tight are the waxers
with gelatin scrub
their alcove smiles paired
on a check-board slate
dive jackets
and coveralls
mark the blue persuaders
stuffed lockers
and lattice straps
for a cold
pilgrim's stare

cork boots
and poly rot
rest in the C block
rank and file
mask a heavily
worn charade
windows wide
and curtains
thread bare
greasers
and **** rats
pardoned
on principle

chain link and
tether held
firm in the grasp
bead bites and
castle tops
slip in the **** steam
chants and speakers
blast from the back wall
elements stacked wide
for tainted leaners

strummers and pickers
held high on the jimmy jack
a chilled base breeze
at the ****** hole
rogues and hatters
stir at the mixer
an imitation face
closing in on the feast

maiden hands clasp
hard at the inseam
scuffed heals shuffle
on the peripheral scene
a cloaked man scurries
(chilled in his double sock)
moonshine
and mickeys
turned up in the jar

light streams blind
the paranoid eyes
laggards peeled
from the wretched
framework
veneer shattered
on a point strip groove
an overwhelming trauma
from slaughter
harbor

before that,
we sat pinned
and winded
on steel hands
and plated masks
near the crimson
jade pools
by the killing fields
of bordeaux

we did not look
we could not look
our eyes blinded
and seared
by the charred remains
and shallow graves
the battered birch
and caliginous path

drifters and vagabonds
and kings of kings
held witness
to the pounding
and overkill
the blades
cauldrons
and burning sweet-grass
all brought forth by healers

rammers, sages
and holy front men
glance behind
(watching them sort
through the rubble
and *****)
the blood flow
spilling its warmth
throughout the
festering scene

they pulled the stops out
on this one ~
those sweated woodlands
and churned meadows
now framed
by a burned
and broken cross

autumn like winds
begin to chill
(casting spells over ground cover)
night lights flicker
beyond
the fallen trees

A man in a field walks through a storm.
Snowflakes on his eyelashes blur his vision.
A man in a study believes in snow,
believes in the truth of snow.

A man leaves traces as he walks.
His tracks ornament the field’s blank.
He meanders, doubles back, evading,
leaves imprints that the snow erases.
A man walks. The snow falls.  

In a study, a man devotes himself to snow.
He reads from the book of snow.
He composes wintry axioms.
“Snow:  Atmospheric water vapor frozen into ice crystals
that drop on a walking man’s eyelashes
or lie blank in an unwritten field.

“Snow is a conflict,
a confusion, a yearning.
Letters are desire.
Margins are melancholy.”

The storm disappears.
A man squints at blurred words,
Resumes writing,
Shaking snow from the page.

Patiently waiting for the perfect light.
Glassy lake, wind, clouds, perfection’s near
as the moment dwindles into night.

Captured moments prove that you’re alive, a height
of feeling between depths of time and fear
that living casts only imperfect light.

But the moment missed is like a face out of sight
that against all logic you hope will appear
from around a corner, framed by the night.

Technology offers consolation in its sleight
of hand:  Digitally correct the analog here
and now, counterfeit the perfect light.

Yet you want more than the remastered byte.
You want the flash between waiting and souvenir,
Self and spectacle fused, reality felt right.

And so you wait for what’s passing out of sight,
the collision between soon and too late, sheer
threads connecting to the perfect light
before the moment dwindles into night.