ommage                    
                    to
               ­             e.e. cummings
                  itsalwaysapleasure
                   ­                         (?)
                       to...
                      read      (u)
                       ­               U; of all
letting us know
the what of IS

"Time stampedes with ease
No paradox."--
the wristwatch of hard knocks

The painting opposite the bartender
hangs him every night.
It's a portrait of his ex-wife
who owns the joint and
holds the mortgage on his rotting future.

He tells his regulars it's all the way
you look at things, or you can make a
case for truth or untruth about anything.
What's your pleasure?

But always some vagary
will collide his glance against the portrait--
and it's then he feels himself twist
a
little
creaking
millimeter
more...

I grabbed her fawning hands to mine
And we danced on the dish of the moon
Serenaded by a loon's rollicking tune
That could not keep up with
Our loud passion cries
Echoing hill to hill
Back and forth In and out
Crescendoing into ecstatic shouts

Easing us finally to love's little death
Nearly out of breath
As we watched the jokey sun rising in the west
And how our tired kisses
Were flying off our lips
Into the clownish banditry of the wind's harsh riffs

It keeps away the dark
It's big as a mother's heart
It's what we draw after we learn to crawl
We love its rusty reds and browns , its blazing golds and yellows
If it could talk it might emit a very sweet bellow
We keep it under our minds' protective bowers
In case we need true flower power

Half-sane near the Seine
with my Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum
who lifted her skirts
to give the lie to the Oriental Lie,
I thought it apposite that an insane
clochard stood a speaker's distance
and masticated franc notes like portions
of ****** "pain" while he ogled
the impenetrable ideogram of
The Beast With Two Backs penetrating

Don't skim those keys
like your fingers are feathers,
Press down the loud pedal,
Lean in earnestly and
Do beat those hammers;
Break the glass of your voice,
Croon wooden lines from an
old folk ditty if you must,
but jump on it!
That fin I gave you
nestles in your pocket
and all I hear are a piano tuner's
pick...pick...pick...
Lift this shroud of night,
Be God,
Open the heavens--
your fingers bouncing aflame with
the apocalypse of daylight!