"The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece
And the footman sat upon the dining-table
Holding the second housemaid on his knees--
Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived"

— From "Aunt Helen" by T.S. Eliot*


It's laugh-out-loud funny
how
one death
can change things.

If she were here
I'd blame
it
on a lifelong ill-
fascination with
Charlie McCarthy
or a hang-up
that's lingered since
the bourbon-scented Santa
invited me to sit.

At some point
you've got to
get back on the horse
though my levers
aren't so
easy to work
and, I better get
more
than a stuffed Pooh bear
out of this trip.

It's still-deep
water under the bridge
because
she's not.

A plume should be a thing lovely and light
dancing violet as it's fanned
at the flanks of the blue
bird-of-paradise
who hangs limberly
to solicit a mate

It should curl
blinding white at the back
of the puffy Samoyed
prancing fancy to please a master
who also preens on the oval
of a sawdust track

It should flop
red at the top of gold-painted tin
helmet awry on the head
of an aspiring actor
who plays centurion for tips
outside a mobbed Colosseum

It should spray
as clear and cooling drops out
the copper mouth of a grass-snake
green hose uncoiled by
the sneaky dad who tickles
giggles from sweaty kids

It should flutter
gray at the tail end of a quill
bouncing to the frenzied
jottings of an anachronistic
frump who takes the pain to outfit
himself far too seriously

A plume should not be a thing of plague
riding currents kissed by taint-
sweet crude blasted from a wound
gouged in the crust
of a frigid deep to feed
our shallow lust for eases

It shouldn't choke

It shouldn't muck

It shouldn't tar

It can't help
poisoning that last pretense
we cared about anything,
be it plumed or not, but
the finality of
a bottom line

Aphrodite's kid
could've handled this
if eons ago
he hadn't wandered off
pining for his precious Psyche.

Where that leaves you and me
today is exploring
the grocery store aisles.

Oysters, sure.

Dark chocolate,
even if it's not.

Saffron would,
at minimum,
put my nose in the mood
for some
hay-scented rolling.

Celery? Really,
it doesn't do much for me,
but whatever
floats your dote, dear.

A chemical boost's
no ha-ha joke
but romantic love could be
based on such practical tricks
to keep our DNA churning.

It might be the pungent steam from a ***
steeping herbs meant to bend its sippers'
minds to potent effect, or an unanticipated
digestive reckoning from that mawkishly flavored
brand of store-bought paste they pass as butter.

However the dough arises, their collective
recollection of storied events, lengthwise sliced
and ritually rehearsed, hops facilely on the ****
of a bucking and overtly nonsensical wind.

Tea parties with slippery perspectives
have been shown quite clinically to induce
heightened sensitivity in participants,
so it's prudent to set about tidying the facts:

The hatter, it's become clear, shifted one place
too many and disappeared with a trace -- leaving
behind his hat to nobody's great advantage.
Lacking a wearer, the headgear's reputation for
producing madness has rapidly diminished.

The march hare pulls off his change in a very
separate and seasonal way: the bunny's
bottom half somersaults its top to occupy
both his spot and the hatter's vacated seat.

The dormouse upon its latest arousal
is re-visioned to be small, but not much mouse
at all. He's plush with the long-in-the-ear habit
of a pink stuffed rabbit, which the crusading hare
furiously declares is most curious, casting
doubt on the vermin's commitment to "no room."

Alice remains foremost in tact and is given
a bonus of two spare feet complete with slackened
bootstraps. She keeps them and her other luxury
items well-sheltered behind a stout table leg.

The absentee hatter doesn't dare shame her
with a radio-show call-in decrying
the waste. She's generously agreed to
cover the medical expenses from his firm flop.

The mighty Chicago Tribune got hit last night.

Well, its newspaper box did,
the only one picked from a spot-assuming
row of four corner mainstays
to suffer that indignity of toppling.

I found it this morning, blue-
and-white face down fifty feet further on, and
eating pushed-down daisies from
the commuter rail's prairie-grass embankment.

It couldn't tell me those dead-men
tales of daily mischief's end, but graffito-
tagged its side did sigh, "Someone
feels my news ain't got the values it used to."

He's part artist, part alchemist,
but a full-on con, self-professed with post-
graduate degrees in mixology
and the god-given sense to know which
smoldering home remedies will catch fire
(give or take an occasional legal glitch).

His healing pitch is grifted on the easy
comparison of queasily lowered brows to
their indistinctly raised betters. You'll doff
the scoffing face as he pulls back a masking
caparison, and your fever gallops hotly
hoof-in-mouth with an uncontrollable itch.

Tinctures, colloids, salves and potions,
they all have twisty caps, blithe boxes
bubbling over with hypnotic patterns
fashioned to cure your urge to avoid
his futility. First'll come the ******, then
the crumple followed by purse strings loosening.

Don't consider it capitulation.
His assortment of fluid manipulations
bear a singular branding at 100 proof,
and after the recommended daily dosing
(two jiggers with each meal), you'll feel
you're **** erectus made sapient.

Gene Wilder's ***** Wonka once asked me
to step into a world
of pure imagination
and I danced to his voice
of sugary imperfections.
The swelling strings drizzled
on top falsetto inflections
captured me childishly
with candy-coated attentions

But even the finest chocolate melts,
and I learned to let purity be
pushed by treacly lyrics
or stern midgets secure
in their fudge-topped zealotry.
It sifts too pretty for me,
powdering my grown-up
infatuations with petty
wants, getting a little messy

What I crave instead's stained-glass contraptions
to propel me past the stretches
of biblical proportion
where light and dark don't mix.
I'm no Idiot, good-hearted
in the veins of Fyodor
or Akira, and I can't see
beyond the pure tedium
of a blurredly driven snow

I like my mental drifts grime-choked and splotched
with some savory do
dropped in to dissolve flossy
confections to a salted soup
of imagined impurity.