I.   Warning

A boundary of warning issued premature
to a lad settled on adventure
will plant definition in a red
corruption code of ketchup on a
post-picnic bib orphaned to the wind
like a fictional friend's home continent's flag

The vision-fielding velocity of neighbours'
arrows augment the sleep-shearing flares
of the father's eyes in the centrifugal
bullseye of his boy's current-green nursery
so close to swelling wide as a planet
now a marble left behind in favour of
a shrunken moon's spheric promise
of an otherworldly adventure

II.   Island

Subservient to boundaries of none but its own
the loner of landmass nurses its nautical mischief
through the employment of sensual labour in darkness
sizing them up to encompass a knowing glow
for the enigmas of bare-faced daylight

The premature thirst for adventure
attended to by the drink of sanctuary
poured from the skew of its welcome-mat shore

III.   Neighbours

Game and Disappearance serve
the Monarchy of Volume under code names
of Hide and Seek undertaking missions in the name
of circumstantial viceroys: decibels
scanning search parties through the x-ray of silent night
for the orchestration of the morn

Tweeting birds equate an army horn
rainbowing the insurgent black sky
with adventures in crusade-recital grooming

An airy beach of reeds is looming
in the coastal fog bracing to embrace
the route taken on the faith of melodic compass

IV.   Discovery

No labourer of mortal being beats the sun
out of bed not even the little one
succumbed to slumber in the bony shadow
of the instrumentally inscrutable contestant
to the claim of composition by his
solar brother's sacred nursery rhyme
insuring the rest and energetic rise of time

This adventure-hearted child heard no battle cry
in what the rivals of his bearded babysitter
dubbed The Sound Of Panic
just the anthem of a little conqueror beneath
a bucky smile of approval on the heels
of a swim befitting of an older lad but not
the aura of exhaustion conquering
the eyes of a goal imagined and achieved
and the smiling gratitude duet in return
from the dutiful and loving neighbours
lulled to their reunion reed field
in anticipation of a father's target met
with a son's accuracy in tow

11 26 11

angry men who do not know I do not have a dollar or a cig to spare. Ugly irrefutable contagion-handed howlers. Angry mischievous heathens that pantomime on 6:00a.m. sidewalk, Wicker Park gallow stop-sign, choreographed gutter-punk drunk walk. And of all he wants and could ever want splits down his gooey membrane brain in the outline of a noun shaped fragment of a clause, "Couldja spare 80¢ for the train," but of course I don't spare on the ellipsis or the period. Semi-colons I won't! My rubber-bottomed leather boots lash out, heavy scraping sounds trail this mirrored shadow half an angle behind me.

*****!! Blonde framed sunglasses from American Apparel, a gift from my sister in a folded Ray-Ban case is scattered on last nights bedroom floor, my girlfriend has certainly not noticed, the gloom-coated morning sun spray has not noticed; but I have unzipped a fissure in the ocular lens. My heart skips a beat. Her bedroom might as well have swallowed them whole. Now the house can halt and have the shade, swaying in Spring air in 10:22a.m. shadows. The aviator himself Howard Hughes would strike me with his 488 aircraft. Edwin Starr in his invincible sinister calypso of War would turn me round. I was sturdy as a rock until I began to forget my forgottens. These unknown unknowns I knew I needed. I'm over a quarter-century on to noon going nowhere- and quite blindly.

But then, still she could stand upright and find me. Her neck crooked, looking onward through the East, the gristly roots of rhubarb buried in her searching fingernails. She's threaded worse, and of course if I could just tell her- this is the kind of nursing which requires acute temperament and flexibility. I am thus on a journey to strike nonsense and fear from the idiotic vocabulary that put this nonsense in my head. Split through me like a butter knife into my apotropaic. Perhaps tar water could cure my ails. If not, certainly a sliver of vanilla would set me straight. Or if could just rain rain rain all day, then I'd make do without, but she is at school. My pistons are racked and nervous, and I'm not going anywhere but my rucksack stoop. I am camped in midwestern Spring soup. Fog, rain, and shade. The nightmare of day.

Here is a thimble.
Your finger is protected from ******,
when sewing a passionate garment.
Yet the blood of a tailor,
is a blessing in dark garb.
Discard metal and thread carelessly.
My skirt is wine red and parched.