Somewhere between the dream of what it could be
and what it wanted to be, this poem hightailed it
out of town. Down the road it went, careening into
hedgerows, jostling small birds from their resting
time. Running for all it's worth, out to the sea cliffs
then arrested, stock still, before all that immensity.
Chagrined by such a rash attempt at escape, even
blushing a bit, it wondered about strange things:
What would it be like to be a badger? To always be
dressed in all those lovely stripes? To never have bad
wardrobe days?  Or what about an otter, with such
strong muscles, and an utter delight for swimming?
To never really feel the cold? These are the things a
poem can wonder about, when it isn't quite sure, just
right then, in the present moment, how to be a poem.

The Straw Furniture (Summertime and the Living is Easy)

The ancient straw furniture, yellow-white, cracked,
My boon companions from the Sun Room where I write,
Give me a welcome back embrace and purposely snag my sweater,
Crackling a laugh and tween boisterous gasps, all wish me a hearty
Welcome back ancient mariner, to your cottage
On the bluff overlooking Peconic Bay.

The deck furniture exhumed from the garage,
Accompanied by a parade, nay a slew,
Of spiders and insects waving Adieu to their winter palace
Climb aboard to get a better view of their new deck digs,
And of me, the anti-hero of their grandparent's tales.

I go down to the basement.
Chagrined,
I come back up the twisty stairs
which designed, aimed to maim,
vowing never to return.

The refrigerator says do you like modern art?
Mold of multifarious colors, heavenly hues worthy of the
Museum of Modern Art,
I bequeath to you freely, no charge!

The clean laundry left out from last summer,
Looks so forlorn, asks politely,
Make me gone, wash away the winter's dusty grime,
Besides, traces of aged balsamic suntan lotion, still inhabit.

The golf clubs say nice meeting you,
Tho we think we met you once before,
Five or eight years or even never-years ago, was it not?

My obedient servants?
No, my friends, my helpers, my guides,
For in their sheltering embrace, in this holy place,
Inspiration floods, overcomes me and I am compelled alive,
Poet renewed, ****** why am I crying...


May 26th
10:15 AM
Shelter Island
In the Sun Room, weeping.

this flourishing silence feels more of
a trite hack-job than it is a writing stint.
     my fingers (frenzied, brazen) continue to tap
and my mind starts to spill like a spigot
   left open. I have taken to smoking and laughing
away

       in an obscured day for myself in the parking lot
and sometimes I can do without company; only the snarl
of the well-oiled tractor in front of me.

    the days are full of yellow and the Sun is a dog
on a leash. the roses smell of brine and their slender
stems bones of the young.

    I can see cheeks flushed with red and skirts
neatly trimmed just above knobby knees
   and I know somewhere in that tender flesh,
a man sifts without knowing what it feels to eat
    bone before flesh, flesh after bone. my silently augured
procurement of today’s induced comatose is but
    a Freudian slip – the world with its burly physique
is a chauvinistic man
           drinking whisky in the red light district of hazy Makati.

                 each slapdash word in penitent reprisal
is the moment’s clearest reprieve. I am glad that this room
is darker than the eyes of the love I have lost
     staring back with a mound of the abysmal or the yearnings
      of a chagrined mother startled back to her home;
  it must be dreamy, the dogs outside pant in heat
        and the obnoxious *** of vehicles outside bears the cadence
  of two people   starting to fall in love:  all chaotic and unmoving,
             fastened to the Earth, aware of the passing minutes,
                                         wishing to be somewhere else but there.

I want to be fluid, I want to be smooth
With the ability to soothe
Be like the waters
With seashell daughters
Of streams and brooks and rain
Always tender, always humble, never vain
Yet still ruling with sovereign reign
Nothing should ever be able to stop me
Nothing can stop the ocean or the sea
Not even time
I want to be huge, I want to be sublime
Never hurt, never chagrined
I want to have no fear of the wind
And even less of the heat or the cold
I want to shimmer with gold
When the sun sets
Away from mortal things like hate or regrets
I want to learn to sing like water
Without ever wearying, tiring,
Wheezing or expiring
I want to be the water
When it hums to the night
Chants to the stars bright
Stroking the sand
I want to be water never bland
I want to be the water that glorifies
Which runs, which plays, purifies
Which is sweet and pure, untainted, unattainable
I want to be the water mysterious and unexplainable
I want to be the water when it unfolds
When it holds
The seaweed with maiden hands
I want to be the water when it expands
Dances, sways, flows,
Diverted from the abyss

Such a tedious thing,
I sense our existence appears.
For my chest to breech to the sky,
A tightened blossom of whipping purity.
Then to sink towards such a vicarious engulfment of hell.

