I reflect upon our shared moments
much the way
an alcoholic
stares into an empty tumbler
realizing
he can't afford a refill...

The needle-tip,





a bee sting





giving rise to a hive.




A sickening delirium
coursing mercurial under eyelids,



tapeworms and tendrils
weaving wildly:



teeming, churning tides breaking over
greedy teeth (a needy mouth


flaying flesh ferociously,
a fevered wolverine
whipping through a petting zoo).

Each agonizing second
slowly sliding by,
tacky molasses on cloth
covering a table in an innocuous
American home
bruises on mother's face
fade (eggplant to jaundice
to the crimson of the setting sun
dying behind the horizon
line {chopped across a counter-top
like a broken promise...}).  




All the lives we compromise



trying to cage a swarm.

The grace of God was painted
on the canvass of your soft skin,
but you don't see it.

I try to touch it,
but you secret it away
like a scar,
or deformity.

I pray for strength,
but the devil propositions
where God charges admission...

no one knocks a free ride.

Reflection
will distort this moment—

(an oasis
in the desert of memory)

the simple
wonder of the instant diminished

as gemstones
depreciated by display upon

a gold band.


Focus fades
in inching instants

(a shutter
slowly closing over a lens)

and we
imperceptibly surrender

clarity
to these evanescing essences of

youth and reminiscence.

... ravening wolf's
blood-caked maw
     explodes
plumes of condensation
    to evidence exertion.


He guards his ****
with a dogged dread,

for I
am an
unfamiliar
predator.

My eyes fly
to the swatch of sack-cloth
abandoned in a corner of the floor,
no doubt considered
for use in a patchwork at some point.

I wonder if it mourns
its shortcomings.

A querulous cry
from my peckish feline
failed to rouse me from sleep:

thus,
teeth entangled in the meat of my palm,
this hideous beast
bucked conventional wisdom in
deciding to bite a hand
to prompt a feeding.

Concurrently
I am considering the adage
of there being more than one way
to skin a cat.