Who’s to say how
He might come back for a second
inhumanely heaped-up helping,
if we grant that immensity
of our assumption He did come
kingly first into this inside-
out size from a do-you-miss-me-
yet’s mirthfully mythical realm

I have seen Him
lurking in a particle-board fine
finish on the thin outer membranes
of our estranged and better faces;
He’s Higgs-boson omnipresent,
but far too theoretical
for our broadly practical, turned-
away gazes to rediscover

There He is now
rising in the favela’s gap-
toothed grins with fabulously naughty
corners this glee-pawed grandpa twists
using cur jests his ***** charges
imagine as flightless quarrels
grey-hooded pigeons would gaggle
were they over-stuffed on golden grain

And there again
on a Calcutta mound’s cluttered
conic end, smog-like He slowly lifts
with the crust-gnawed, razor-wire crimps
of a soup-can’s unconsummated lid
as dainty fingers crawl in toward
a gelatinous glob still clinging
to the powerful pretense it’s meat

And there once more,
conceding oms, He restless flickers
at the margins of blocky beige
Beijing screens as crisply clicked clacks
circumnavigate the darkling
smooth patches and spit-spark a few
conscious drips to squiggle out from
the babble of noxious red seas

Emerged, this welp
won’t toddle off to dribble-stain
the dressy linens of a made-up
nanny’s well-mannered and ornate
evil; it will curl up instead,
a swaddled yawn with no yearn to
suckle under His real mother’s
gaping wide and grungy bloused best

Our wilier webs
woven with the distractions of self-absorption
can come to feel
cheated if we use them
only for halfhearted games of catch
and eventual release.
He’d overlooked that part.
Then there was an obligation to prey
who so willingly strayed upon the taffy
pull of his sweet and sticky strands.
The scrunch up of their wee faces
squeaked, “We deserve
to have our glued-down expectations
met with a most gruesome expertise.”
He’d just wanted to watch them
struggle a smidge,
at first.
It was a test if this muscle the scribes
ascribe as rightly plagued by pangs
was in him
perhaps despicably defective.
With each tripper-by trapped
the examinations grew
more tortuously complex,
and when none raised even
the slightest murmur of a palpitation,
he gave the web its dripped-dry due,
at last.
“The murderous truth will out,”
they say. It did, monstrously.
Now his bound but gagless masques
are always well-attended.

With its sinuous green edge and its delicately
decorative white venation this dewy cress laid
on a fine crystal platter would fit well next to that
chunk of cement facade ensconced in a vitrine
at the Art Institute’s new Louis Sullivan exhibition
There’s little cause to wonder why these particular
atoms once afloat on inchoate seas and awash
in the hummed mumbles of humble vibrations
chose to decohere into this one captivating pattern
from among an infinite variety of mattered schemes
even limiting their choicest range to those paired
colors A tree frog for example its narrow lime toes
suctioned on a broad leaf and its watchful pearl
eyes misconfigured with a blind spot too soon
exploited by a beak spouted peril Or the gallant rider
in uniform myrtle and mounted atop an albino steed
who at a mirthless gallop through routed troops
delivers this message Mother I am so far away
from everything They’re oddly jarred couplings but
with any choice whether slapdash had or carefully
considered what’s our guarantee it will live up to
the iron of romantically clad expectations I have
heard It’s always the salad that gets you in the end

It has every right to bare
this clenched fist of a grudge
embittered by techno-Jovian
whims and base transformations

Once delicately formed— two
tips pressed en pointe, three
others elegantly tucked— it
danced with a golden shaft
pulling indigo pirouettes
across a swept ivory stage

Then came the re-pose: a claw’s
arched looming. Unhappiness
fell as five wilted stems,
beggar mouths forced to fumble
toward those impoverished
humps of white-on-black glyph

The other hand is left
complimentary, richly gripped
by understudy glee, being

My heart is a squishy stone
I toss out
across this green-gray gloss
mosquitoes skim
but the odds were always slim
it would skip with any vim given
its mix of bulges
and irregular beats
Let’s not mention that
surprising lack of heft
currently keeping it afloat
There it lies not quite flat
a maroon lily pad
I’ll lay piddling wagers
some nomadic creature
can make a home
Maybe the crawdad whose squeak
nothing like a fog-horn warns,
“Frog dress is on the marsh”
I swear I can hear
her bull groaning,
“The slippery *****
can’t stay clothed”
Newly hitched
this bogged-down daddy’s got
a passel of polliwogs to feed
and he needs
the lean of her tender
slimy legs for support
The crickets and I
might inwardly snigger
but from such
small giggles bred
is the manly laugh of strife
and that’s when
my heart slinks slowly back

let us join hands
you and i
and ***** down this falling away
road new paved with over-baked schemes
and the shattered
windshield glass from a dream car
we left for dead many miles back
every tire including the spare had blown
and they still hiss their casual tunes
while popped-out
flesh-tone hoses
dangle and sprinkle
a rainbow gloss on black-rimmed puddles
it’s a cause for deepening joy
these shallows won’t
dry up in either of our weened lifetimes
moisten your lips dear
and make that pineapple-sweet whistle
i love to taste
when i dare to plant my tongue there
the food’s long gone
and pots are now for banging
we’ve lost our way
and maps are made for shredding
into playfully themed streamers
we’ll tie in our hair
as we dance off the waning
silky heat of a too-late summer
the sun’s dial is flipping
and bound by those zeros
we’ve gotta go but it’s best
we’re brought low together

when I go
it will be
impossibly late
and I’ll leave you
not multi-talented bars
or pairs of randy ingots
itching to procreate
in a splendid explosion
of golden delight
what I’ll leave you is
a stale-air larder
filled just this once
by dully packaged thoughts
and duller feelings
when I have them
they could only couple
if enlivened with musical prodding
or the sigh effecting benefits
from hands full of mood-altering
pharmaceuticals
so please yourself instead
and don’t
put them to any use
bury them deep
better yet
pile them high on Pyrrhic pyres
where the gathering scorch will send
down leaden puddles
while precious platinum curls rise
up to trickle trickster tears
my greatest possible reward