With each palpitating symposium,
My lungs waver.
To crust over,
and bless the,
upon gilded guffaws.
Perturbed of my ascension.

Or shall they sink,
Sallow under chagrined blasphemy,
My horridness inked upon
parchment seasoned skin.  

Not but,
a child of bitter consideration.
I shall butter myself in ashes,
just to perceive myself a shadow.
For at dusk's beckon,
perturbed; to kiss the constellations.

Blemishes I conjured,
beneath a quavering lip,
a gentle crease of my nose.
I silence their whimpering of wrongdoings,
which I have failed to rupture.

To exhale,
in such a bubbling manner.
It gurgles at my lips.
Dribbles before me,
Whilst the sun blinks back a yawn.
Yet, upon a lunar serenade,
the talons which protrude from my veins,
writhes gruesome.  

To my supposed
talents,
I see no anchor.
From them, to what lay before me.
To where I shall drift.

And good sir,
label my simplistic existence,
if you must.
Yet I shall soon die,
and so, you will too.
And by that flicker of seconds,
we should matter no more.

She has a girlfriend.
Deep red hair and soft fingertips and a magnetic gaze like being pierced by a ray of sunlight
And a girlfriend.
Freckles sprinkled like cinnamon over pale cheeks,
Eyelashes that cast soft shadows
Around chocolate eyes
As she looks down in confusion
That I would gaze into them
Like I gaze into a night sky full of diamond constellations.

And. A girlfriend.
Permission aside, and brevity,
The fact remained, and...

God help me, but I never minded.
We were partners, and we danced all night,
Not with steps but with subtle touches and near collisions.
And I tried, I really did,
To bow out.
But sweeping close and stealing away,
Somewhere within the infinite moments when we were a breath apart
I lost my grip on restraint
And tumbled into her thrall.

I don’t understand how someone could want a man.
Men have no power, no magnetism like that.
No force that draws you in like a moth to a flame.
No captivating pull that drags you into their arms.
When I've kissed a man, I've been led.
Hell, when I've kissed most people, I've been led.
But every once in a great while,
I meet a girl and I am drawn,
Enticed, seduced.
And oh,
Does that demolish my self control.

The dizziness of being touched
My skin humming like guitar strings
Strummed
By her casual hands
The little tendrils of her hair that waved in the breeze and twined in my fingers...
I showed her tenderness that I don’t show people
Because I knew she wouldn't see it if I did.

When I hitched my fingers beneath her chin,
I thought of the marble sculptures in the soaring halls of a museum-
Perfect and smooth- that cool, soft texture that begs caresses.
Even as a child,
I always wanted to run my fingertips across their cheeks,
Feel the curve of their lips,
See if soft and unyielding could exist together like kin.

Last night, my restraint frayed like a rope
Sawed down by the blade of her subtle symmetry.

I never had much anyway
And what I had never meant much to me.

We shared a breath a thousand times before we shared a kiss
And it was like dying to be so close every single time.
That was the best part- the sweet, slow torture of being close-
I didn't think I’d feel that way again
After the last time.

Maybe that was why I couldn't stop,
Wouldn't try,
When her hands would flutter around my waist
And land like butterflies on my hips.
I’m not sure it was me,
Leaning in, tugging on the thread of decency I didn't have.

I fell. And I was happy about it.
From grace and from goodness.
All my life I've made my choices to save everyone else
And last night I made my choice to stop for a night
And save myself.
It was the sweetest chance I ever took,
And I don’t know what it means or what it makes me.
Not sure what I've lost,
And if I care to look towards missing it.

I know it was too short a time when I was near her.
I wouldn't call myself caught,
But captivated.
It was like being drugged.
Her hands wove a spell into my skin,
Pressed a longing into my chest
That I haven’t truly felt in too long to remember.

