Bleed a cold,
Starve a fever,
Pray the plague don't come
Looking for you, unbeliever.

Don't sneeze at disease,
Or stick yourself with an arrow,
Just stack your dead
In the wheelbarrow.

~
atop the Manhattan skyline
her similitude descends as rain
we see her wonderwork
we see her water-standing
her very abandonment of draperies
unassuming and artless
where the heedless moths settle
with bodies of mystic warmth
colored with rose and a dash of flame
~
– for Audrey Munson

A couple jogging in the park
Can't seem to schedule in ***,
They pass the plight
Of an overwhelmed trashcan
With indifference.
Some have too much,
Others not enough.

A young mom
Pushing the pram,
A young snail
Pulling its shell,
A bird on a wire
Watching both intently,
The call of his stomach
Shall prevail.

Love and doubt,
Apathy and duty.
A checklist of options
Lost in the quicksands of time.
Pick one to share,
As if metering off infinity
With a yardstick.
******* the hour.
Confuse the day.
Create exotica by building
Interest in offshore drilling.

The well run dry,
What's left to strike
Rests inside the mind.
The second hand cannot remember why
She must constantly move like a shark,
And so she settles to sleep,
Forgetting who she is.

The couple in the park may run
home to make love in the shower.
The trashcan may finally
Be relieved of its anxiety.
And young mom, snail and bird
May find continued purpose.
But when asked what time it is,
The clocks with amnesia
Will only be able to say,
"I don't know."

I can no longer see past the smoke.
Life is a heartbeat
Inside a cage of fear.
What we don't know is terrifying.
What we do know is even more so.

~
Bergamot morning

the astronauts are sleeping

and she dreams like a mannequin

ceiling stars abound

like hummingbirds in celestial flight

about the nectar of

young bodies, young machines

we drew a map together

from burst to bloom

from fever to neckline

from scale to mirror

pretty scar, a thing of awe

when the curious girl

realized she was under glass

raining in time lapse

she traversed me ad rem

with might and main

I didn't have the heart

to wake us from

her brainchild's motif
~

You can't take it with you,
But many die trying.

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...

~
Sleep, no sleep
No making plans
New bed linens eat my dreamland
And settle in the wilderness of my ever-opened eyes

I see you
I see me
I see everything
I'm a play with no final curtain
The story continues unabated
And the ridiculing light of day
Is as sacrosanct as an unused blanket
Nonetheless, I'm checking in
Sleep, O sleep, swallow me
~

Rose was a Red
Dodgers are blue
We're stealing signs
How 'bout you?

Cheat like this
Not like that
One's okay
The other picked at

Keep to tradition
Not technology
Yeah it's confusing
So is most any ideology

Lost underneath the hood
she made sure
he stopped to ask for directions
then with map in hand
and strapped to the seismograph
she tremored into the land
of eternal sunshine

Two cups of happy
One cup of sad
A fair share of passion & caffeine
A whole lot of doodad
(You know what I mean?)
Even throw in a bit of the absurd
Now mix them all together
Shaken and stirred

~
Cold cold heart
Frozen plumage
Like a peacock
Her ladyship
In the campfire light
Skating about the pond
Of her own vanity
~

I hide
In rooms
Cold and spacious

Sleep is a hunter
Triggered
and mendacious

Through cracks
In crevices
Here I am

Studying the arts & architecture
Of historically
Dead mayhem

Affixed and frozen
To the ceiling
Of my head

Where twisted thoughts
Grin signature
Red

I can quote
All sorts
Of useless things

But none so urgent as prayers
In escaping what
My polar opposite brings

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?

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...

If you give a troll a cookie
He will never stop with just one
Like cancer he'll spread
And infect his poison, just for fun
He used to live under a bridge
Now he resides in our very own community
Stopped he must be, my friends
Lest he terrorize HP with impunity

~
Belonging to Eden,
the garden of
inescapable pleasure.

Prepare to fall again
for the pretty things.

The desire to preserve life
lies at the root.

The way of flowers
--let them beckon and bloom--
sincerely upright,
vessels for memories,
methods of communicating
with distant versions of yourself,
a conversation that could
drift into tears or laughter,
personal revelation
or total silence,
depending on the mood.

If only time and thought
could be as perfectly
arranged as flowers.
~

There once was a rotten tax collector
Who combed the rich Italian sector
   He lined his grimy pockets
   By cheating those he audits
Alas! today's appointment was one Hannibal Lecter