If you have eyes that hang lanterns in mid-air
and smooth skin where your wrinkles sleep,
and a broken heart where you come from…
mending rivers with tears and old photographs
of antique cameras encased in opal coral
on a seabed of shipwreck and silt...

If you pause to reflect and the mirror
needs a minute to adjust to the absence
of your vanity… and all your coats
smell of wet dog rescue and soup kitchen
and your god is a living thing
that knows why you ask questions
that have answers
but you just like the sound of love’s voice…
so you pretend politely.
and pray for real.

then let my mind tick. to imagine thee
in all your wondrous oddity
allow me the privilege of adoration
and a moment alone
to caress your wings
with all the tenderness of a wish
without a name.

and i’ll abide.

she lives where the cell phones die without remembering
the tone assigned to a cryptic stream of social Lilliputians
on a list of offenders, and befrienders; all caroling at random
for a stitch of thyme or to barter with banter and allusions.
she sleeps where her bed has fallen in love
with southern exposure; but openly flirts with an eastern sky
boiling over with morningstar and brindle night .
her thread count...
an imaginary number
between sleep and a full moon…
and her pillows have embroidered her silhouette
as she takes slumber to meet the parents of her proclivities
that have ever held sway over all of her charms.
how her forks and knives pay conjugal visits to spoons
To the clank elegance of her signature
explaining the vacancy she hordes without joy.
armed with only a loaded pun
in the barrel of her ***…. and a thousand safaris
beyond game. where a woman can breathe without pretending
the pink flamingos are Rodin on Ritalin
she can howl in her own language without poppies.
she lives in that house on the hill
that wasn’t there yesterday.
and the paper boys  
all want to
be men.

so oleander.

The air is damp in the basement where several boxes trade baseball cards
With long-forgotten toys in
various stages of disrepair.
A 30ft. hose, pretending to be a reticulated python; commits to the role
In an asymmetrical coil of hunter’s green, weathered and neglected. It becomes a reptile in a garden of reverie.
Next to an oil can full of rusty nails and sawdust. To seldom applause.
At night, the seeping mirror is placid and black on concrete between crates.
A washing machine windges in an existential spiral
of bespoke filth and hand-me-downs.
you can hear the rain patter like fat cats in bubble wrap
as a late dinner sinks into the catacomb, crooning pork chops and maple
with a hint of ambergris’ and misbegotten broccoli.
When the hour is late… the mice chat as metallic slugs lace silver thread
to weave a two-dimensional sweater
for a concrete god
in the dark.
with no
hands.

that wind at your back
with my eyes and my name
is me breathing.

those clouds overhead
with hands full of rain
is my song.

that tree by the porch
where you swing -
holds a torch
and my
meaning.

evergreen in your season.


II

those butterflies
that can’t tell
the flowers
about you….

are telling them all
just the same.

they know all about
how my love
surrounds
you.

and now they’re
doing the
same.

the morning had no coffee. just had 98 degrees by 10 am
and a barn on the lean in the distance.
where time never cuts the grass and nothing happens.
dirt roads pray for death or slow traffic. and clouds like smoke
from a bellicose pipe… on the lips of a medicine man
who became a woman when a cloud called him “ medicine man “
while the peyote was barking without dogs, was unleashed
to prairie in the marsh where the bogs agog
with summer candy in its peat moss.
no dowsing rod to spare a child the ridicule of finding god’s pond
with a stick obeying a cop.
the morning had no mirrors. just broken glass and aspartame
and very minor miracles. no part of a red sea. only dust mites
and last night’s *****. the trucks won’t stop complaining
about the radio. because you have no radio.
and when you sing on those long trips to the corner store…
your truck is like “ what the ****? “
and “ this guy must hate trucks….” and all sundry regalia of suffering
from a hole in the muffler and a tone-deaf pilgrim
on half a tank of sunshine and vermouth.

with a dent
in a twist.

My Solitaire is irascible in aspect. Just over the Hill there; I used to carve my initial conditions into a blank stare, or a block of omission. But now my stratagems soar far beyond the pondering of Loneliness. Even Abandon cannot fathom Me.

     I tend to orchids that have earthquake hearts and care for the waning moons in my terrarium of phantoms and glass apples. i anoint the chasm with vespers of Isolation that sparkle like a madness in phosphorus ecstasy. My books are Discreet.
I am their Shogan.

This town has asthmatic headlights and bottle caps like tiny crowns for giant ants, snatching moonlight from the concrete, hoarding halos in blind alleys; where the homeless groan and dither in shadows like blackstrap molasses. The sign on the backdoor reads “ Exit “ like it was ******* Shakespeare, but across the street where the lamp is having second thoughts… a red brick unicorn is grazing on bottle caps with moonlight icing and a Yellow Cab idles in the Irony of Yellow.

     Parked cars are engaged in their telepathic games. The trench coats are keeping secrets and house keys huddled in a clump of disarray… in every palm. Neon shoestrings in windows, spell words with glass agendas, twinkling conspiracies that trade on your emptiness like a promise on the lips of a snail. You can hear the world spinning a yarn to knit a sweater thick enough to ward off the chill of an existential crisis.
Heard Carl’s Kid, Marty has a habit of catching butterflies and sewing butterflies to them. Carl says “ The Boy's gettin’ purty good.