Stupid me, I loved her scars,
Tattooed on her arms like snowflakes that hit her skin
And stuck, lacy, to it.
I tried so hard not to break her vow,
Sat with her and asked her who she was.
I think she thought it was an act
But she doesn't know that that was what I meant by kissing her-
I wanted her soul to come out and play,
And lay lithe in the light of the almost-up sun
So that I could see it and let it transform me.

Can you feel a woman’s soul in her lips?
Only if you look. Only if you beg for it to touch yours.
I did,
Unapologetic,
Full of shudders like a struck chord.

But hours before, I lay beside her as she struggled in her conscience
And told her I didn't mind.
What a story behind those eyes,
And chagrined to tell it, she glanced away.
Her fingers twined with mine and it was my struggle then:
To keep it simple.

But.
See.

The quirks of her lips when she’s tired,
The way she squints her eyes when she realizes she’s done it again
Like you've set the sun on her and not warned her first,
Her steadfast denial when the words of awe would slip from my lips
Showing her the side of me that can write a poem about such a beautiful girl,
They tugged at my heart and I bade it sit quiet.
But it ignored me like it usually does
And seeped tenderness into my veins like wine.

She has a little bit of me, I think.
God help me, I really know how to get myself into these messes.
But she does, she’s got the part of me that hoped
Someone like her would prove me wrong that I’d never feel again
Beyond the confines of my control.
She stole it with her soft lips
Pulled my resistance from me and turned it willing.
And today I woke up
Happy to have lost it.

The flames of the furnace (well-travelled by wind
slowly glazing the rags of gray women chagrined
at the sight of a hair fleeing tresses now thinned)
sometimes billow like waves flooding naves through the night,
when the lightning peeks in where the tension hangs tight
while the lanterns, alarmed, appear fulgent with fright.

Having lost both his hands, and now dancing for dimes,
Captain Hook haunts the alleyway's rivers of rhymes,
sometimes singing or prancing to mimic the mimes
with white faces contorted to pillars of pain,
as the ringmaster murmurs “we're all the insane”
and the inmates dunk donuts in droplets of rain.

With their hammers in hand, in their plum pinafores,
Satan's soldiers of fortune wield powers of Thor's
leaving blood on bent bodies, the tombstones of wars
lining highways and byways  with manna and gold
for the mastermind movers, survivors consoled
with some pie in Valhalla (or so they've been told).

Above boulevards, battered with batches of bricks,
flys the Duchess of Dawdle on waxed candlesticks;
while she watches, debauches, her ****** tricks
as he talks (on their walks in the summer-day parks
where a parrot kneels praying, a parakeet barks)
’bout the buffed brazen beaks of the latter-day larks.

Hoary goblins glow gruesome, they leap from the loft
to the hard-hearted rues, shedding tears that they've quaffed
through the night of the dead as the clarinets coughed
and the keepers kept watch so that no one escaped
dingy dungeons where priests and their puppets hide caped
behind walls lined with tulips and justice hung draped.

In the Garden of Eaten, where apples once grew,
lie the bones, somewhat blanched, from the last barbecue
and the snakes strut like storks down a lost avenue
along tracks  like the cracks on the mask of the moon
all alight with the shadows that seep down a dune
as the firefly crawls from a crimson cocoon.

Phantom trains travel tunnels (dispatched in all haste),
voiding tickets to nowhere, it seems such a waste
to see roadblocks with red lights at dead ends misplaced
at the base of the bowels of the bottomless pit
where reflections of life seem so ****** counterfeit
from the back of the eyes of the blind hypocrite.

Lady cockroaches, camped in the Countesses' beds,
are commanding crusaders to fit arrowheads
to the ends of burnt bridges suspended by threads
from frayed thongs of diminutive bald balladeers
taunting Cerby, the three-headed dog, serving beers
to the pagan disciples of bold puppeteers.

The oceans lay barren, the garbage dumps filling
with fracking and cracking and lead water spilling,
for milling and drilling are thrilling but killing
the birds and the beasts and the tea leaves, soon falling,
yet gurus roast chestnuts but can't heed their calling
while mauling and crawling on knees while they're brawling.

