Bad poetry makes me ugly:
Look, each line, a cliche
Each blemish, a simile;
My smile grows more bitingly smug
With each overzealous superlative.

My raccoon eyes are ringed
By metaphorical self delusions,
Badly performing alliteration-
All improvisations of incompetence;
And then the clash of symbol, deranges all thought.

Choose only the wound that is in your heart
That you would earnestly enlarge upon,
Steadfastly ignoring all the others.

Love is a mannequin dressed in rags,
Desire’s the streetcar, that left you in drag;
Time is ephemeral and can't be touched;
Distance is as far as the eye can see,
And any farther's something we never reach.

Emotions are phoney, though we love them so much;
Sadness and jealousy, pride and elation:
Blaming the invisible's just a crutch-
Only anger's real; the rest, decoration.

The colored carousel is coming for me again
The roller coaster zigzags across my vision
My head thumps with it's own band inside
Pounding away on one side, wearing it down to bone
Colorful streamers follow it, but I can’t focus on them
The image shifts with each movement of the eyeballs.

Why do they always have to bang on the same spot?
I knock some holes in the wall with my head
The freakshow’s fat lady is on the other side, taking a bow
But it feels just like looking into a mirror.
In order to feel some control over the pain I'm privy to,
I tighten the vise on my temple a few turns

Then I bang my neck with a tire iron
Just for equal opportunity agony.
The dwarf man stares at that, as if I am the highlight of the show.
I start to do a little tap dance, but my head blasts off on it’s own,
As if out of a cannon, rocketing above the arena
Slowly turning in it’s bug-eyed orbit.
I remember just in time to tighten the noose and step off the chair,
To the excited howls of delight, from the crowd-
But the support gives, every time; it’s all part of the act.

Why do I always have to work so hard performing
To achieve what my body does without thinking?
The clowns are pointing at me and laughing now,
And the children want to know, what is it all for?
But now blood is in my eyes, and the striking of the clock
Makes my vision shake, so I lay down in the cool doom of twilight
And wait for the loud music to slowly dissipate.

They don't want to hear it
These minutes of a life; this synopsis
That could only make sense to you
Even if it doesn't.
It's your baby, your Alcatraz, your Auschwitz;
Don't expect any sympathy
And then they won't bare their own scars
Of things you haven't even dreamed of.

Dig a hole and bury that pain in secret,
Like a cat buries its dung,
In the dead of night.
Paste on a fake, plastic smile
In a bright color, early next morning.
Life is shallow, because we are selfish
In our weakness-
How about pink?

People who always are writing of ***
Are like birds, always writing of feathers;
We know it's their specialty, and they're proud-
But find another subject, for crying out loud!

For half the fun is in chasing the one
That you want to handcuff to you (in love);
But don't leave behind poems, on your nightly passes
Like deflated balloons, lying in grasses..

He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon,
From drops of peridot scattered at sea,
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.

His father not caring where or with whom,
Or from what rare ocean his being might be-
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon.

He learnt his letters from a dark winged loon
Who flew where the mountains caress the trees,
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.

His speech was a garble of false and truth,
Whistling like a hollow piped reed,
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon.

His eyes a contagion of waters blue
And brackish trunks of underwater trees
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.

His normal voice wove a threadless tune,
Brought close the mermaids, hungry to feed;
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon,
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.

When I was just a child, they were just a married couple;
Older, middle-aged, nothing distinguishing about them at all.
I loved swimming in their swimming pool,
Until they upsized, to a glitzy neighborhood of rambling,
Ranch-style houses.
And they upscaled, to exotic, foreign vacations.
Brought me back a Hawaiian volcanic stone, with emerald flecks,
A salt and pepper shaker set from Israel.

She was a clothes horse, always kept her figure,
Dressed slinky but classy, for an old babe;
Visibly stood taller, if another woman
Ever complimented her clothing or style-
And they invariably did.

My dad said that when alone with her husband,
That man would brag about daily *******
From his office receptionist, at the end of the workday
Before going home. I was older then, tried to imagine
How the shared exchange could have furthered
Some ancient, nightly excavated ambition?

Alone with her once, my dad said he made an innuendo,
Some playful joke which he had since forgotten the point of,
Probably due to the more stunning reaction it caused.
He had always loved teasing with words,
But he said that she had dropped all suggestion of pretense,
And she had told him then, You couldn't handle it..
He still chuckled about it, long after the fact.

