This is not just an ordinary day
like yesterday or the day before
this day I’ll open a door
to a garden alive in dark clay
hummingbirds searching for paradise
in a heat wave scorching and dry
honeybees saying goodbye
mothers in a war made of sacrifice

No ordinary day this one
I’ll find a way out of sadness
through an hour of madness
out of moments undone
taking thirty minutes for my lover
where we touch our toes
take a risk to expose
mistakes we were loathe to uncover.

We will create this present day
halfway out of old into something new and bold.

I am a slave to the sounds of
poetry. The rhymes of lovers
pledges, the colors of tanned
songs sing to my imagination.  

Poems drape over me like
dresses on women.  I see
colors and patterns reach
with tender fingers. Vowels
touch and with moist
lips, rhyme.

But there are no poems
here in Gilead,
no epic washing away of lines
on the waves of the

final

flood.

jaeger.
chasseur.
foxtail.
seduction of fascism in mind,
like tumbling autumn leaves
ever and always
on the steps of a country house.
always and ever
just outside the aix-les-bains dance hall.
his blousy new bride
and her old lover
aware of his sympathies and
  the danger he presents to them.

jaeger.
chasseur.
foxtail.
seduction of fascism in mind,
ever and always
on a deserted alpine road.
always and ever
one trail of blood,
remnant of the preyed upon.
she screams against the glass,
quiet devil in the backseat
haunted by the disorder
  of his own mind.

eyes opened to
his own mutability.
alienation is immanent,
bred in the bone.
a desperate need for gravitas,
built upon vaporous credulity.
and she is pursued through the woods
ever and always,
through iridescent fields
always and ever,
until finally in his crosshairs
  she falls.

those like him have not suddenly
vanished from the earth, but
  are merely lying in wait.