Jack jumped last night.
We might have expected it
had we not been so unsuspecting.

Those blue periods of his,
I'm sure you've witnessed one,
were walled in somewhat by the
swelling tides of years
and years
and years.
When they came, they were
quelled by the very occasional red mark.
These punctuations
when they mercifully visited
would open doors for him, in
which our brother, neighbor,
father discovered strange liquid
tendencies to ailing strength.
Too many blank-out nights
could find him and his new
battery bickering the old childhood
verses. Too many four-of-the-clocks
would cue the choragos his
specter-critic's eye to deign a
Plan on our friend's blue
stationary.

A smile might have
mailed it straight ahead.

Perhaps it was last week when the
boat met the shore, some heinous
delivery of packaged, patent-business
sealed reformation, salvation.
In the midst of his violet smile
the cogent steam engine had a chute
into which it might heartily crash.
However it came remains to be seen.
What we have all seen this morning
remains our family's chief export.

Jack jumped last night.
He ascended the hill with his red hands
full of ****** punctuation marks, and
he spouted full-rehearsed
all those lines he'd learned in
grade school. Like a prolix
Gertrude complaining of her thirst.
And with the singularity of purpose
that haunts even the sharpest eyes,
he completes the trek to his three-foot tall Kusinagara
with his asthma wrapped around his neck.

Victory is a queer bird. Its song is never heard
the whole way through.

He breathes in weightlessness,
regains his bearing and waits for the
lines to quiet down. No one should leave
in the middle of a recitation, regardless
of the quality. At last, "Richard Cory"
reaches his terminal syllable and
our dearest man searches for his place in the music.
And it's just a minute,
just a minute,
just a minute,
jumps.

Jack jumped last night
Just as he said he would,
And had we heard him say it
We'd have thought "He could. He could."

The novelist shows people that do not exist
in situations that never happened.

The memoirist shows actual people
in situations that never happened.

The biographer shows people that do not exist
in actual situations.

The poet shows every person that has ever existed
in situations that should have happened.

The playwright shows people that should have existed
in every situation that has ever happened.

The journalist rather makes one prefer fiction.

My newest hobby is telling people
that I have a prom date, watching the drift of mouths
and listening to the refocusing
of eyes. I'm sure they don't mean
to be rude but they certainly make a good show
of their unkempt reactions.

"Really?" comes the pestilential chorus
as trains of thought rapidly switch tracks.

One stalwart, you may shudder
to hear this, expressed profound
disgust when I disclosed the girl's identity.
"I wasn't aware they let lesbians go to the dance.”
he says and I: "Well, you'll find
they cannot bar the doors to any
sort of trash. You're going right?"

Not a thing about this business seems (to my joying eyes)
quite belonging to its proper world. Yes, it's really me.

I, the wandering ******-shaman,
must look quite at odds in their view;
despoiling the *** ritual
by stepping out from behind
the moon's galling rind of half-light.
To beat at my own tides? Oh, god!
The quiddity of my queer mind
is sacred like a water-walking rumor.

I find myself betrothed behind my back,
my role is sealed ere tightness shows a crack.

The sky shoots its myriad blue eye
into a pavane of reds and silvers.
A farrago of ****** tastes signal second dawn at noon.
An indescribable sound pierces the eardrum
from the inside as it rushes ******,
humanly,
inhumanely outward.

Face all of crag
Lined out in youth
And smoothed where Time thinks best.
Parenthetical mouth.
Asterisk-ine blush spreads
Where Doubt lingers.
Question marks pronounced
Exquisitely through lips.
Like a tactile symphony,
No harsh chord exists.
Not in the lines of the face
Though it looks as if its
Planes were imported from disparate periods.
From a Baroque cheek
To a Tudor brow
And a smirk that even James would be
Hard-pressed to translate.

To my initial A. Long may he reign;
For I feel in truth whatever he may feign.

Some days there are no problems.
Others, becoming more the frequent,
I feel as safe as Anne Frank in
A china shop.

It's never good fun.
But it doesn't have to be this way.

Either the seekers' rubber boots
Squeak up on me
Or I fling myself against the
Floodlit brick wall.
I've dreamed it a thousand ways.
What new can they do?
Their gas and their bullets, and
Their tire irons across my cheek
Cannot hurt me, a fool
Who has no fear of death,
As every day Death walks beside
And casts a grey lens to filter
What I can see.

If I am caught
If I am found out
And if their hands, their hands, their hands
Pull at me until I am We,
I hope the rendered halves
Push forth that warm light we like to hear about
In place of a deluge.
A light
To burst forth doors
And save the ones who perch like finches
Daring never fly.

I might hope only to become a hand.
A hand in which to step
And to be clasped
And in that clasp be free.
For all the men and women and
For all the in-between as well.
I wish that I could give that to you.
To rip away from your grey rags,
Your stars and triangles,
And in the persiflage of silence
Break the gates and cells
With my limp wrists.

Throw stones until my blood be upon me.
Mother.
Father.
Sons and lovers.
Break my mouth and put my eyes away.
Let, though, my skin go last
As a radial, red calyx.
I. We. All.
I wish to be the last to see the sun.

To be at last
And to be me.

Rubber soles squeak without pretense on air
Fills the floor and the dwellers' ears
With the simple note,
Deafens them all with empty afterechoes.

Not a single meanderer would care if he
Pulled out a gun.
Instead he pulls out a knife
(a paring knife to be exact)

And selects a chair near the door.
Begins to shear the hour.
The knifeblade gleams behind his eyes,
Skewering seconds,

And he continues not to exist,
Murdering minutes.
Someone physically there remarks a draft
So he rises to shut the door,

But reconsiders and retreats
Back to his homestead seat.
Crossed arms and crossed legs.
However evilly uncomfortable,

The figure must be statuesque like the air must be.
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. And then sixty arrives
And he rises like a seagull in an operating room
In a grand gesture. He smiles to no one and

Retreats back to his burrow or wherever he lives.

But no one considers old, mad Mister Gray
Though he comes and sits queerly there day after day.