I am of three minds—
an un-whole trinity
built by ghostly id,
god-sick conscience,
and one son of never-
virginal egos—
interlocked inside
a mortal’s spirited,
head-in-head conflict.
To the fabulous free
goes my prized heart’s
spoiled meat. Cooked rare,
its fetid, red juices
run in all directions.

Wipe away that image of
beating butterfly wings

and the currents they send across
great continents.
See instead, you and me

arranged on the same vast
plate — two irregular green peas
rolling around the nucleus of a split pod.

Even if we don’t meet here and now —
snagged by an intervening fork,
set off course by rivulets of gravy,
separated by marbled slabs of meat,
or consumed by a gravity-defying, black-
holed gob — somewhere
on parallel, fine-clothed
tables, we’ll savor the joy of
big-banged, trajectory-altering collisions.

He couldn't
not take off
the backward cap
that hides
his tousled hair
as he pulls back
the high-backed stool
he'll perch himself on
next to
this unfamiliar beauty.
He couldn't
not accept the bourbon
shot, a pert bartender
offers to keep
his pint company
and lend him
extra courage.
He couldn't
not exchange
an inquiring smile
then a glib remark
about the heat
and the sudden
appeal of dank taverns.
He could
watch her
small gestures for hours
and never
lose interest.
The way
alabaster fingers
tease auburn hair,
they pull at his longing
for a moment
they'll land to still
his right hand
nervously tapping
so useless against
the emptied glass.
He couldn't
guess where
it all might lead,
but he couldn't
not take the chance
it might,
somewhere.
Her accent
sounds French,
and it is Bastille Day.
Anything's possible,
n'est-ce pas?

There’s a sidewalk here,
the city has poured,
cemented with smooth
and perfect squares.
It leads to all
the usual places,
only altering when
at last it crumbles.

There's also the rough-
cut route I’ll walk,
taking ******
by his shaky hand
to stroll where moths mingle,
dandelions dance, and
destinations giggle
tickled by our setting suns.

Should stolen silver wings make soft
cutting of glass and steel...

Should thumbs of clouds smudged red and gold
stop watchful gulls mid-dial...

Should broad-shouldered blue shed brave skins,
then feverish crumple...

Should there ever be a morning
when grey snow falls on warm
September sidewalks, and brings us
no damp or cool
relief,
but the burning
silence of five thousand throats... how
could I write that canvas?

I like to visualize my death
not as a grand moment
fraught with TV-script intimations
at sudden illumination
while I’m encircled by a non-weepy
sprinkling of the usual types:
one surviving relative
curious to see what I’ve got
left to inherit; one forgotten
friend dubious I hadn’t
died quite some time ago;
and one vengeful stranger
anxious for the shock
when I hear her unmask.
No, I envision my death simply
as the lonely release
of a hardly noticeable puff,
its minute droplets lifting
to mix with every other
ever breathed, and to bid adieu
to my residue of befuddling
puddles flecked by unresolved wants.

Young Johannes keeps his theory
dressed up with petty pink
flourishes and tucked inside her
wicker basket. She's plopped fat

on a spangled, off-center perch
while surrounded by tangles of
circular mirrors, each reflecting
his fragmented eye. “The fluid

mechanics of my camera’s
lens imbues its gaping human
subject with a soul,” this caged bird
sings, just as he’s coached her.

She doesn’t require very much
care -- a few scattered meat-filled
husks and white space for flapping
her clipped-tones -- but reluctantly

Johannes must set Prolly free
to wing it openly upon
the waves of patterned noise
his vacuous glass can’t see.

I don't know
where we were headed,
but the sidewalk did,
and its smells had been
liberated by a hot summer rinse.

You grabbed at my pendulum
arm, and ******
me back before
the gap grew us
out of being a couple.

My penance was
a hair-shirt stare
and a smack with that saw:
"Life's about the journey,
not the destination."

"Sure," I said, "but the end's
a ****** cul-de-sac.
I wanna see what I can
before we smash
against it."

You summed me up,
mouthing the three letters
you drew on my chest,
still not-chastened:
"A-D-D, Humming bird."

"There's no deficit
of attention here, Old Crow.
It's just this
plugged-up world's got
a surplus of stimuli."

It was one week
later you left,
taking a whole
slew of savory inputs
to the blank without you.

"Everything
happens for a reason,"
you'd tell me.
Knowing the cause,
never changes my effects.

You could put it down
as youthful folly, or spit out
the hackneyed line about
pride and what goeth after.