Funny how for all those years, what I remembered seeing
Was a mostly colorless couple
Who always drove large Cadillacs.
And how in the later years, he could only move
While tethered to his oxygen tank,
Though it never hindered his smoking.

Does a sunken Galleon live in time;
Does a once drowned book
Still sing in rhyme?
Do mermaid's fingers
Now turn the page;
Or Captain remember
Sea's foaming rage?

Does love unnoticed
Beget love forgot;
Does it freeze in December,
And thawing, rot;
If in your mind, there could no doubt,
Does the ink of Time
Ever run out?

Sad, beautiful days
Embrace me, from some stranger land
Than told to truth, beneath a ******'s moon.

I must go there to unfold the dawn-
Quickly; before the moon's shadows can find
The red radar beam, that's behind our eyes.

Now longing owns the temporal shell;
There's one name, one lone figure
As distant as the blinking stars.

A gesture may have to speak our words for us;
Or sometimes, only an expression;
Or just the direction we happen to be facing.

In a wider arc, I sense your being
Big as the ocean, deeper than sky;
Your tears the diamonds, questioning why?

Give to me your softer hands,
That sorrow's flames could never bear;
Somewhere above the spreading sun

In waves of peace, I'll find you there.

I was gagging on poetry
And nothing could help:

I was gagging on poetry
So they let me lay my head
On Emily's desk
And her inkwell spilled.

I was gagging on poetry
And they covered me up
With Whitman's army blanket
On which I promptly threw up.

I was gagging on poetry
And the Poet Laureate
Sent me a get well bouquet
Of forget me knots.

I was gagging on poetry
And all my poems
Kept getting rejected
For Selective Service.

I was gagging on poetry
And they performed
The Heimlich maneuver

And up came
Twelve autobiographical
Sketches of poets

Thirteen anthologies

Three missing manuscripts

Two thesaurus books

One rhyming dictionary

And my good luck eraser.

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The kindness of melancholy and the trusting stars
Of all sentries, within our slumbering sight
Whose watch was kept by a distant scout
Who held his peace, till death put out the light.

I am love's Savant
Of perilous divining;
No simpering hierophant,
Of the desperately climbing.

For love arrives naked,
Sans cloak or cloche,
While love's finger beckons,
For me to come close.

I'm privy to his prophecy;
To the keyholes I tiptoe,
Where I see the aristocracy-
In flagrante delicto.

As his scribe, I'm resigned
To write impassioned words;
Still, desires will not rewind-
Even though they be absurd.

Under the arc of days, he set her free in time,
He gave her up to the whimsy of wind,
The ghostly waves of the Sun's heated ethers.
The hours of their togetherness came unraveled,
Came apart at the seams, at the mended parts first,
Though he never sought to repair the tear
Or to comfort the newly opened hole's emptiness-
It was all too hopeless.

And why take you thought for raiment?
Consider the lillies of the field,
How they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

But instead, he wound it around himself,
Purposely made plans to remove himself, like a spot rubbed out,
Like a runner in a pair of hose, allowed to consume an entire leg,
Until the wearer must certainly abandon it, or else gather up the tatters
Knowing not what to do with them, or how to reweave the mess,
Or worse, continue wearing it, to the obvious surprise of all encountered,
Either pretending not to know, or pretending to wait for a private moment to remove the defective stockings. So, in this fashion,
He would remove her from his life; in effigy, he would cut her from all its pictures,
All the memories he had made with her, he  was now determined to forget.

And why take you thought for raiment?
Consider the lillies of the field,
How they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

Nobody could put the news back in the can, repair the injury.
And it was a public game, this necessary total forgetting and giving up.
Maybe others couldn’t understand, but it didn't matter
He stared at the headstone flanked by Lillies for a couple more minutes, and then turned,
Walking slowly down the flagstone sidewalk to the parking lot.
There weren’t a lot of mourners; they had only been living here for a few months;
No time to acquire new friends and even less the casual acquaintances,
The ones who always seem to manage to make it to funerals
For whatever reasons they might have.
They had taken the banks of Lillies surrounding the casket and arranged them,
Quite artfully, around the stone and opened grave.

