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

~
Bring your whirlwinds with you;
in the snow angel summer
bring Margot the sun.

In the hour of red glare
a rush to pick slowberries
before getting caught up in the silk.

Prisms, mirrors, lenses!
strategies for combatting visibility:
keep your eyes closed,
face away from the window.

The myriad threads of people in hiding,
they eat their own web each day,
and yet something always shines
in the heart's secret annex.

Men and women are
separated from each other,
the girls are on a train
to the Bergen-Belsen,
"white founts falling
in the courts of the sun."

Margot now cries quietly;
so silently she weeps over
sunshine and hate.
~

We now return
to your regularly scheduled dream.
Do the math: ducks in the pond
swim upstream to spawn supreme.

Then pay it forward
as a string of numbers.
Continuous in series,
strung out and unencumbered.

There's some **** saxophones
lifting off in tune to the rhythm method.
Save the soft jazz for when you're really in the mood, and read a bedtime story instead.

Vision begins when the lids
are closed and threading the daisy chain.
This is where we
place the refrain:

Caution--unstable, but microwavable.

The lines blur
where the vertical and horizontal collide.
Can't stand the swimming in the head,
yet enjoy the peripheral ride.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure,
even as far deep down as this chasmic seabed. Living with technophobia,
But married to sensory overload instead.

Making new babies in safe mode.
We lose sight when plugged too long into this hub. Just another anxiety in need of a pill
--join the club.

We meet where there's free Wi-Fi
so battery life doesn't drain.
This is where we
repeat the refrain:

Caution--unstable, but microwavable.

~
the night starts here,
the night starts here
in the dunes,
fixed in time;
incipient waves falling into place,
their subtle purpose
to roll over and sing;
the fountainhead above us,
like it's above the shore,
attaching softness to a shell.

we blew on a dandelion
and the whole world disappeared;
love is a mysterious shape,
love is a remembered rhythm.

I have trembled
my way deep,
I'm a guest in here,
drinking at the stream,
seeking bliss in
the plural homemade kiss:
peppermints and orchid rain.

we please the night,
we please the night in interlude,
and it merrily leaves us that strand
of pearls called "good morning."
~

~
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
~