It's true, I over-reached,
wanting to limitless kiss
the sun's crisp lips.

I did hold her glowing cheeks
firmly in my palms
for one exquisite breath.

Can you, rocking there
in your comfy prison,
say the same?

There comes a time to sit
astride clouds and burn off
the waxy buildup of childish things.

The weightlessness before
the plunge feels
like it will never end,
but, I can tell you, it does.

He peels an azure rind
sure to find click-clack gears clocking
tin-men's timid-toed steps

But these clouds conceal gut-
taut strings rain drops plink, teasing out
hours of palsy-foot jigs

I want to paint it
this plaint
I've worded
one thousand
unrecorded instants
only to see both
the deep and tinny
syllables I thought
vibrantly tinted
dissolve into
pale, gooey-bottomed wails

I should pitch it
this paste
to patch an unfrocked
eye searching
puffy tears for atoms
escaped within
abandoned margins
as narrow as
the difference between
my white canvas
and an emptying hand

I have to plug it
this post hole
bored by my frantic
inattentions
and stencil a sign:
bold letters below
a starched cuff,
its pulseless finger
pointing out
there's one way
round sniveling sounds

The swampy heat draws swarms of bottle-glass
eyed flies who I'll buzz with their Christian name:
dragon. They hover, dive, then skim tall grass;

Cellophane wings beating hurricanes. Game's
afoot, but where? I've seen the solo flight,
pairs mating, but never so many flames

bounced off blue-green foils by the sun's white light.
Their gather's a check for black plumes of beasts
gone unbalanced to these hunters' delight.

If on mosquitoes they make seasoned feast,
my meek blood inherits to this world's least.

Sea lilies
I see as silly
sprawled and feathery
arms lift: either
a birthday child's
happy waves
or the crone's
hunger-mad flailing.
Ethereal, they sift
nervous ticks
drifting down with
the dwindled since
carboniferous
seas rose from
an obsession's
bad-mouthed drought
to my sorrow's
sadly doubted drowning.
The miracle of
this one thought
circles up to me
at a glacial pace.

First a disclaimer:
My god is not
necessarily
yours, but she is
undeniably
hungry for a comfort-food
snack of peanut butter
and Fluff brand
whipped marshmallow spread.

(Yeah, I know,
nasty stuff, yet
every god has her quirks)

She's actually
more demiurge,
needy and enduring
a dangerously dull day
ideating at the office
that gets worse when
she opens the gripe-box
to unfold a complaint
pasted in ransom-note letters:

"Too stingy with praise.
Resent the ego stroking
going one way."

"Can't stroke what you ain't got,"
she cracks, tipping back
a cold glass of froth-topped milk.

The bubbling laughter
seizes her
mid-swallow, and
caught up by
a soul-clearing cough,
stars spray out speckling
black tile in a no-longer dark
part of the universe
we call home.

Chi sono io?

My i strayed from its o
(divorziato)
decades before the ***** and egg had wed,
hatching me to a self-soaking
tub where the immigrant
pigments of Ermano e Rosa
were twice removed.

Quando dormo
gli antenati stanno sempre
sussurando indicazioni

Rosa e Ermano each descend
(spaesato)
on separate planks plunked down to greasy
rock by proverbial boats.
When they do, Emma Lazarus doesn't
warn them the Lady's "give me"
comes with a take.

Provo a sentire
le due parole dolci
ma non posso

Ermano e Rosa each find
(inamorato)
American spouses, have American kids
who sprout to twist a native tongue
till an ill-fit, its tang is
left in must and un-dusted
just for periodic trips back.

Ripeto, Chi sono io?
E nel questo sogno
i voci mi dicono di nuovo...

Let's skip the unplugged generation's gap
(collegato)
to where my i reacquaints with its o,
but their made-up past makes
a tenuous tether, so together
Rosa e Ermano drift on
the whispers of a forgotten song.

Non dimenticar

Let's offer up our prayers to a finicky Father
who sits in his segregated heaven, rocking
away senility on that rickety chair
with a spare, tall back wrapped in striped wool blankets.

Who sits in his segregated heaven, rocking?
Our Father, keeping his heart warm against the gusts.
With a spare, tall back wrapped in striped wool blankets
perfectly square (but too small to share with others),

our Father's keeping his heart warm. Against the gusts
and idling time, again he stays busy carving figures
perfectly square but too small to share. With others,
these tokens will help the faithful remain fertile

and idling. Time again, he keeps busy carving figures
on the edges of a pesky map. Mad for expansion,
these tokens will help the faithful. "Remain fertile!"
Father cautions, as he watches a big screen TV.