And why take you thought for raiment?
Consider the lillies of the field,
How they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

The baking car seemed more silent than ever, as it quietly came alive, purring softly.
He pulled out of the cemetery parking area, deliberately not glancing behind him again.
He rounded a few roads, curving sedately around the low mountains,
Marveling at how clear it had become, though earlier it looked angry and unsettled.
He rolled the car windows down, as if to banish, remove the scent left behind.
Though once you have smelled death, been touched personally by it,
Everything else becomes a farce, a denial of what you have already seen
With your own eyes, and felt breathing too close by to ever forget it.
Every day becomes another refusal to continue dying, even if it's the only game left in town.
He laughed a nasty, rumbly sort of laugh, resolved to seek out that little bar,
The one at the edge of town, where he had met her, so many ages ago-
Perhaps luck would favor him twice there, it could happen..
The sun meanwhile filled the windows with tiny prisms and reflections;
All the bright objects going by flashed a microscopic brilliance into the car
That he had never noticed before, as if they wished to touch him even in a minute fashion.
And as he was desperate, desperate for any kind of omen,
He decided these sudden, unexpected illuminations would have to be it.
He could pretend to go on living for a while, till everyone had forgotten about it.
His mother had always told him to keep his business private,
Not become a joke, not lose the respect of others;
Familiarity breeds contempt, and all that.
And when people ask how you are doing, they don't really want or need to know the details.
He thought of the small pale and solemn face, ringed by dark hair, with dirt beginning to pile up above it, the hidden form broken and camouflaged
Above the creamy blue satin lining and the strange high gloss wood.
And only a single tiny muscle twitched, just below his lower lip.
In time, he would learn to control even that.

And why take you thought for raiment?
Consider the lillies of the field,
How they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

He had always suspected god merely created man
So that he would have some entertainment, something lower than god
A pathetic thing needed for laughing at,
When even being god got to be too much of a bore.
Ah, if the real heaven-and-earth creating god had only to drink from man's cup once,
Things must surely change. The religions really had it all backward.
He fired up the radio and firmly blanked his mind.
He needed to hold on to that ability to forget everything and stop all thinking;
After all, he could still live a useful life.
There were people who still needed him, even if she no longer did.
A sob escaped and made it's way to the top of his throat, but he swallowed it down quickly,
As if thwarting a hiccup. Death is only a hiccup that comes at the wrong time,
He repeated to himself, realizing his mind-clearing trick had failed him.
Memory was only a crutch used to keep the living in the past, and thought was it’s transportation.
This too shall pass, he whispered. The aphorisms piled up, began to tilt sideways,
Threatening to fall over, to obscure all the light left in the stiff, unwieldy light-dying world.
Never again, as long as he lived, would he have another white Lily anywhere near,
Or in any house or room or yard he ever spent any time in.
That was the only sacrifice he dared to make for this day.
If you give up, if you give in, they've got you by the ***** then.
He had seen people who were slave to their emotions, and they were cripples.
As if this idea bothered him particularly,
He glanced into his own eyes in the rearview mirror,
And for the first time, he saw something unrecognizable there,
Saw a person he felt he had nothing in common with any longer.
He didn't want to put words to the things now being etched onto that face.
It was going to take a lot of years to erase that pain; a lot of drinking alone,
A lot of being cold and unfeeling and relentlessly alive.
And at the end of it, if he was lucky, he would live;
Not just become another animated corpse, himself,
Though it was still, he decided, much too early to believe in a future just yet.

And why take you thought for raiment?
Consider the lillies of the field,
How they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you,
That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

-Matthew 6:28,29  American King James Version

It may be that you were an astronaut before
And now you clamber unknown chambers of my heart,
Knocking down the tilt-up walls
To find the inner space of your reservoir
And your oxygen; my bloodstream
My heart; your pulsar beating out cosmic revelations
My future; framed by your unblinking past

Terminal comets tumble alongside
Undisturbing of the velocity of your experiment
Exploding suns in supernovae spin-cycles
Left your scientific mood untouched
The last horizon, my need for security
Has been hitched to your superior fuselage
Now we float together, at the end of a single lifeline

I breathe out as you breathe in
A symbiotic bellows, in perfection geared
Neither of us make a move
Except we go in the same instant of direction
This must be what heaven feels like
At the end of time and acceleration,
Facing the unknowns inherent in the expedition

There were never any promises made,
Discovering the wonders and terrors of deep space
And at the finish of my hibernation,
I awaken to explore a mysterious new portal:
Held open for me, an orbital doorway
In galactic eyes of bluest heaven-shine
Which will stir the primordial chaos of my existence.

