Players in the hit parade
abound like orphans—eat the glow
of while-you're-seated pills that start
the fading of a heart. Their covert
deposition talks you down—hawks
warlord-wisdom, spits betrayals
of what you built. So if you have
to plea, reveal your guilt two inches
from their eyes.

Good jest replies
in callbacks: "When you get to be
more special, let us know." So folds
their show of reason, leaving you
to lurk upstage upholding tasks
divorced from charm: false shopping,
twisting arms. Outsourced.

In faith a word
casts end-of-game, denies
them helpful shame,
applauds their global reach
like red-tide beaches. Lights up;
stir the waxing i·re, fixed-width,
non-perspiring, livid.
Stunned in passing,
angels catch collapsing tenets
cached in rivals' mark: clipped off
and quiet, buried in the dark.

Crash unbridled gates. Grind organs
through the rosy calm of tolerance.
See misfits shuck the beasts
in bed with bliss. Type up and tack
to this new daily mess the bounds
of what went by 'neath private barroom
skies; no looming spy will fix you
flint to burn the friendly waters,
flicker honor out to disarrange
and scold some rhyme too bold
for comfort-answers, dumb-fit, fumble-
grounded in some sliver too uncouth.
Tape pageless trees for truth;
blog-sift the spheres, watch darkness' evil
ears upend and train the tuner on
the lips extolling groundwork kisses
(sparkful dominance upstaged
by passion turned to stone:
reserves gone sour, hour unknown.)
Mist-choked misnomers
acting onerous and blinking out of phase:
de-stage the structure. Anchor down who stays,
who pulls the latest polls. While blind-spots
clutch white lace like arguments,
make space to process what flies past
as ****** rats stay the course,
a maze in grace.

Winter muffles whys—builds camps
to cover lies, and sing, and pray,
and rank-and-file amazement
underneath the grave. For whom? For hymns
to cheer the worker tasked with robbing
coffins—refund for the nauseous
ever-trope. The price to cope
may mount, but saints will light your way
to greed-bared aisles, and holy phantages
watch you in your motel,
and smile, and gather shells that held
self worth (picked dry—your kids don't need
them anymore). Now deck the wedding:
brides of clever ruse and grooms-to-be
lined up in civic mass, one shotgun
glance away from trumpet's vengeful blast.

Rude-awakened, bare, I plunged
the mine for errors—yelled revisions
up the shaft, felt echoes drift.
Stifled gold-myths for anchors: pig-iron
chained to answers. Asked "which way?"
and felt novel paths fade to gray,
gut-checked at gates Now Boarding,
urgency-alive, departure day.  

For-Shame walks hard his two-block beat:
the love against his feet, the bleach
behind his eyes. The toll is lucid blood:
much thinner, quick-twitch coded,
primed to run. Canaries, fathoms down,
sing longing to the mask
that votes for trade—sweeps laurel off
the heads of state, befouls the learners'
****-grounds. What truth might Satan

still confound? Denounced and parceled,
grifters spend our last resort
up paper-trails that track too short—
force every sense through that
accursed mask.
To breathe, perchance, to ask.

I dream a dream of skill,
I gather pictures of best practice
(methods best enacted off the couch.)
I house,
crisp corners, soaring beams and posts
where gawkers marvel, ‘cos
the high is feeling good. I see
the woods
and watch the owners.
(What good grip they have! enough to claim
what they could never care for-
let the lessers sing their lives!)
I drive a drive
not fast enough for fastness-makers,
flaunting logos, polished chrome,
I drive a loan.

None say it, none will ever hear
these soft confessions to
the “here” I hold right now
in its un-good. I slip
a “should” on, halfway,
dumping it for snacks and cons -
I run for miles
to lose it on the lawn.

And as I break, I pause to
watch a bit to see how not to fail.
I land in jail. The wardens
never speak to me,
the only copy of the key
described in stories, but
they’ve scattered every page.
And every day I fail
to reconstruct it out of naught,
I age.

Tasked today with thorning
thistled favor over reigns,
we drained the shot that scored
the weak on board
and shattered crystal pain.
Who drops us off white rockets
pulled from earth like swede from stone
to jet to planes above?
The fuel we love, abundant every turn:
advice in our good ands. Disseminating
buts like rice, exceptions
unto every goal,
obscuring each clear picture
in the way. Re-light
and curse the days

you fight it, pining, elbows up,
some cheap romance whose pages
wear you thin. You render
heartache on the blow -
skid-crushing, woeful throes
of counterpoint dispatched to swallow
lightness from the shore.
Wise up

and ask for more.
Be stronger - shed your brightness
on the bay. Delay those saturated
hoodwinks. Gamble on discreetless
balconies where broke your fall
from order. Signal wholeness
of your cause, re-bolster lack of laws
with blinding arrows to your neck -
revise, rehone the wherewithal
to do what’s due: respect.

Nothing’s burning. What went wrong?
No one desires the simple song
you croak out for crumb suppers, ‘cos
it doesn’t make them think of feasts.
Release the guise of competition -
like you’d ever win these heats.

Behold who placed: staid mottoes
wearing proper faces wrapped
in proper chains.
Observe their seats in proper chairs:
the owners of their stake
never relinquishing the bloodline’s hold,
impenetrable walls between the well-born
and the cold.

Who likes us? Weakness does:
tremblers demanding ones like you
to save their damsel hide. The saved abide
all laws convenient to them;
for the rest, they cut a deal,
and you’re not in it.
Be afraid of that. They ratchet up
that fire finesse and do
damage control: what dare we salvage?
Wayward cities? Idle souls?

Compress them in a tank of rigid steel
mixed by the craven powers.
I’ve got mine - don’t call it ours
(although I speak for all of you.)
We’re through if you don’t show up
at my dinners, check in hand
in sleeve in shirt in suit
on fire -
when I’m done, sweep up your soot.