On the edges of a pesky map mad for expansion,
many errant souls who wander are unable to hear
Father's cautions. As he watches a big screen TV,
the devil's slipping him a low-ball offer to buy

many errant souls. Who wander are unable to hear
news heaven's economy is still struggling, and
the devil's slipping him. A low-ball offer to buy,
our aging Father mulls over hot oatmeal and tea.

More wiry weeds than hair, they grow
coarse black and at a heightened clip
from ear-top follicles suddenly fertile
after decades of smooth-flesh dormancy.

Add to that a stubborn snout intent
on lengthening and willful fingers bent
on becoming gnarled claws. The horror
signs indicate a slo-mo transition

from man to wolf, but don't let that put
you off your supper. We're all made to fall
apart. Creep on over. I'll take a little
nibble, and we'll howl at forever's moon

together.

My miss may not be expansive
but she's worth this world's unfolding.
On bitter days and dreary nights,
her apricot smile's at my side.

She's furrier than some may like 'em
yet when her wag drags it takes
me down with its droop, and that's why
I'm missing my Miss Sadie.

She's got an easy-gone temper.
There's no bit o' bite in her bark,
just a fondness to be pampered
and I'm happy to indulge her.

She's furrier than some may like 'em
yet when her wag drags it takes
me down with its droop, and that's why
I'm missing my Miss Sadie.

She got sick, it's me that's hurting,
and while she's doing another
kind of healing, I'm waiting for
my poor missed Sadie to come back.

She's furrier than some may like 'em
yet when her wag drags it takes
me down with its droop, and that's why
I'm missing my Miss Sadie.

It was my nightly recurring teenage motif:

The cramped room with a stomach-knotting
presence, creaky floorboards and one wickedly
white door looming as ghastly and large as
any bad-movie omen about to play out.

Being poltergeist-gripped, it swayed back an inch
before a sudden but noiseless slam
shut that unhinged me toward hasty shouts
of, "The power of Christ compels thee!"

(It's a silver-bullet phrase packed and ready in
the chamber of all aspiring exorcists.)

The devil scared out of me yet again,
I'd wake up with renewed vows to avoid TV
horror fests, and those sensational stories
my mom brought home in her Weekly World News.

"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.

If I hedge thus a drooling wager and cash in
on my thrice-foiled cravings for her overdue bites
(plus a guilt-free laugh at his expense), I can
use minced steps to sidle around too-lively
trunks, and avoid the need to heed thugs
barking mad from within their crevice-laid traps.

How those bug-eyed brutes'll clamor and claw at me
to discard this protective wrap, clued in by my rep
of never bending willfully to anybody
but her. "Come on, shed! Get, uh, new set of scales,
for you we will — promise!" is how she'd stammer,
roughly translating their not-so-twee chatter,

if she were there. Rather, in that lavishly apt way
she has, she'll be away picking suitable pelts
to adorn her newly uncovered, quite public shame
while fending off an advancing clod, who won't go
easily, but who does go on ad nauseam with
a penchant for naming every God-**** thing

that haps vitally across his cocky path. Beyond
a simple relish of mischief, I'm doing this (mostly)
for her benefit. How could a persimmon
be forbidden, as if he had permission to make
such bargains? He's dismissed it as an ungainly fruit,
and mocked its likelihood to "lava thy lips"

with an orange pulp, but in that chance smattering lies
the matter to inflame my soul. I'll feed her
the pudding-fresh flesh, and strip it down
to its delectably small seeds. In their splitting
I'll glean the silvery utensils to spill
a man's wholly worthless future. Let's tuck in.

Sidestepping shadow-plays
boxed in bonus-sized portions
for garden-varietal religions,
I've had these scuzzy intimations
great big (voids) lie behind
most altruistic inclinations
and the biggest news is,
we're still expanding
with-in-exhaustible potentials
to be eternally filled greater.

Now I'll admit to being
hampered in my cognitive
capacity for meaningful
pattern recognition
by my debilitating
predisposition toward
concentrated forms of myopia,
ergo, I can't shape
a formless mess into anything
but incoherent flimflam.

I've tried alleviating this
condition with meditative
concoctions and palliatives
of sensory deprivation,
yet I fear I'll need
a silicon-chip-enhanced head
before I can glimpse
the cosmic legerdemain spinning
its paradoxes of endless
surfaces but no top.

