When my Calling is Calling
And I fail to answer
The Phonemes…

I’m depressed.

And of course, I must be.
Driven North of my South
By harpies
Draped in flags.
My constant Dystopia
More Terrarium
Than a home for
My bees.

And more Hive
Than any Home
For
A Dream.

A plush junket
Of close calls-
Where rice patties
Wane.
Because Prophets
Fail like crops.
And The News
Is just a new Nothing
In Imaginary
Palms…

Phantom
mad.


II


But when my Calling is Calling-
And Negotiations have collapsed.-
As foretold by Introspection
And served on a platter
Of Absolute Narcissism
Chained to an Unspoken Woe
In my Achilles Heel-

My Falderal, fumbling
For Unfaltering.s.

I almost digress.

III


I clamor to the forefront
Of Myself; maladjusted
To Sun spokes.
Privately
Waning.
A Tempered Steel
In a molten
Kaleidoscope-
Hoping
Love hath a Plan
That a Hell
Dismissed.

Or a Poem
Made sense
Of It...

Sisyphus.

In the copse where the green is noble and remote
and my wineskin sings whatever tune
my besotted soul applauds…
As I gather no moss, no stranger to rough canopies.
as there; i serve agendas beyond
my craven absolution
to arrive be-darkened and be-knighted
in the very crescent of my
incorrigible descent
erupting from a tomb of my own making
with a sprig of mistletoe
in a goblet of Sangria
star-struck by
moonshine...

Her fennel failed, so it was off to market-
where local lemon squares cartwheel
with kettle corn
as free samples dissipate...
and the business-
of honing in on
a needful thing
becomes the
sepia tone
on a wharf of
gathering.

with the fog that threatened
the forecast, abated.
the air was gray-yellow
with a new sun cracking mist
as veterans
meander like elk in hoodies
between the fresh catch
of the day
and the venison heart
on ice.

under glass.

been giving rainbows jumpstarts in grey areas
ever since point blank range became the metric
of a total *****.

And yeah, that **** hurt.

But you can go now and be the perpetual **** mist
on a black fob in a wishing Hell.
And I hope
you do.

but i must account for my many wounds
by giving fewer ***** about you
and Jupiter will always be the bully
your Mercury sleeps with…
unless the hole in your actual argument
is also the enemy of the Point.
but you sand
witch…

i clock blind rubies by their dozens,
spinning up red ogres and margarine-
in a sheer toast to our fallen comrades
that had other souls to bargain with
but only our fondest hopes
to herald… even as our slumlord daffodils
deign to embark upon new meadows
where cave ravens steep sunshine mead
in preposterous bogotas.

the faucet of every lake dreamt is a drain,

nothing drags a frame of reference out of bed
like a fresh start on a pike.
you strap your business-end to a playful lark
and stave off the broken moons
as you Tetris the Possible
like an unknown god.

I hoist my genre by rote;
my tropes charmed and dangerous…
for the pen is mightier than the fjord
of our most opulent shadows.

My Etch-a-Sketch memories diverge
like Christmas geese
flocking to a pagan potluck
as cellular as a private moment with
a Neilson rating of zero.
I tune in when a gadfly lands on the nose of a spite,
and make a poet’s face.
I sleep like a baby on
the Titanic-
but my average epiphany
bobs for apples
in a bucket
of Northern Stars
too keen on wisdom
for a dullard’s
petard.

at first glance, every blank stare
like a horde of eyes
with pitchforks
and torch songs
made of
why?

as if light had a fist, her eyes were bruised. stormy lipids.
marooned in vitreous witness, forsworn to a buoy
on a blind wave. she had the far away inside her
like an ectopic pregnant pause.
too many Almosts in
the Coulda’ Bins.

where she stashed her hammers, the woodpeckers never say.
but time chips away at the verve of her established implosion
like a verb suffocating a Stop Sign.
and No Exit seems an offramp-
somehow.

as if darkness had a twin
with the navel of a pin
to hide an angel
from a stitch
in a Prayer.

she had the gravity that floats
because the bottom
wept.

And I very nearly spoke.

even when i lived in barrels i was stung by pre-Euclidean geometries

aping right angles, askew of a laminar flow of Time.
even when i stutter like butter on a lightning bolt
my collisions resolve dormancy
wherever i evict a conspicuous
ascetic tenet.

i twist The End where The Beginning buds;
and watch for spontaneous eruptions-

for Origins, mapped to a powder keg
with a damp fuse.

[ it’s steam engines now… ]

AND
the moon’s belly
is a bright eclipse
clamor-locked in the beastly
barrage of our tuneless
arias…
coping with despotic realities
with aplomb; birthing sunshine
from a myth mirror
emblazoned where harm refracts
exact moments-
tumbling magnetic…

as your eyes
Yahtzee the Forbidden
like a rogue.

with
blunt force
Rama.
as Fore-
​​​​​​​told.

II

infinity pools are finite if you swim like a rock.
or fall asleep when a lullabies’ on fire.


just so you Know.