ice too is structured, I have witnessed its
appalling unbrokeness for longer than I
care to recall.
as with the guiding principles of
silverware, conversation should follow.
any misapplication would be as rude as
one cut off midsentence.
the mark of polite society is cultivated facade without imposition, hitchless
ritualism.
****** muscles uncramped of miseries,
poise is how stock is measured.
yet there's Michelangelo's: David, even
more poised with his pecker's forbidden
talking point.
tonight we exchange the currency of one
year for another--as the fog goes about its
yellow life.
no yellower than these so tight-lipped
about teeth.
the first time it happened, tobacco smoke
stratified layers of breath, cologne & perfume--letting fall delinquent unwash.
they all spoke at once, their features grew till they broke out of magnifying glasses.
as if they continually crawled out & came
for me with their airless truths.
that I learned to see with one eye, use the
opposite hand natural to me, balance on
one foot--to disalign with their choreography.
I increased that split second, I lingered upon it, caught others stitch a seam.
I saw the easeful converse of skulls make
stark headway, stiffly tolerant of arms left
raised in toasts.
the polished hatred of servants complimentary with movement & stationariness.
fool, martyr, poet--isolate any of the above & I will be indistinguishable from them.
it is I who lowered my guard, not they--throwing my nerves into the pools of impregnable circles.
hard at the art of hearsay, a one to one with a King--one with no dynastic
trickledown.
I drank from that chalice on New Years Eve--white flannel trousers rolled up.
masticated peach in my stomach, my ankles cuffed by a shoreline's puzzle piece.
splashed in the face by a mermaid's tail,
as to revive me from an undreamt year.