If I finally do, I'll smile big
as a great-white gull winning
his first demonstration hand at
the three-card monte of not-to-be
reconciled contradictions.

I've been thirsting to burst your bubble since
I heard the low-down we may be over-
supplied with a green-backed bird called Money,
that trollop spread-wide by aliases

A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
A buck or a pound, a buck or a pound

To a layman's ears unlearned in the fine-
tuned registers of glib-tongued financiers,
it may ring up as reason to cheer with
no tinkling of trouble, but if Money

Is all that makes the world go around
that clinking, clanking sound (they do say)

She sings, clangs a bit hollow when she clings
too heavy in alms of poorly wrung hands,
it's then well-heeled sit'n spins'll turn us about
to the golden-gapped beams of bankers mouths

For Money makes the world go around
The world go around, the world go around

And will till johns who hold little put less
stock in the **** pitches of slick-macking
daddy Street with his tricky fat pay backs
for the ounce of love he's flouncing to sell.

They're piled in an Amazon box of almost never-
(that is, all not-quite not-ever-
but sometimes twice- and most often a mere once-)
worn clothes destined for another,
bigger green metal box proclaiming itself
charitably fashioned for such donations
as these nearly pristine shirts,
jeans and sweaters that have only those holes
their makers intended but still lack the want
I've wasted for arms, legs and torso to fill them.

What they don't have is shabby stitches
or those counterfeit claims mocking
a public thread-lust for luxury labels,
but they are mild misfits of the well-meant
gift or of my poor-choice selection
and they carry an ill-suited look,
whether it's fleeced too loose and loud,
or flanneled too bold and blousy,
or otherwise woolly with any too fuzzy
je ne sais quoi that puts me off.

Too's had grown too many as if the clothes bred
while tucked in nice 'n cozy at backs of drawers
rarely drawn or stacked sleepy on the bottom
of a closet's clutter-topped shelf,
and if proved it would be a miracle
on par with Christ's gospel-touted cloning
of the loaves and fishes, but it's not,
so I can't compare my parlor-trick sharing
of two dozen hand-me-downs carelessly passed-on
to his magic of multitudinous feeding.

After all, the real comparison is,
I could have accomplished even more
than this speculative giving,
had I been retrospectively better
in my retroactive accounting
and made the significantly less sinful
omission of never (not just once or twice,
but actuarially quite not-ever)
accumulating so much always
not-needed, however tasteful, stuff.

From that moment the mouthy man in the middle,
top hat in hand, barks and waves our three floodlit rings
into motion with a flourish of brassy blasts,
the big top gets turvy and my stomach's all nerves
making the bushel of peanuts I just munched feel
like broken glass chewed by my friend the tattooed geek.

Martha says, Elephants are supposed to be more
dignified... don't mope! It is hard to grasp for her
tail day after daisy-chained day when I'm holding
this bouquet of forget-me-nots rubber-banded
by a grudge. I tell her, The real indignity's
being dressed in a rhinestone-studded satin cape.

It's a common trope,
the Danse Macabre that troops us
toward hushed tombs.

Blame its plague on Wolgemut
or Bruegel (Pieter the Elder),
and certainly Bergman

What with his iconic black-clad Death
and the parade of captive players taken
hand-in-hand on a joyless march.

But Life has her own fleet moments to lead,
and these flip-flop pageants though ragtag
are not the less enriching to behold

Or so I'm told in passing by
the delicate bluebell peaking its buds through
a monochrome rubble.

To concretize my theorized love,
I could play the accidental odds and strew
slippery tongues of spotted petals
onto thickly trafficked highways,
or use the best predictive modelling
to deduce when and where I can poke out
a well-heeled boot to trick unwary spills
and ****** a kiss from the unsuspecting
lips of any suitably compatible
passerby oft times inconvenienced and passed
on by.

These well-oiled and crudely experimental
methods do produce expected results,
but not the breakthrough nor the looked-for
satisfaction of appropriate reactions,
so I'll keep my dotted eyes tucked in
their pulpy stems and my shoddy toes curled back
while I beam my bits of invitation through
circuitous routes spatially arrayed along
parallel paths where one might search
with an extra-terrestrial inventiveness,
and wait.

I know the trials of these errant waves
won't add up to a guarantee
my burpy blips of a pulse can reach
the receptively comprehending and responsive
soils I seek, but it's the remoteness of a stead
to come stalking that appeals, and despite
the Hawking drone of unveiled warnings
I might regret such contact, I'll risk it all
on vaguely washed wishes this astronomical
anomaly with an alien sensibility has
one match.

