before the shutter of sentience
and we fall at the foot of the sun,
there are many risings.

let us not, then, shirk
our confession or our convalescence
in hoods of harrowing;

in consignments of death.

for crossèd ashes will surely
give rise the phoenix again
and most high flight.

Wordsworth bubbled in my cellophanate bath water
yesterday, at the candled hour.

whilst horse tails whinnied from Joshua Bell—
Tchaikovsky in brood, 1878.

Oh, but if I had thought to Bogart the whole affair, well,
I'd be a modern Michelangelo, a downright da Vinci—

a Dostoyevsky before the dawn—

propped between the cold **** and the hot,
wet behind the ears.

Then I turn the note-the page-the scene:
Don't try this at home, they echo in the shackles of

celebrity. A drowning horse has sounded better
than their confession of our normality.

i'd have you know i went to church today.
spread good cheer like a bull in the stock market.

—not the sort of church jesus would overturn, though.

no—there was too much peace; not enough wells; everyone
spouting his name with a big, blessed J.

for christ's sake, that hand-shaking ******* is not his bag.
and don't even get me started on wine

in a box.

"Have you ever noticed
how we are always climbing
but never getting
anywhere?

up glass-sheered avocations
and suits with bonus ties—

up **** with temperamental husbands
and secretaries with Monroe thighs—?"

It was a rhetorical question, uncannily rhymed, in the wake of
Collinses. But he didn't know that.

"We are always climbing on
what other backs have built:
the greedy gringos and their
brown-backed buey—

but i'm for Scotch and soda
anyway."

He poured out spirits like amphoras of sin.

"Oh, never mind the mess—
please, sit down.

What's that?

The mess of lives, I mean, or whatever
it is that greases the greenbacked highway
to the corner office coronation."

He knew the prodigal flames that lit the
corporate torch—the cirque
that stood in steel. He said as much:

"Oh what a monstrous architecture
of avarice! What a makeshift it is
and so much lost for all these stacks of
stuff. Sad."

I pointed to the happy pair of smiles in a
company frame. Levity interrupted.

"What's that now?

No, i've been married three times,
divorced a perfect three.

I know what you're thinking—"

And here, he laughed as he slurried his rusty brown transgressions with an index finger.

"—lucky man, he slipped the shackle
three times.

And sure, I'm dynamite by numbers
but ******* say I'm not all that nice."

"So anyway," awkwardly pivoting his grease to grin,

"you'll take the job then,
and I'll be commandeering your soul?" With a ****-******* smirk.

"It's a joke, of course—I can't just give you the job.
You'll have to show me you can climb—"

Starry-eyed empty ensued. It was enough to see
the rungs permutating above his head. Unclimbed.

"But we'll be in touch about opportunities—" he shook.
"You know—**** and stuff."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that I am, and always will be,
a homosexual.

would there be any tenor to the world
were tomorrow i gone? vanished—
like some ethereal dotted eighth—from
one divine orchestral stave—into eternal hush.

there is our moment played—and should the maker
miss his mark—a flat, or too sharp for a natural—
the score proceeds unwitting—cradle of keys
whe’r sound or sour—and there is symphony regardless.

but if the conduct of those chords progress
until the maestro halts the score upon us—a
premeditated coda—a failed tune—a clumsy strum—
and that is how the world in me plays out—

would there be music in the world again
were tomorrow i gone?

how cordial the
way we hold doors
for heeled ladies
and the elderly

but never order them
a steak.

UnHAND me—!
Said the Jebusite to the Jew
—or I'll take your Sabbath
and put a miter in your mouth.