there is a limit for everything.

there's a limit on how accurately
you can pronounce 'pecan',
and it's worth a watch--
between wild west ranger
and retired norwich resident.

one must decide which arm
is stronger-- two grocery bags
for the left arm and one for
the right,

but if it were not so,
you may as well carry them
on each drooping finger.

a can rests on a tired desk.
it is filled with nothing,
which is precisely everything.

it weights 478 lbs. to an ant,
a balloon's helium proximity to you.

now try to step in the aluminum cylinder
and carry it from the inside

I cannot recall the bruise on my thumb
and the lazy scent of saliva on the carpet.

Working, under what circumstance?
Have you not the mind of a nocturne?
Are you bidding me to sleep
when you know I cannot?

God, I wonder if his fingers fumble
once in a while,
when I firmly hold my soliloquy
between the reed and my sorrowing lips.

It hurts,
down bottom,
I think,
But Saturday holds a repetitive rendition
of the same smiling faces
and the same brand of red pens.

I am not tired;
one has a maximum that
has not yet been conquered.

Thanks for licensing     your wet name
Like a spoon against a bitten cheek

to take your vanilla trophy
and      pop it back in :

Your crowd of hairs,
tinsel with limited light

and hoard of little comprehension,

Ma'am, sweet goes your calves
and fish tail swinging back in glee :

Tell me of tomorrow,
please.

open seed;
her busted fetus of death's frail womb
and moisture drops soil's dehydrated tongue,
a quiet resignation, understanding,

is some triumph on the other side
where the picket fence, traitor,
glances in whatever direction he
hears noise.

&

we exchange our horoscopes
with our eyebrows,
and the mini universes beneath them,
circular and budding
as medicines and poisons.

&&

you are not shimmied away
by the sand's magnetic force
nor stand with planted soles
on stone foundation.

you are lured
by wind's woe of distance.

so it was once
when you did each explore
in the crevices burned deep beneath
the blacksmith's pitcher,
and of kindling an unfamiliar taste
left to ravish haste
into statue-like disposition.

sometimes your fingers sting,
for it is you against dark
and cold does whistle
when your lips cannot part,
for they are chapped--
once ridden by an ancient kiss

where you once viewed the metropolitan
shadows against michigan's waters
though you were nestled
against sage weeping quilts,
resting at the sky
whom bids you no more

with stars the fury so soft
you smile,
because there is nothing else
worthy to do.

you'd like to think she does
the same; counting her toes
when they pad on linoleum ground,

and her being able to hear
against the streetcars rumbling below.

...is some minding swoop of your brow,
mimicking in your doleful eyes,
some ember fled to soot-drunken clouds
of mumbling mothers abandoned from cradles above.

Distillation, did her husband remember,
like banquets of poor bread that suffered in baskets,
no tender fish to oil the hair or curse the breath.

The casket feigned bitter chocolate,
hallucination the refuge of finger bones replacing ribs,
and what priest would sneer beneath his cloak,
as he turned away to cough and sympathize under unheavenly wings?

Woman, woman, you've cut my pie all wrong.
The piece goes like that, obtuse and feared,
and your tongue at my knees when days do retire--

her melody's a ***** shriek,
pawing through the birthplace of sea glass
and sharp bruises of scents through her palms,
where perhaps one lingers thirty years too long,

taking one year of fetal distraction.

It is 3 AM,
and no one is sleeping in their dreams,
but a meter flicks with the ring of your pulse,
supple streams watched
by tender mothers
and their soft eyes in darkness.

I glimpse my city
of ratty ears,
dust of mill and coal the reluctant taste,
of acrid tongue settling against the corners.

And they beckon me
with once plunged fingernails,
and luring each tall man
against the harbor, against the wall.

So lingering their grasps remain on summer weeds,
skinny strands of yeasted yellow
like some lurching disease that has brought
trembling, tilting, padding
hard feet slapped against cold floor.

She was warmer than fall,
and thicker than winter's feed.

Her frame sits on the blinds of 3 AM,
where somewhere else on the road,
light is blown from infant hands.