what are your terms?
can I offer you a drink?
is your cocoon luxurious?
do we  have an understanding?
are you one size?
is there a wormhole that you prefer?
or all about the deep end
of ending this?

what are your terms?
do you have songs in your mittens?
are your balloons delirious?
do we have an answer as fancy?
are you quantized?
is there a Dirge that you were
that your life  forfends?
or is it bliss?

what are your worms?

where the pumpkins choke on campfires
and all the noise is a weekend-
staving off the solar flares
of an absolute
pyre.

strong lemonade for my perpetual disquiet.

in the bads
where the goods
go mad
and the hours
at hand-
stifling
as you wave
to reverse
an advance
but complete
a full Curse’
on a
Half-Life.

there are songs that are too many things
and catskills and blarney, jumbled out of focus
to appease the unnecessary Agency
of our Practical Demise.

in the bads, we return from somewhere that left when we did.
love, an Impala with an open mind
made of thorns as ratched
as a claim.

and a blind wine.

On the Northside of a very private Southside-
where a Midwestern Daguerreotype
of Some Kind

[ Eastbound ]

On Pure
West
Business.

Had mine eyes fallen
upon worlds
between
wheels.

Having learned much from toil-
and extravagant galas
my appetites subvert
the meringue
as an infinite feast
unfurls.

breaking bread in an alcove
of cinnamon stars
in a pitch black white
that goes with everything
you’ll never Know.

like a flawless gauze
wrapped around
an itch.

II

In the telling of Sunfish Fables
one must contort the bend
to render a skeleton key
to a locked Rune.
Ya gotta foil the fates fancy
with turbulent renditions
of inner hurricanes
that cast such spells
as to weather you.

even at the bottom
of the sea.

you gotta burn rocks with your teeth
because your tongue is busy .
sleep after death
because Now is too soon
to forget how to be
Alive.

And too brief to
believe
Until it's
True.

To hand I have imperial wheat and the humble shuck.
The froth of Life’s undulant bulk, like a wave of tons
Skipping stones across my troubled heart-
To pale the girth of Jupiter
and ruin.

Mad with plums that read palms from ***** to Left.

Mad with cherries
that sting
a bit.

Draped in beans that Ivy
to a Giant Pause.
For a Fee to deFy Forked Tongues
With Plain Dreams.
And Golden Geese defrocked
Some.

Then to the Center of It, you and I.
The smallest Kings in a whiff
Of Dominion’-
Lording over mirrors as vain
As our countenance!
Woe, as we tinker-
With the Worst that makes
the World go ‘round.-

And Find You, That I Am Me.

NOW THAT
might be
profou
nd.

tipping the scales at half past a vanishing point to an argument
we’re like a tribe of unbridled huckleberries, spoiling for a jam.
but then… we lose the wind to a terrible storm far beyond our sphere
and labor overmuch to assuage the curdled grommet
of our foisted  appeal to an unvoiced fear.
we slip into our rainbows and swim unfettered until a wing breaks
to sing an anthem to gravity’s callous law. gobsmack in the perilous nativity
of your awkward alliance with the Mystery that conceived you-
as a Lost Boy.

you’re always the Beforeigner.

So Now.

So Now.

So Now.

No slumlords in the orchard, only the good Lord’s bounty
heaped upon troubles and shimmering defaults.
where life has loaned you-
a lemonous sun, as ashes belie the anthracite
smoldering in clandestine doubts and rarified hope.
This world is teeming with life without irony. Teeming with you-
like a vestigial immortal, entranced by a wasp
in an apple tree.

In the doll spot the violins in your eyes
are not the choir i was looking for.
merely the shell of a silent scream
in semaphore *******
lavishly devoid.
Pondering the revels of Last Things.

I came upon your homicide by chance.
tripped over your open wounds and hung lights
on your bones to find the empty wells
yawning with grief invisible… and all the secret storms
of your tepid furies. i read your mail.
in a sense.
i saw the background of your foreground
as the planet you believed in.
and waved at you “ Goodbye”
because backwards
Day.