fissure in the fold
of an aging merigold
reminds me of death's
soul-bewitching breath;
and a once-devastating wild,
torn and ever-reconciled,
falls in a deep sleep just like a - like a child.

Lay simplistic in my nervous embrace,
though my fingers shake with your purity.
A great, gold-backed moon-palette for a face,
and mind acquiescent simplistically.
Your features, sharp and definite, are free,
and none may mumble a pedantic word
against you; let them talk --- they'll never see
or, blindly, feel what you afford:
a priceless truth beneath a thin veneer.
Incomplex, clear, manageable, and clean;
you, non-idealized and lying near,
are like the timbre of a tambourine.
No more rhapsodizing --- lie slowly down ---
be calm tonight; forget this specious town.

The spidered light of a September night,
shallow and sparsely flung about the room,
reminisces the sound of a phoenix in flight,
while webs inside the rafters loom.
The phoenix song is like the pallid glow of a chandelier.
Waning, yet resilient,
it coos in mystic merriment
melodies in the key of a rattling nearby mirror.
Every so often the song completely stops,
filling me with a silent bit of despair.
Commonly this follows loud scores of pops
indicating the cycle residing in the flare:
into ashes the song bird bursts again.
It's Rudolphish nose begins to scrunch up ---
I see it even now as I fill my water-cup ---
a sort of reincarnation acumen.
But the bird isn't really real or here;
it's more of a half-truth or memory,
similar to tales of the origins of tea.
It sways, forgetful on my cerebral pier,
nearly falling into the waves of my brain,
dipping it's feather mid-refrain,
repeating it's song again and again,
and again.

If there should ever come a day
when the heavens should file for bankruptcy
and the stars pack up and walk away,

know you no longer have reason to stay
and watch the waves abandon the sea.
If there should ever come a day

when gravity breaks down, losing it's way,
and molecular bonds begin to disagree,
let the stars pack up and walk away.

If mathematics come undone and run astray,
break the last abacus and then decree:
"If there should come a day and that day is today!"

If and when it comes leave Earth in disarray,
disassemble each and every tree,
tell the stars, "Pack up and walk away."

Call up all the physicists and say,
"Discontinue paying your A.P.S. fee"
if there should ever come a day
when the stars pack up and walk away.

If I could love with an old-fashioned love,
they'd wonder whether I was mentally stable,
'cause no one lets me past that casual stuff.

See, all that game-playing --- I've had enough.
They say it only happens in a fable,
but I could love with an old-fashioned love.

People reject what the heart's capable of,
they treat it like the bill for the cable.
They never let me past that payment stuff.

I wouldn't want something held high above,
just something simple, without label,
if I could love with an old-fashioned love.

Not sentimental --- ...not roses, not doves.... ---
but basic, kindred, sustained, and stable.
But no one lets me past that puppy-dog stuff.

Maybe when I'm a ghost, a flappy old glove,
I'll find someone who's willing and able.
If I could love with an old-fashioned love ---
Enough! --- wait, what was I thinking of?

Languid soundings of evening recede;
when commercials calm, dulling faint,
lay yourself simple in his hold. Feed
exhaustion with a touch. Wooing heads wane
and lull, softly full by the fire's beads
burning low in the hearth. Shames
of the day cannot enter there. Nothing short of
a tangible fullness describes such love.

The slow dropping of retiring snow
slumps over the roof. The business of
being disappears into the dark. Know
that they are alive and that that is enough.
Know they are alive, though sharp winds blow.
Wholly essential affections drive
the warming depth. They are alive.

Static of definite extinction, to whom are We allied?
If it is to Your noise, Your scatter and clean-up-later attitude,
then We are separatists.
If to Whatever, We are assuredly conspiring cohorts.
Do You claim to provide what We've needed all along,
but have simply been too short-sighted to know We've needed?
Or do You delineate? Do You define Us by unpacking Us,
thereby reconstructing Us into sections of a whole untarnished tool?
Machinery, if you will?
Take, for instance, television.
Do We need, or even want to watch?
Needlessly We need it. We want it for lack of choice,
or so We think. It is, simply, there.
Easily - and how easily We may never know - one may turn
to the body's offerings, or the plummets and peaks of the mind.
Sport, science, language, art, human, essential, vivid, now -
they are nearer than no one knows; practically graspable.
But Static, You move Us to wish.
You **** Us to think we must consummate Ourselves.
As We said, We are separatists.
Declare some vapid civil war.
Who, then, will provide your nothings?