Your world belongs to me now.
I can take over every aspect of it, 24/7,
Stopping just shy, by a few micrometers, of what the law allows.
I'll accompany you now on all shopping trips
Offering my advice from, oh, forty feet or so away.
I'll utilize binoculars to make sure you're not doing anything unsafe.
Amazing how well those things work sometimes.
Especially at night, eh?
I might have to replace your dog with a smaller, less intimidating unit;
Of course; you're free to keep the replacement or do whatever you want with him.
Don't want to risk a serious bite on my intrusive forays after darkness..

Call forwarding; amazing cool thing that is!
No questions asked; just need a few minutes time on the telephone!
And pictures; I'll be taking loads of those.
You never know just when a particular photo might come in real handy.
I carry around bird-watching paraphernalia, so anytime I get stopped,
Everything looks copacetic, even the binos.

I also carry groundwater test kits, along with shovels, rakes; boring stuff like that.
You never know when you might need to test the water in an area.
The test kits are out of date by a decade or more, but who's checking?

Had to duct tape that old broken out back window.
I know, I know; it's unsightly and makes me highly visible,
But they'll never raise an eyebrow now, on seeing that fat roll of duct tape.
And you will always have peace of mind, since you can readily identify my car
And know for sure that I'm on the job, around the clock-
Working only for you, babe.

Oops; time's a-flying. Have to get downtown to the city before they close.
I've requested to take a peek at some publicly viewable records.
Amazing what you can find out there, that you never would have expected.
Isn't it?
Bye now; catch you later, ok?

Nicely wrapped gestures,
Who do they fool?
We all ate of the apple
And evil finds its double
Every calendar day;
We would all save ourselves
And sacrifice the neighbors.

Nice gestures;
How thoughtful we would be
If that were the whole of us?
But we always keep one hand
Behind our back,
Half the antidote we withhold:
The half that could save our humanity.

I can't tell if any fleas
Have smaller fleas upon them;
But I can feel that on these fleas
Are giant jaws; and toothsome.

These fleas are opportunists, sure,
They hop from leg, to arm, to floor;
Each leaves behind a bit of gore:
There's nothing smaller I abhor.

They're nearly invisible and yet
Upon me I can feel them set;
And tear out great big chunks of- Nyet!
A bigger fiend, I've never met.

I awake before dawn and call out to the Moon,
But the Moon is missing, she has other duties to attend to.
I sleep fitfully, aware that something is missing.

I awaken at dusk and call to the Sun,
But the Sun is missing, he has other lands to shine upon.
I wake with uncertainty, aware that something is missing.

I wake up in the midlands of night, in the close darkness
And I realize then that there is no longer anybody to call out to;
Whether I sleep or wake again is no longer important.

I send word to the Sun not to awaken me.
I send word to the Moon not to expect me-
I must go where light and darkness can freely mix,

And where things grow, touchless beneath a hidden sky;
Nothing is not there that should be,
Nothing is there that should not be:

And I am my own Moon, mirrored Suns shining from every secret eye.

A river bears a burden
It carries far downstream,
And no man's eyes will see it
Or fathom what it means.

A river bears a burden
Beneath it's swirling toil.
It's rippling edges teasing
The sodden, silent soil.

A river bears a burden
Beneath our nightly dreams,
Our temporal excursions
Along it's watered seams.

A river bears a burden
Of many dreaming feet,
Searching all it's alleys
To a dreamer's slow heartbeat.

A river bears a burden;
It will not wake our sleep,
But carries us forever
Our roaming souls, to meet.

Adorn me with you,
With unashamed glimpses
Or lock me inside
Like some abandoned mine.

With prayer beads on lips,
Hearts beating like thunder
This lightning strikes fast
But the penance takes time.

Bewitchments abhor
A dry well, an anchor;
To fly free through thin air
Just pretend there's a savior.

In the chalice of heart
I poured out my wet petals,
Till your rose-silk of eyes
Found the mended way in.

A severe civility rests within
the soul,
of the broken hearted man.

That burn which test, his fabric's core
has torn
the once strong warp; no more.

His eyes are filled, of far off light;
enough
for only, each sole night.

His words may break in lines, between
the bones,
of the sentence, of his meaning.

Not the whole man, he used to be
for reasons
less obvious, to you and me.

He keeps his grief apart, so he
can bury it
some place, secretly.

And though he never go there again:
his eyes
his loved one's shroud, still rend.

