Next to the iPad,
horn rim readers,
a book of postage stamps,
and a rubber eraser.

Were I to borrow
seven words to build a poem
which ones would you be willing to lend?

white Styrofoam cup
waits for waitress fill up,
out of cigarettes!

If I saw your handwriting
would I know
whether you were taught
cursive by nuns
or a teacher
on the public's payroll?
Does your hand calligraphically flow,
from a favorite Mount Blanc pen,
or do you print
using a ******'s pencil
made by the millions
by Chinamen?

It takes forty sap gall0ns
to 'still one gallon of maple syrup,
boiled down by the sun stored in firewood.
I remember well, my aunt Florence
feeding the boilers in the hill orchard sugar house,
wearing an old going-to-church dress,
that had, some years back, been handed down to workday chores
and on top covered over by uncle Fred's red and black mackinaw.
"Stand back," she said as she opened the boiler door
first the roar, then a bank of fire that painted
her from kerchief to boots flaming red,
her eyeglasses, two pools of glowing magma,
and everything above was steam and rising vapors.
In my mind's eye then and now when I read Dante
I'll think of her, she was and is, the very vision of a devil tender.

I had a terrible dream
that I was Ethan Frome
and you lived in Vermont
and it was cold as hell
but you were hot, hot.
You were married and I was not,
or was it I that was married?
"Knock, knock"
"Open up it's the sheriff,
there's been a terrible accident."
"Knock, Knock"

Now I feel remorse
having besmirched this clean page
with these very words.

Among the plethora
the eye plucks one falling flake
melting in my hand.

I desire to write only the words and lines required
to transport a thoughtful reader
into a contemplative moment of our own making.

There are two sides of town

The straight teeth side,
and the crooked side,

The private summer camp side
and the open hydrant side

The bedtime story side
and "get your ******* *** in bed" side

The balloon birthday side
and the birthday frown side

There are two sides to every town
Sometimes they meet on the same street.

In time
twenty years
will no longer be a lifetime,
but an imperfectly remembered fraction
'less you've been the rare one
journaling the everyday
that seemed so very unimportant way back then.

Step off the bank
into the oxygenated flow
of silver flashes
leaping upon,
in flaring rise toward
interior spawn basins,
catch one in the maw 'n claw
before it breeds a million cloned others,
only then to die a quick and fitting death.

Waisted daze and wasted tights
I have lifted you fair behind,
For you do belong to me,
Tho the cart belongs to someone else.

Why should I keep rubbing you
When I know I've made you blue,
And why should I rekindle flames
when you're to blame
for making me so huge?

Apologies to Freddy Fender

Don't eschew me through the haze
Remember that you called me "Hefty"
I was your one and only,
My fair Dove Bar.

Why should I keep rubbing you
When I know I've made you blue,
And why should I rekindle flames
when you're to blame
for making me so huge?

Apologies to Freddy Fender

Poet,
get out of your head,
and like a preparing photographer,
rucksack your tools,
include a horn of wine and a loaf of bread,
then get out there
and alien explore your world.

we are:
killing,
eating,
*******,
*** machines,
and given free time,
will awe stare a mirror
and repeat "I", "I","I"
in the name of God.

Should you ever need
a dust jacket blurb
I'll genulexitize, "ise" if you're British,
your opus work
(sans the redundancy).

A chimera ground
of profound sadness
enframes a deep field of arabesque red
split in two,
as Salomon would,
by a thick bleeding bar of black 'n blue remorse.

It's 9:30 p.m.
and the CSX train Jericho blows
its Doppler horn
across the black flow
of the Cumberland River
skimming  the rafts of rippling light
lapping the west bank of early revelers
gathering  in the streets and bars and ***** tonks,
spun together by an invisible attractor they're calling
"Happy New Year."

I find
you
once again
sleeping on my bed,
you slinky black self satisfied *****.

Is there a there a secret room
where, like missing socks,
unsaid words sneak off to rest?

Mice are endlessly studied
blindly piloting channeled maze,
but who among us
is not doing the very same?

On our wedding day
my expectations fulfilled,
Our life since has been
flowering revelation

The script,
an act of fate,
parts for all the players,
in their shabby to grand guise,
and painted faces,
some happy, some frown
for the pleasure of the crowd,
to all involved an analgesia,
no aches, no pain!
until the flood lights fades,
and drops the final curtain.

Waisted daze and wasted tights
I have lifted you fair behind,
For you do belong to me,
Tho the cart belongs to someone else.

Why should I keep rubbing you
When I know I've made you blue,
And why should I rekindle flames
when you're to blame
for making me so huge?

Don't eschew me through the haze
Remember that you called me "Hefty"
I was your one and only,
My fair Dove Bar.

Why should I keep rubbing you
When I know I've made you blue,
And why should I rekindle flames
when you're to blame
for making me so huge?

