When being on top of the world
Has me up on the ropes
I like to keep my options open
Like you keep your legs closed

I don't

Basil, paprika, cold Hungarian goulash,
bleu cheese and stale cinnamon
coffee cake dominate
the taste of  your
mouth and skin;

it’s not because you are
slovenly that pulls me
into you, I am alone.

is like cotton twine,
if you put a match

to string, it will
burn away,

but if dipped
in beeswax

the flame will be
slow and sure.

These winter days go one by one
and seldom does much happen;

yesterday my cat murdered and ate
a chickadee on the deck and the blood

and snow mixture left a pattern
similar to what a painting of

Vincent Van Gogh’s severed ear
might look like on fresh linen.

I let the killer inside, she licked
her paws--curled on my lap.

She runs from the garden with a tomato worm in her palm
leaving behind a doll, chocolate milk, and banana.

Behind her and thousands of feet above, a green-black
anvil cloud muscles in  from the southwest, close to home;

far from her mind.

She walked the school’s halls
thirteen years, few students

talked to her because she drooled,
walked like a puppet, and had

greasy hair; there are  poems
I can not finish.