King Tut's necklace missing;
They're hunting high and low,
And Obama's nose is growing
Just like Pinocchio's.

And the Ben Bernanke is sensitive,
For he feels misunderstood,
Cause all the paper he's printing
Is really just a bunch of wood.

And there's lots that's going on
But I find it hard to care;
King Tut he died eons ago,
And there's something in the air:

For the birds keep falling dead,
And Yellowstone's waking up,
The sun has no more sunspots,
And the North Pole’s moving up.

The Gulf current dead or dying,
The Middle East flying apart;
I wish I had a magic carpet
To escape from all this dark.

The fish dying in their schools,
The gas is scarce or gone;
The power plants are idling
Just when the chill is on.

Is there something I've forgotten,
On my list of things to dread-
Oh yes, I've ordered poison
Cause I'm better off just dead.

Do flower, drop some dew
Upon me
And ripen me too
I follow you, reaper
Sower of dreams
How it gleams
In a fair flowers face.

Sun hunter, shines on high
Shine on me
Hunter, gathering by
Dreams of a sun weaver
Spreading your glow
Lights up soul
With a rainbow trace.

Love potion, on earth bestowed
Love the best portion
Enter us whole
Seeking always
As the dream's began
Till heart of man
Find every grace.

Circle ****:
A benzene ring of the most powerful
Viral assortment of the worst kind
Accountable to no one,
Secrecy rules this cabal.
Only fire can extinguish this conspiracy-
Burn the rich.

The poor don’t need middle men,
Lawyers or intermediaries
When there’s an obvious infestation
To be dealt with quickly-
Before they change all the rules, again.

Morning always comes too soon,
Whether you are loathe or loving;
Moon withdraws her silver spoon
And we’re back, to push-and-shoving.

Morning always comes too soon;
No matter if you grieve or sing,
Minutes to think are never enough,
And time to sit and do nothing.

Morning always comes too soon,
And some might like to slow it down,
But time to some’s their only boon-
And just enough, for some to drown.

Aunt Louise was a rodent
Who preferred to call herself, mouse
And out in the gamboling country
Had a sleek modern hideaway house

The door was disguised by a boot
Whose toe was quite deftly chewed out
And a quaint little stair descended
To show a most well concealed route

The soil was a clay most compacted
Excavated most patiently slow
And no water nor creatures could crack it
Neither hail, nor sleet, nor snow

The neighborhood creatures would marvel
What a crafty genius, Louise
She'd say come down for a spot of tea, now
And close the door behind, please

The door was most clever of all
For it looked like a fragment of sock
Left behind by the boot's missing owner
But concealed there, a small sandstone rock

When the painted side of the rock
Was in sight at the top of the house
It meant that Louise was at home
Like the most respectable mouse

When the raw side of the rock was showing
It meant, don't bother to come down
For Louise was bound to be shopping
Over in the nearby Mousetown.

The rock was bright red at Christmas
On St. Paddy's, was bound to be green;
But her most favorite day was Valentine's,
When a gorgeous pink was there seen.

But one day a terrible accident
Befell poor Mrs. Mouse's door
It was a hulking monster of metal
With a disconsonate roar

A lawn mower chewed up the boot
And it spit out the piece of sock
And it crumbled the hapless sandstone
Till it no longer looked like a rock

So Aunt Louise had to move then
To another den down the way
Where she never again would mention
The quaint little house of old days.

In the greater oyster world
All the children eventually grew old
The windmills ran down
The fields went back to clover
The stones kept all their secrets
Waterways forgot their courses
The sundials were covered with moss
And time eventually stretched out
To touch the edge of infinity.

The coals smoldered
With obsidian flakes,
To reflect sky or ocean there.
The heat was tropical;
An abeyance denied
To all who'd arrived there.

Earthquakes simmered
Along the meridians,
While smoke floated free:
Released from it's *******,
It drifted to where
You wanted to be.

if some electric joy could paint us
here in the vivid shards of wasted glass,
or create a beauty that's never been drunk
we'd question our surreal imaginations,
drugged by passion's symbolic chisel;
the blue aesthetic of an angel's dust,
of abstract life more sensed than performed;
the psychedelic absurdities in bolder strokes:
I'd sing your **** genius sculpted through every world.

Who shall praise the sour wheat?
We shall praise the sour wheat.
Who shall praise the stillbirth?
We shall praise the stillbirth.

