I live in my horse's saddle: a beast, piteous.
Maidens sing forlorn as we pass.
The children do not see the chopper
at the roundabout.
Soon, their shorn locks will match the minstrel's sins of old.
Castles burn in the day: robbers ride boats on land.
Mascots fade against tapestries, hung out.

It's wonderful to sing out, revolt in time.
The sleepers don't hear the bees, save the woodsman.
Trees whisper secrets of the woods upon the wind.
Rows and rows of spears and woven flocks, poor things.
Descendants of cold metal.
They will come.
Too soon.

Bluebells and daisies flattened in an hour, green to brown.
Leather worn and sweat of ten rides polish the future.
Cut to make ribbons of blue for lasses unborn, the sky.
Bring to rise
new rivers of strange color, coppery seeping to earth.

taking time to lick off the walls
the remnants of my scattered mind
so we can let the hole for an hour
(with plastic green)
and safely lower
this last (s)mile
into your dark.

oh, see the child blink
how you ran the fat
rendered and left
the yard
confused.

Nailbed, hot stone.
A simmering anger, old.
Heavy.

Some battling debate of
loss thrown away.
A small, gray key.
Join them on a ring and
give back, give back, give back.

See now, new currents drag my pennies.
Down.
I'm an octopus penning idiocy.
The counter, brown.
Such a small counter.

But this small key, so heavy to give away.
Is it loss or thrown away?
If so, who did it?

Mind never grasped the sorrow,
the secrets, hid in serpent of glimmered italics
and windfalls left fractured for years
rediscovered in haste of other dilemmas.

Ok, it'll be three dollars (and a bit).
That's all it took a heart to turn.
Ashen walks and stale apple pie,
unstately promise.

It needn't rhymy.
I have no more timey.
Another chunk of sanity slides
(and that bit).

And you think
no one will know
to put change in this cup
because it is empty.

The rain hitting
the paper of it
doesn’t sound the same
as the clinking coins of yesterday.

A child skips across
the bridge, outrunning
her raincoat, ahead of mother,
does one and then another

double take because she
does not want her raincoat
anyway, wants to feel
water bead on skin,

she falls back and takes it
from mother’s outstretched hands
and tosses it to the folded ones
of the man.

She has one pound
to spend today, mother may
I?

No.

Mother, why?

You watch her little hands
ball into fists,
her eyes cloud with mist
that melts into the rain.

You watch mother open a door,
watch a wind tunnel batter
the chandelier ornaments,
they clink like wind chimes or coins.

The child safely inside,
mother’s eyes glare back,
fear without reason,
they shout
*I want that raincoat back.

Know you nothing, cat?
Pretend to be drowsy when the keeper comes
and bolt out the cage
like lightning from that essay
you wrote on that other orb.

Come, cross then the stream with me
and wash off the struggle.
Sadly, was only the bottle which spoke.

Begging a cuppa kind smiles. No, them's tight.
Parochial *****, weather's no better there.
Mind opens like fresh sails 'pon the breeze.
Poseidon took a break, this is from
somewhere else. Only the angels know.

Now down it comes, o the ceiling!
Grand, a mess it makes. Unfair is the game
and no use of plaintive tone. Stuff down the fries
and God, down the water goes.
The saucer's up now, they're leaving soon.

Alas, too late. The forests catches fire.
The planet burns. Come, say the fairies
ne'er too tired to fall on dancing shoe.
Let's dance to the end: either the sun's drifting
further away, or we're spinning closer to it.

Take upon the tongue the straw
enough to break one's back
no caring which season
of the five.

That itch, a flea beneath my skin
one scratch here
and zoom! I'm mapping out new continents
on my back
with red marks on blades
and on the valleys over my ribs.

The tall gentleman says he could see
a face from long ago (old gallows)
in the face of a stranger. One who now
has a hand in progeny's songs.

A piece of dried seaweed and two shells.
Beautiful music, salt balm for the soul.