After wide-set earthen towers mask
the highway runoff, campers come off lofty
horses, signal boorishness to breeze. Sat alone
where rolling orange will tease
the peace from perfect dark - the hint of dread
forgoing litness to expose a martial bode -

the low-slung limbs of stern bring
trained to-wrist like faithful,
catching glimpses of what common good
afforded us naff hazes like the present
sickle answer, whale-bone grief and prescient
danger. Fix a poultice,
love’s soft landing seldom not
for treasures come.
Revive the brazen lungs

in boasts of rushes, random-lit,
forestalling sodden semblances of wit
from Sunday’s arsenal -
right-matched to cleaner absences
than your limited souls could ever pare.

She’s felt - a fabric after our own hearts,
a loan from common waltzes,
taciturn in downshifts of this archen land -
of course - of hand, a slight
anomaly for watchers to observe.
Each roadblock touches nerve.

The prime I’m in (cold file) grinds down
the onslaught of the surf. Wet hands
coerce her tidal politic:
a love-sick shire of common knots,
revolting, wretch assured.

   Unleash the phantoms of
the wistful world at bay
from that optimal day when climbed I up
the risers, capped to fortune,
palme-d'essence, mindful hitch.
You stitched the barrier
between your absence and my glitch -
upheld the cases made for fiery rhythms
of romance, as echoes clattered in the apse
of quiet towns’ pastoral grasp.

   I’m sitting shameless in
the offing of a while. Unseated:
will my offspring smile
at sunny landings on
the peaceful shores of joy?
Can such be relished by a boy?
Or will his chains hold strong
and anchor back to relapsed wrong?
Can such be relished by a song
and her soprano? played piano
for the crowd, but filling one’s forever,
wonder-loud?

The banter runs in squares. Hot air
condensing stories on the things you like,
inquiring where they’re from? A lush
entanglement of architectures
pulled from hungry jaws, unsated,
set to gnashing blindfully
at light, like worms?
Rejoice in proper terms!
Renounce those shameless fights
with others and yourself, best soldiers for
this no doubt war
appealing to the combat tribes
to both consider lives
and shoot them from the fences.
Ampleness, bedecked in hero standard,
tacks our motto to his brim -
“Why Can’t You Be Like Him?”
A just extolment of desire
(trod lightly otherwise),
steps to our eagle-eyes.
We’re living.
Pry the fenders off the lies
that carted us to chaos
heedless what it spurned -
what gardens have we watered?
Labors that upturned the noses
of the rulers bidding silence in their undertow -
what power, then, to stir below.

Now that you’ve been sold, what thing
will bring you back to us?
Arches of waver-lust, departuregrams
inform those on the freeway lam
and send us crashing gates and exit maps
as transit days dump rain
and what we know we’re in for gets too big.

Hurry to racing pits,
a bit of shelter huddled under heatlamps
pecked with pigeon dust & and odd late chills
that cracked the April. Plucky in
the clothing bone, we shiver, bide,
relent from marking make-up time
on coldwire sheets

We fold
and put work in our purse all wrong.
Some smarmy song New Yorks us, whinging on
where rent wars rage. Code-shifting blocks
of solace to the kept while crushing
others under debt - a glacial chill,
a respite, magnet phones left smartless,
calling on our wits
to ride those twists
through money-makers’ gauntlet.

Out of harm’s way, donning gowns
and Never’s hand-me-downs from
Stalling Leisure, Merry Ways - cinch up
and see what stays, what juice
the cosmic strain can free
when anger walls re-tighten down
to shape, or ****, without a sound.

Here’s my hefty, over-lumbered
case to put you in:
suggestions on a pin
to ***** your dogma,
error’s commas captivating
run-ons with their length
prolonged for lack of strength
unseen in staying parts -
your wants is off the charts!
But needs are nadirs; we all stoop
to let them talk us into something.
Independence (*** thing) wrecks your time
and chews your peace apart.
Your heart beats out
a chapter shorter now each night -
the longing makes it right
and lubs the biggest dub of all -
recordings of the ball,
the master moldering in some storage tomb
alone for adding rooms
onto the house you’ll owe forever for.
Why snore you with my secret?
Loud man come, inventing orders -
hupping-to shreds being into blue.
Who showed me out of there?
Who whisked without a care
and smashed the batter of your special batch:
for sure, at times, a catch,
but else an error, comma,
asterisk,
rappelling down your robe of risk?

Spry distractions loaf on lithe intent,
men waking, wishing, trying,
b’lieving, doing, buying -inging time rather than be-,
results in salt-work, sprawling like the C
in coldness: callous spray
that dampens your New Canvas Day.

Pixels splat and reek of pure demise,
wine trauma met with whys
fires livid earth from foil-pressed crumbs
from which your towers rise. You miss
the point of -ing;
the shape you’re in’s an -e-d thing
writ past because of practice;
timed it slow, fixed solemn bets
all rife with catty pugil,
ribbons placed on “I-got-tīme-in” *******
that gleam too brightly
for the lover’s open eye. Youriyese
in grace, ingratiated by devices
(rueful caries)
shelter you from toil’s ten-thousand days.
You see them, they see you whilst print-ing,
comb-ing over, feel-ing joy anew: such sugar lines
the bottom
of a borrowed cup of time.

White hues direct-ing -ingots in a line
totally gold
and pin “pathetic” on your chest,
their best not forged in -ing or be-
(like they would want you to be) -lieve,
but rather hey! and halt!
The hollow points of discord,
blood of victims be- -in’ salt.

Color’s dervish, wanton rays
bark big waves out to little eyes -
surmise that they could live so bright,
or cut their burden down in middle flight
with Pantone Answer. Limber fantasies
hung dainty on the wire, we blast
a spectrum: chilling op-eds,
townless crier making hay
from sunny days’ hot take.

Alarm us! Twist like windy satchels
full of Great Divide
between the Haves and Left-Behind.
And as the bank vanishes wage,
we colors come of age
in numbers borne to rap
the sounding toll upon its steady head
and leave for dead his monuments
to Avarice, Big Dollar pulled in tow -
it’s too much meat, you know.
Too sufferful for show
when corny love could fit the bill:
high-mounting, climbing still.

Arrest the cold diversions from
your living-time and feel the sun
whenever possible; the harbingers
of war will tremble color-ward
and drop the gun.