We shall be grateful, yea; even for emptiness
And vacancy
For there is still another opposite, even to the
fullness of nothing down here-

We should be grateful even that we realize
there can be a 'nothing' instead of a 'something';
We should be glad-
Even the void here contains worlds of universes
While the echo there just goes on
past the unraveling edge of forever

Flowers of the sea,
Bobbing in the tides
Colors dreamed by Neptune
Upon the ocean ride

Flowers groomed by fishes
To suit a mermaid's vase
Unfathomed as her wishes
Rare as her unseen face

Flowers untouched by humans
Growing free the wildest way
In salty brine they're blooming
Decorating sailor's days

She steals serendipitous words from the dead
Ranges them on comely pages,
Sybaritic springs filled to overflowing
Metered precisely, to the raving adulation of crowds.

Only dark closets speak to me,
Crying out their hoary linen secrets
While musty airs clog my lungs.

Why can't I have ghosts, fragrant as wind,
Free as balloons, loosed of their tether,
Instead of pilfered dust *****
And scattering bed bugs?

Life can mesmerize with smiles;
But when it weeps beware, beware:
Your tears would fill a mountain stream
That's rushing past, before Life care.

And when you laugh, you laugh alone,
Though you might think the flowers too
Would giggle at a word you said;
The flowers thoughts are very few.

We are not often understood;
The world speaks in different tongues,
Though we may think that ours would be
The only universal one.

Corrugated tesseracts
Are enlivened under blood gorged membranes
The barrier to a cool coral maze
Of still shoals, the palest pink
Permanent waves folded
Into a frozen tidal sea

And here is the world of worlds
That makes of us, ourselves
A dimension that can't be trespassed against
Where we are always home
Inside spider woven neurons
That talk only to each other
Or to god

They relay their subsonic messages
In penumbral patterns
Translated into dismembered tongues
And ancient relays of concordance
Telegraphing farthest emotion
Into clairvoyant flesh.

If one could make dreams into poems,
I would have such a wealth of material-
Although it might be missing continuity,
And whoever appeared in it might suddenly turn,
With no warning, into someone or something else-
A white rabbit, or an elf, or a Grecian column;
Rooms into swimming pools, and such.
Lucid dreams have signposts to watch for:
Letters and numbers will not behave,
And keep playing musical chairs each time
You look at them, and something about clocks-
Wait am I asleep yet?
More like a lucid dream is poetry dreaming;
We can control everything according
To the strength of our minds attention.
The unconscious is a slippery eel;
But it pops up in poems too sometimes.
In a lucid poem, then, you could still
Pinch yourself? Just to check-
Let me dream about that some more..
I’ll get back to you…

O deeper sea
That waves restless between us
Engorging and disgorging
The changeling creations
Steep rills and ridges
Making not a dent above
So stays my heart hidden
Hidden in its element
So stays our viscous love

There's magic in the air
When Cinderella dreams;
Glass slippers may appear,
As odd as it may seem.

When Cinderella dreams
Of jaunty men on horses;
As odd as it may seem
For magic reigns, of courses

Of jaunty men on horses,
She dreams, in her little bed,
For magic reigns, of courses;
And it dances through her head.

She dreams, in her little bed
He has come to take her hand,
And it dances through her head;
She'll be Queen of the little land.

He has come to take her hand,
Glass slippers may appear;
She'll be Queen of the little land:
There's magic in the air.

(Pantoum form)

Though moonlight and dreams may be
Our starlit route to ecstasy,
A touch holds more than worlds can show,
In planetary light's day-glow;
And soft words said at evening-fall
May hold a captive heart in thrall.

I long to take you all the way,
Somewhere even words can't say;
Somewhere stars won't disappear,
Whether it be far or near-
And timid Violet's in the shade
Will know that they by love were made.

There's an air of stale tobacco;
But nobody here's been smoking,
And a feeling of wilted flowers,
But no one has yet to die.
And the air moves all on it's own;
With a trace of smooth monotony,
Changeless, beneath the sky;
All our mouths are dry and cottony.

There's words you would not speak,
Though the bells might be hovering,
Soundless, for a wedding,
They're waiting to keep,
Invitations, sent on the breeze,
And the guests; fabrications of movement,
In a church, with an empty steeple:
My life is moments, such as these

Filled with plastic, mannequin people.

Proximity-
My knee touches yours under the table;
Adults we are, a knee excites no molecules
In our experienced repertoires.