* apologies to Freddy Fender

What are dreams but kites we string,
thoughts we stress,
sometimes obsess,
with tails and tales of fantasy,
that we run a field
with overhead,
seeking to find a bit of lift,
a warm and rising currency,
that buys us time,
time for us to bide our wish,
like lofting balloons of lunacy,
but serves us well,
that we do dwell
on thoughts of things
that may yet prove
veritably impossible,
least we lay a plan,
and execute.

When you're shivering
beneath a shawl,
and you're warming your hands
between your thighs,
(sigh)
there's nothing to keep your nose warm
except a proboscis mitten.

To sleep
or not to sleep,
that is the quandary.
A wink or two stolen
is sweetest when
one's blander isn't swollen.

My love,
my sweet delirium,
my dopamine flower,
my nocturnal obsession,
my daylight thought procession,
how do I bare a split second of your truancy?
Your hair, your skin, your eyes, your spike heels, your leggy fluency,
are but a little tittle tally of your unnerving inventory :-)

Blue bottle on sill,
White window frame, six lites,
Doe, faun graze green lawn.

If one could bail
all the love unrequited,
and it were wool
from shorn and shivering sheep,
and you were Ram
with the only blanket :-)

star top evergreen,
three days past prime time casts
dunce hat across walk.

A man that has everything
may appear to have nothing,
or like Janice said,
"Freedom is another word
for nothing left to lose."

The person that invented the zippered fly
probably doesn't use one,
for any guy will tell you why
especially if he's mis-zipped Wun!

we look for patterns,
a this from that,
this is how we cope.

let dimension equal n;
where n is infinite,
plus one,
no matter.

set,
non-set,
Containment.

Western boot snow prints,
ice, snow, heel, toe, walking sound,
creek interrupts gate.

The old sod house,
The west wind
chit, chit, chatters the hinges,
The door creaks to 'n fro,
Vermin music to the denizen within.
The old sod house on the hill,
The windows were broken long ago
Like old folks who've lost their 20/20.
And the memories too have leaked
Through that busted fenestration.
Where most the year the wind is weir
And long ago caught the laughter
That onetime surely resided here.
Hard to know who did lived there.
There's only one that surely knows,
I'll ask the wind.

*This poem is a collaboration with joann alabsy who inspired its creation an contributed generously.  Any and all short comings reside at my door.

"Who am I?"

When I was three, six, ten, sixteen, twenty...
not a single cell could trace the transition,
therefore I must not be my body.

If not my body, then my thoughts?
I can not frame a thought that has not changed!

If I'm not my body, nor my thoughts
Who am I?
Who asks this question?

Upon reflection,
we are the source of all tears,
as if naked,
alone,
in an infinite sea,
backpedaling,
breast stroking,
with a limitless blue sky
the only encouragement,
to remain afloat.

Her brain,
miswired
in the way a microphone
feeds it's amp's audio gain,
infinitely looping
loopiness,
with ever madding annoyance
until madness has only itself
to entertain.

(insert  complaint here)
You cut me off ,
but you'll not steal my day.
Were it to happen,
I would be both thief,
and the one stolen from.

I imagine making love
to you on a sand table,
the type a fine mason constructs
to firmly, but gently hold,
by impression
a precious form,
your intoxicating manifold
snuggly thus,
would counter
My every ******.

The city's office canyons,
all but deserted
this snow laced Christmas day,
as if a pesticide had been sprayed
during the homing hour,
only to learn one day later
that it works best on people.

I'm told it's vile
to pick one's teeth,
but a lodged sesame seed,
caraway, or a tad of compressed nugent,
is another matter,
yet I must confess,
barring an audience before the queen,
I've been known in polite company
to search my inner coat
for a hidden piece of faux whale bone
and merrily go at it.

Remember the Christmas
we rolled our own chipatis,
Indus whole wheat,
like fine beach sand,
an equal measure
of all purpose white,
water, oil, salt as needed,
then rolled thinner
than unemployed hope,
stove top baked on high temp,
topped with fresh tomato red,
and green pepper salsa?
Now, that was bread!

I only have you for a minute,
two at best.
Therefore it would be silly of me
to stand here on my head,
you there,
wherever you are,
reading this.

I only have you for a minute,
two at best.
Here, it would be silly of me
to stand on my head,
you there,
wherever you are,
reading this.

I'm eating chocolate,
the kind the Swiss
keep for themselves,
the quality kind
that can only be delivered
by security truck,
Chocolate that the Incas
would **** a thousand in cold blood,
Chocolate that's so good
it will turn a committed ******
into a ******* sweet ****.

*Touring Venice with the Chocolateer is paying current dividends!

Christmas morning,
I went down eight flights
to check on the weather.
From the sidewalk,
courthouse square
was a snow cookie
sandwiched between
gray skys and bleak streets,
with no one around
to electrify the public's mangerless tree!