The destructive daughter
and the delicate one.

The blunt daughter,
and the passive one.

The rageful daughter
and the sad one.

The out burst daughter
and the collapse-in-on-itself one.

The always apologizing daughter
and the always receiving them one.

The destructive daughter
and the delicate one.

A pirate sailed south, but too far.
The good ship's prow found
harbors filled with icebergs,
frolicking penguins and walruses:
it began to snow inside his mortal soul.
He dreamed of perfect white beaches,
warm sand, sunlight, palm trees
and (perhaps) a lovely French poet in a slight bikini
lolling like Erato on holiday.
He could taste the sun and coconut on her skin.
It was only a vision, but one worthy of a quest.
He preferred living dreams to dead conclusions.
Many people told him he dreamed too much,
to accept this landfall and be content.
But cold and darkness are not a pirate's lot
and contentment does not appear
in the official pirate's vocabulary.
Even an aging pirate holds true to course,
pinned like a medal to his longing and desire.
More sail, he cried, and turned the helm
toward the islands of his heart,
toward a landfall of warmth and color,
toward hot and willing flesh,
toward parrots and monkeys and blue skies.
Leaving the nay-sayers in the cold,
he headed the only direction a pirate can, further.
- mce

A pirate sailed south, but too far.
The good ship's prow found
harbors filled with icebergs,
frolicking penguins and walruses:
it began to snow inside his mortal soul.
He dreamed of perfect white beaches,
warm sand, sunlight, palm trees
and (perhaps) a lovely French poet in a slight bikini
lolling like Erato on holiday.
He could taste the sun and coconut on her skin.
It was only a vision, but one worthy of a quest.
He preferred living dreams to dead conclusions.
Many people told him he dreamed too much,
to accept this landfall and be content.
But cold and darkness are not a pirate's lot
and contentment does not appear
in the official pirate's vocabulary.
Even an aging pirate holds true to course,
pinned like a medal to his longing and desire.
More sail, he cried, and turned the helm
toward the islands of his heart,
toward a landfall of warmth and color,
toward hot and willing flesh,
toward parrots and monkeys and blue skies.
Leaving the nay-sayers in the cold,
he headed the only direction a pirate can, further.
- mce

the stars do not align
like they do every now and then
not as we drove through glaucous willows
not as the stelliferous night twinkled with promise through the sky roof
not as my cupidity for you
not as we danced in each other's arms paradisally
not as the lanugo on our bare limbs blazed a golden white as we watched the sun rise
the stars did not align for us.

we loved like antipodes - if antipodes did not love.

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc'd with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish'd thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They'are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face.

Because the pleasure-bird whistles after the hot wires,
Shall the blind horse sing sweeter?
Convenient bird and beast lie lodged to suffer
The supper and knives of a mood.
In the sniffed and poured snow on the tip of the tongue of the year
That clouts the spittle like bubbles with broken rooms,
An enamoured man alone by the twigs of his eyes, two fires,
Camped in the drug-white shower of nerves and food,
Savours the lick of the times through a deadly wood of hair
In a wind that plucked a goose,
Nor ever, as the wild tongue breaks its tombs,
Rounds to look at the red, wagged root.
Because there stands, one story out of the *** city,
That frozen wife whose juices drift like a fixed sea
Secretly in statuary,
Shall I, struck on the hot and rocking street,
Not spin to stare at an old year
Toppling and burning in the muddle of towers and galleries
Like the mauled pictures of boys?
The salt person and blasted place
I furnish with the meat of a fable.
If the dead starve, their stomachs turn to tumble
An upright man in the antipodes
Or spray-based and rock-chested sea:
Over the past table I repeat this present grace.

Skin supplanted by steel,

As pigment falls to paint,

A hollow duralumin chariot,

Ridden by the affluent,

Fortuitous souls, borne to their heart's requests

Down from below, as antipodes clash,

The behemoth clamors, with metallic clangs,

Conflicting privileges, one invulnerable,

Touted lands turned to tarnished wastes,

With a destiny targeted at armageddon,

Humanity's fate glides, like the zeppelin.

What precedes Pain is love, and what precedes grief is Joy..
as life goes on, you will experience either bliss.. or  snag,
...
From each of antipodes, you're going to have a slice,
This is the LIFE...
..
This is the life, gives you everyday the opposite of senses, just for TRY.

There's this ******* incoherence...
and obsessive cut and paste of mind.
Whatever pasture made its green bed,
has serial murdered...
painted...with head and heels, a lifetime of
tumbling.
Bipedal...the fallacy of bragging rights since
birth.
There's too much to engender without choice,
involuntary antipodes of mind...variations on
madness pawn their humours at storm-crossed
gates.
Strewn...the scrap metal of such limbs.

The clock was protected from change in your house.
No Daylight Savings Time admitted to your routines.
We who bordered your life had to adjust or miss your timing.
Your farm the antipodes of ours...straight and neat,
Everything where it ought to be,
No duplication or mess....
A feast for my order-hungered eyes.
I had not yet learned of obsessive-compulsiveness;
I only despised my father's clutter,
His refusal to wear time upon his wrist,
His stubborn old World ways.

I shoveled barley half a hot and muggy day
To load your truck,
Emerged tired, covered with dust,
Raging in a million itches
To receive fifty cents
"To take your girlfriend out."
Most ungrateful, I chafed,
Told anyone who listened...
But now, I smile,
Wishing my labor to have been
A gift, now long ago.

I fell in love with John Deere tractors, gleaming green,
Colored television,
Fresh paint, white and red,
Because of you
Standing in striped Osh Kosh bibs,
Penultimate farmer.

Lydia, your wife,
Danced to the metronome
Of your orderly life,
Escaped only in Harlequin novels
Stacked by her chair.

Until the day everything changed,
Pink drool trailing from your mouth,
Gears grinding as you lost
The memory of clutches,
Tractor care,
Crops to plant
Be ******...
A stroke was taking down another man.

A Saturday we moved your wife to town
Near where you convalesced;
Monday, the Baptist preacher found her.

You ordered mahogany, rich and prime,
For us to bid your Lydia farewell,
Then followed, true to form,
Within the month.

Your children ordered oak, solid and strong,
Wheat sheaves bedeck the top,
Inlaid and waiting,
Ready for the coming harvest.