Proximity-
Shoulder to shoulder, in the airplane
Trained to be busy, to keep alive;
No time for sensation or idle daydreaming.

Proximity-
Two hearts beating, back-to-back, in a fertile darkness;
And a long gaping drop-off, just before the edge of forever:
Every cell too keenly aware..

Kami-Kaze dinner test
This is a test of the emergency Kami-Kaze dinner alert
If this were a real emergency,
You would have been instructed where to go
And what to do next;
But as this is just a test,
Please pick up your napkins
And arrange them comfortably on your laps.

Begin the salad or soup course,
Picking up the correct utensils when the main course appears,
Don't forget to sniff for the delicate aromas-
Wait, hold it-hold it-hold it.
Hold on for just a dad-gummed minute there:
No shish-kebobs allowed on the menu!
Kami-Kazes just love shish-kebobs..
(Heads are gonna roll for this one)
This is no longer a test;
Get ready now, everyone

Dive beneath the table now
Fast as you can,
This is no joke, no;
This is real, as real as it gets
Come on-
Push aside the table cloth,
Bend down, bend down quickly
Forehead to knees, and hold your breath,
Just like you were taught years ago in school-
And prepare to kiss the pork ****, goodbye.

Ah, the lips, and ah, what cheeks;
Methinks though, you are not too deep.
What sunbleached tresses frame your face,
Even though you're lacking taste;
Your laugh tears out the soul of me,
And you're quite bent, it's plain to see.

Now touch me not, with your white hand:
Anemic sprites, I cannot stand;
Fix me not, in your blue eyes,
For I don't want to hear those sighs.
I'm sure your organs are complete-
But I care not, to hear you bleat!

You lit my life; my fuse was done,
While I swam deep waters all abuzz;
In fathoms deep, I sought your dream-
No one cares about dust on a submarine.

The mysteries were all right there,
The sky cracked open, to show new air,
And the whole world, with your presence rang-
No one cares about dust on a submarine.

Now I haunt the deepness of the void,
And my hope is no more buoyed.
In nameless twilight worlds, I'll sing;
No one cares about dust on a submarine.

My pathway of desire
Seeks the way of least resistance;
Come warm me at your fires
And answer my insistence.

The stars drop flaming names,
Which fall upon the skies;
Their embers burning up
Until the evening dies.

An angel flew too close,
Once upon a sun;
And all his godly aims
And actions came undone.

He waits for darkness now,
Morning Star’s his name:
For the fire in his two eyes
Put the burning sun to shame.

His beautiful complexity is difficult,
Confuses me; my neurotic inner child
Wants to be beaten or serenaded,
It doesn't understand many-layered things;
His whispered confidences, less alienating
Than others, made me trust too soon,
And his atoms, more colorful than
His brothers painted-on coats.
My being turns all around his center;
My wheels to his drum,
My arc to his sun,
Laughter when he's coming,
Cries when he's gone-
Till I'm reduced-
Subtracted-
Done.

I break precarious, upon your precious word:
The voiceless reason, dying goes unheard,
My heedless passions lying yet unfurled;
My thoughts, in none of yours paralleled-
I break; I break precarious, at one word.

Nighttime clouds must veil the stars,
As we must veil our thoughts

And winter's clouds hide winter gales,
Until the sunshine's brought

And spindly branch of broken trees
Must scratch the shadowed days;

Until the spring arrives in wind,
When green uncovers May.

Some days the canned laughter gets to be a bit much;
Is there any authentic laughter left, in this post modern Rome?
Even the real sounds artificial now-
Perhaps we’ve stayed at the gladiator games too long?

The sun’s already burnt us, we're tired and thirsty,
While the entertainments keep playing on and on,
Growing ever thinner, transparent, predictable;
With each dreary season, the same debacle song.

At night we dream, that we’re the newest slaughter,
They're readying to come for; that banging on the door:
No longer far away, swords drawn and at the ready,
The four horsemen are coming;  the apocalyptic four.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never had religion,
For famine and scourge don’t belong to one creed-
But we're still too busy now, gorging ourselves
On endless dreams of supremacy and need.

If someday on a stone you read
My name, by a dying flower
Please find one memory to cherish
Some hope, for a dreadful hour.

Wreathe it in an ivy circlet,
With the wisp of a silky ribbon;
We'll make of the bare bones of love
A feast, whether taken or given.