar phases keening
in the tender light of these infant wars.

t-minus one/this is fear

farewell threshold on laudanum,
the grifted gift of the Joe Blakes
painted from memory.

the far off observation
telescoping my fear, leading me
to believe I'm hiding in plain view.
~

*** in the morning
Death in the afternoon
And it was dark

Milling about stacks
Of paperbacks and out of focus snapshots
Some of her in the shower

But pay heed
She's an iceberg
Warm her up on a bed of nails

Until she's a plaintive waterfall
And then tie her to the scaffolding
Of a clean well lighted place

What remains out of sight
Through omission
Through silence

Through childlike syntax
Shall float to the surface
In its own due time

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

~
connected particles settling

as evidence

of the blissful graze

the brush with chemistry

the aftersome

and there the flashover

reframing time

by the warm places

one isolated touch sends you to
~

Star soldier with the rocket arm,
you bleed silver, gold,
and product placement.

Smile big for the camera,
the media will sell its soul
for a new bankable face.

Party hardy, Heisman candidate,
******* your semi-steady's
sorority sister,
then ask to see her again
sometime after the **** kit.

It's quite alright,
so long as you have talent
beyond this hemisphere.
Why even the fatherland, ESPN,
will gladly call you "son."

~
Desert pond,
       idle sun.

Salt, shadow,
       and the revealing light of midday.

She traipses from
the safety of the car
        to the danger at the water's edge.

One hand shielding her eyes,
the other,
        her over-exposures.

Discomfited by a lack
         of self-confidence.

Loving the water,
         hating her thighs.
~

Sparks don't necessarily
lead to love just because
they ignite a fire,
sometimes all that burns
is the neighborhood...

Chaos Theory is nobody's friend.

It will do the sensitive math on just about anyone; in constant loops, patterns, fractals, and repetitions.

This can lead to the butterfly effect:

A butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane in Texas (or NYC, for that matter).

It's simply when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

To what does this measure?

That perhaps the present is already the future...

Remember,
the best things in life are free

...plus tax
...license
...and recycling fee

A promise is a promise.
Only a lie can be made
with an expiration date in mind.

You and I
are the sand and sea,
we will always keep coming
back to one other.

You and I
are the trees of eternal spring,
we shall never leave.

Not every day is remembered
as special or significant,
not every word spoken between us
is Hallmark worthy.
But love is never absent
and what is shared
never forgotten.

Alone we are
merely ordinary,
together we are considerable,
whether it’s sharing ice cream
or each other’s
aches and pains.

The road we traverse,
hand-in-hand,
may be covered with obstacles & illusions,
but the horizon
is hardly false.

For look!
God himself smiles upon us.
These vows are indeed
of an endless variety...