Told of keys
& a kingdom
Don't blame
Me I'm on my knees
At a loss
For words or machine oil,
A stuck lock in pearl--
Petrified cross.
It's a matter of mimicking
The master, *** metal
And attention to detail,
Tumblers unsticking--
A little spit,
Devil's ****.

All I want
Is more verses
In this room
That I can read to you

She likes the baseball afternoons,
Better than the Sunday sermons,
Has waited,  sleeplessly, all night,
Now nods along the homilies,
Less certain of the trinity
Than how the 6-4-3 can end
An inning that looked perilous,
Or how the cardinal lately
Spending evenings by the fence row
Might be her husband back at work.

Ignore me if you will,  I've tried.
I think the thinkers may be wrong
About this thing free agency,
Hardball being better since Curt Flood
And who are the owners anyway
To tell us where our interests lie
As if some overbearing deity
Got jealous of the lesser gods,
Or even me, with my
Great Pleasure in the flesh,
Disputing life and destiny,
Not waiting on a starry crown
When thorns will make a fitting laurel.

That past is least predictable,
Which might have cast the healing spell,
Slim echo of the madrigal
Drawn out of some abandoned well
Where wishes once flowed easily
And fast enough to be construed
As miracles and prophecy;
Small crosses fashioned from old wood.
All offerings anticipate
Such future unaffordable
Without the fire that's said to wait
Some place beyond believable.
Lost words lay stalled on blotted page,
Conceived like orphans sent to rage.

Red sky this morning,
Clear to anyone not sleeping in--
Heat rising off the street,
Songbirds reluctant with their song.
The early lunch crowd eyes the sky.
Don't like the looks of that, one says,
Seeing some suggestion,
Something gathering
In the west.

Come dark it's rained three times and quit,
And then the heavens open up--
Fire dancing through the rain.

Some lives will not be spared tonight--
The weather not the worst of it;
Black powder, steel and lead.

I like it here, between your ears,
Safe distance from the sin-packed world,
The careless way that words get heard,
If heard at all--not merely sold.
And why not celebrate the day,
Remainder of the speechless night,
Whose music gives cacophony,
Some slighter version of the void.
When all appearances be lost,
You have the nerve to listen still,
As I go searching for my voice,
Like stealing from a wishing well.
You mend my words like fractured bones
That pierce the silence coming home.