I was born
here in a Capital place,
as in DC, or so I'm told
by the yellowed scrap of paper
embossed with a seal,
which Birthers might say is forged,
but it's not, and that's
a happy circumstance for me,
because I hear folks like me
are different, maybe even
exceptional,
and with that lone American
difference comes a boat load of perks,
including the right to say
I don't see any difference
when it comes to simple
appearances,
but I do feel different
than those who want to speak
in the name of the same
old stupid conceit
that some belong
and some don't,
all the while they search
for differences
and seize on the might
to drive wedges
between us,
and if they end up driving out
our differences with this crocked-up
lack of a due process
cloaked in the flag, well that would be
the real crime.

The news never stops, but sometimes it breaks
strange, like when the cops tell us,
Man throws dog at sister.

It didn't fly far, but across town,
the Police did finally catch another stray dog
on the Eisenhower Expressway.

I hear it's driving a '98 Toyota Corolla,
which has nothing to do with
the 3 critically injured
when their vehicle hits a pole
on the Kennedy Expressway.

They could be spooked by the report
that a Suburban girl, 11, threatened
to shoot up her school bus.

She's been told pink bullets
are the latest preteen fad,
and to prove her absurd point,
there's more bad news of
2 children injured in a Far South Side shooting.

Add their names to the piled-up statistics
and the multiple PR reasons
an often divided
State Legislature and Mayor Daley will try again
to crack down on gun violence.

This equation's always out of balance.

They sprouted more than flew, and
there were quite a few, possibly dozens —
though, looking back, I always do
tend to exaggerate such incidents.

Anyway, this aphid swarm of grassy
greens decided to make me home,
and my chest crawled with specks, while
I waited for a bus to St. Peter's.

They could have been splattered "as if's"
spat from the mouths of hungry sparrows,
taken mid-swallow with a guffaw at
this tourist dressed in DayGlo.

I might've gotten the omen, but
intuition wouldn't surrender its clues
how to shoo insect guests attracted
by a coincidental cloth.

Perhaps they were meant as subtle hints —
an eternal city keeps its own agenda.

Militantly mustachioed, at least in my mind's eye, and
Invincibly attired toe-to-wing in sterling silver, he
Commands legions less scary than our mechanized monsters, but
Hell's soon-to-be tenants are awed enough to scurry. Swords, not
Angelic in a cherubic sense, wilt Lucifer's pride, and
Exiting those gates, the now-Dark Prince howls his lament. I picture
Laughs on Cloud 9, Michael sharing beers and war stories with chums.

I.
They say,
Those who won't learn
the spirally past
are doomed to walk
its re-coiling paths
again, and I can't
argue with precedent.
I can point out,
my present and future
doubts, kneeling
down with guttersnipe
gifts and a candle
lit up to appease
history's stalking ghost.
What I really want
is to ***** it.

II.
They say,
This world's gotta date
marked expiry
and it's all set to go
sour with a big bang
or a small bust
out from the fridge
of twenty-twelve's
wintry chilling.
Lately, there have been
jumbo packs of weirdness
spilling onto
every last shelf,
but things got strange
long before the Mayans
began tying knots.

III.**
They say,
you can take the brutish
and dress them up
natty, extolling
their hirsute
vices in basso
profundo voices
till we all queue
back to ****** them.
I've heard the jingle,
but I'm drawn instead
to wisdoms spoken
by officials
not officially
allowed to speak.
Their off-the-record's nice
and scratchy.

"The Pacific's the best
show on TV!
Best ... show ... ever,"
one lean teen blares,
wanting the whole train
to know it.

I don't know
how many shows
he's seen in his thin
decade of watching, but
that won't stop him
from its knowing.

I do envy
such certitude
compared to my fat
knack for lacking it, and
I bet he sleeps
well, tonight.

His mind's eased,
its hunger not baited.
Me, I'll be
restless and gorging
just to begin
the comparison.

You've made a sensible decision,
joining these ranks of stomped-on stand-in's.
I'll be your Virgil and guide you through
the ropes too often learned at lashing.

Don't overlook the import of choosing
proper cause and duly sainted miens.
Be better judge of princely nature,
for when he does stray, it's you we'll hurt.

The world has no shortage of ******, and
to keep the knife at bay, befriend him
you must, lest he misbehaves solely
for the pleasure of watching you writhe.

