These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.

O I cannot explain what happened to them!
They are proper in shape and number and every part.
They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid!
They smile and smile and smile at me.
And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start.

They are not pigs, they are not even fish,
Though they have a piggy and a fishy air --
It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were.
But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction,
And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.

Black holes are only temporary
says Stephen Hawking in reverse
and the deathly grip of gravity
is released before finality
extinguishes identity
from the Universe

He must have found that memory
can survive a voodoo curse
and bring back sanity to
a world of unreality
before some tragedy
takes you away
from us

It isn't music, really
not really
not the kind that you can
dance to
or sing words to
or hum along to

but maybe tap your foot
a bit to
or rock your shoulders
a little bit to
and sway your head
a little nod or two

It's more like rustling leaves
from pianissimo
to crescendo
above the tapping
drips of rain
in puddles circling
round the dangling feet
of waterspouts

and the trilling ring
a brassy bell delivers
swinging from the strike
of an opened door  
as dampened shoes
skip shuffle and slide
inside the musty lair
of an old bookstore

all measured by
the syncopated
clapping beat
of hooves
on cobblestone
in time with
carriage wheels
and drumbeat hoods
of rocking cabriolets

He paints from sound
that whistles in the wind
and freefalls from the sky
that bounces in the streets
and whispers to his eyes
that nestles in his pallet
and mixes in his dyes

It isn't music, really
not really
not the kind that you can
dance to
or sing words to
or hum along to

but maybe tap your foot
a bit to
or rock your shoulders
a little bit to
and sway your head
a little nod or two

when you see his aria
composed by strokes
from brushes
dipped in sound

If he loves himself
more than you,

Then he is only one,
not two