If it comes to that, all you'll have left
is to pray, he meets an untimely end,
and loads your back with shuffled-off cares
to scape back to the wilds whence you came.

I know it's best
to keep these things professional,
but I've begun to crush
under the graceful strokes
of your sixty words
per minute.

You'd be amazed
how much I've learned from the simple
arrangements and careless
chats of your lives lived
so transparently
in front of me.

You may not feel
as intimately tied; that's okay.
All I'm asking is,
you'll stay, and sustain me
with your momentary
presents.

She stood
thus, I wrapped fleshy
tendrils about scratchy
bark and consoled her
for all the trees I imagined,
rightly or wrongly,
were sacrificed to rusty
notions of progress
neatly packaged in
emporium form;
the saffron leaves
and peppery roots
lost to dusty
reverberations.

That's when
the crow came,
glowing eyes above
fierce wings, his caw
hinting at mockery:
"Don't flinch,
I'm here to help,
and you'll not get far
imposing such
improper intentions."

"The trick," he went on
reassuring me,
"is to always
stand apart.

"Yesterday's sigh becomes
tomorrow's squall
unless today's kept
at a distance.

"Fly up,
but not too fast, or
the only thing you'll feel
is dizzy."

And that,
without another word,
is just what
he did.

My meaning's gotten
garbled in a simulacrum of language
where d1g1t5 act
as harsh and angular interlopers,
bringing coined conversations
to a clanking halt.

Add to this the strange
ch@r@cter$, who've been irregular-
invited by secret-keepers
to play at masquerade
and waltz through endlessly
interchangeable interludes.

I pass on these words all-the-less
and expect they'll meet
equally imperfect listeners.

I, a hyphenated Italian,
will claim Shakespeare
descended the long
Romanesque
staircase, to write
our empiric wrongs.

It's all there in the plays,
if you've a keen enough eye
to catch these things,
and his name has cachet,
while mine needs
a laureled bling.

He doesn't have an infinite supply of monkeys.
In fact, he doesn't even have one.
Unless you count that stuffed toy on the dresser,
but it can't be expected to type,
not with those tin-cymbals glued to its paws.

Then there's the small matter of time,
which has always run out or been shut in,
at least over his lifetime of so-far off,
and he's not getting any younger,
so if it's gonna happen, it's gotta be now.

He bangs out a big-shot first word.
He thinks it's at random, but who can say for sure.
Galymbon? Maybe that's the name of a king;
it's certainly not one from Shakespeare.
His whimper isn't worthy of tragedy.

Tucked-up tight
as a cotton ball
dappled with brown-black patches,
the part-calico queen,
presiding on a sofa-cushion throne,
surveys her square
and bounded realm.

Scaly ******* shudder with a gutter-gray cleaving.

She misses the calming touch of her breezy paramour,
and their nostalgic days vent in pitched-white whispers.

If I could breathe back those mists, I might lessen her sorrow ...

Too-rigid muscles slide into aqua spasms.

She fidgets at the lack of fuss her fragments show,
and the brittle hours snap at the metallic-blue cracks.

If I could massage those bursts, I might slacken her worry ...

A caustic blood simmers up vermilion bubbles.

She whiles ways for the weakly spotted to crumble,
and languishing minutes dissolve with yolk-yellow pops.

If I could stomach those boils, I might keep her from breaking.

Two loose yellow tongues flap me back
to that cul-de-sac of leather
***** bounced on a tarry hot blacktop.

The sweat came fast, our slapping palms
got slippery. We couldn't waste time
on excuses or fouls, just elbows

strategically placed, saggy smiles
and my canvas Chuck T's tearing
away from worn-down rubber soles.

Ill, my white lies lay
along black-truth's way,
attracting the stranded
eyes of idle watchers.

Dropped so indifferent
in hands that lead up
to one man's simp'ring god,
our antique worlds meet

and shake. His wired head
sits uncomfortably
near us, and spits words
by life left unspoken.

They feed the moon full
with dwindling day, to flesh
out love and make our steps
half-brothers, again.

there, come upon a greening once ........................... in ticked and timely woulds
where all footed plantings have danced & swirled, ... he takes a speculative girl
they tip-toe tentative steps of belonging .................. to meet, to part, join fingers & twirl
till they reach an inevitable verge ............................ but with each successive passing
of the will to do & was not true ................................. she grows fainter in his mirrored should &
their shy shadows wobble in recognition that ........... her hands can only feebly grasp at
what's lost is found, but never bound to ................... this fading pane of here