Unshorn sheep in the meadow are led to the bay
to be brainwashed and fleeced, trusting donkeys that bray
of the virtues of demons that haunt yesterday,
while the vultures deflower the turtle dove lanes
where the blood trickles up and the cruel crimson stains
Easter eggshells and feathers – that’s all that remains.

One eyed bees pilot lines through electrical storms
and blind hornets hum hymns when they're swirling in swarms
while the rest are repressed as the blue marble warms
(regent Queens losing sight that the end has begun)
and for eyes of the ewes, veils of wool have been spun  
and the wasps fly their flags from the **** of a gun.

Seven trumpets (attempting to echo the horns
of the Siamese goats and the three Unicorns
giving birth to the mirth in the temple of thorns)
sound the bugles of sorrow inside of the sea
of crazed lies of the wormwood afloat like a pea
in a pod of dark dolphins that can't disagree.

Often bellowed by barkers, to crowds with no faces,
are words (in their aftermath, leaving no traces)
of picnics and parties in limbo-like places
on paths to perdition where pundits are preaching
and sirens belch bullets while pirates prowl, breaching
the shadow's barbed branches, with whistles blown, screeching.

They're dissecting dissenters that dare to annoy
and then trample with jackboots sent in to destroy,
until taming the toes of the last Gypsy boy
who gets caught in the craw of their cold catacomb
with no rescue by running nor staying at home,
and no freedom to breathe, only rough roads to roam.

Those majestic immovable mountains
As mesmerizing as the prettiest fountains.
No. More so, I know so
Standing here on the highest plateau.
The sky depicts a deep dark hue of blue,
A hue that can make all stress subdue’d.
The air somehow heavier, harder to breathe,
As if God Himself forced my lungs to seethe.
The higher I climbed, the more it burned,
Til the top I reached, and rested, well-earned.
How blue the sky is! I would say,
No wonder they come here to sit and pray.
So close to Heaven, I wonder in awe
If They can see my each and every flaw.
Like a speck on a microscope slide,
I felt Eyes moving with my every stride.
I laughed; what else could I do?
Facing those mountains, refusing to move,
Making their stand, their point to prove.
Stretching far beyond my scope of sight,
These fearless peaks displayed their might.
It was me versus God, no one else there.
I was all alone in the cold thin air.
Now is the time to ask, I thought,
Of all the questions and answers I sought.
I glared at the heavens and began to vent
On why things happened, and what they meant.
And on the mysteries of life, time, and space
Why some people are good, while others disgrace.
Can there be no right in a wrong-filled world,
Where hope is dying, withered, and curled?

O why must Your will be done?
When I have fallen,
  Is that when You’ve won?
Why do You listen, and help me not?
Do You watch me in silence,
  Or have You just forgot?

Nothing.

I waited for something, an answer, a sign,
Something amazing, something divine.
My yells were turned into echoing spears
Of anger, frustration, and fading tears.
So this is my answer, I mused, understanding.
My life unto you I will be handing.
For I am to walk this earth alone
Soul ever pining for one like my own.
My greatest desire caught in the wind
Carrying my hopes, now chagrined.
But here the mountains will not tire,
They will forever rise higher and higher.
Making their point, remaining unshaken
Here their honor will not be taken.
At last, I shuffled down the gentle *****
Clinging to one last, final, hope.

A gentle breeze brushed against my cheek,
Could something this subtle be what I seek?
I thought of my family and friends who care,
The ones who have stories and memories to share:
Speeding on the highway with the windows down
Yelling with the radio from town to town.
Dancing ‘round cones on a dark-lit stage,
And making money at minimum wage.
Of awkward hawks and dynasties,
And engines failing overseas.
Discussing life, women, and the mind,
And how one so insightful can be so blind.

An epiphany occurred right then and there,
That I wasn’t alone; I shouldn’t despair.
And that ever-gentle breeze picked up once again
Aiding my trek down the gentle terrain.
The mountains continue their looming presence
But for now they don’t seem as intense.
As I set foot onto solid, flat ground
I realized I was lost, and now I’ve been found.

Upon entering the orchestra pit to take my
chair, I noticed someone else was sitting there.
My ressentiment was without notes;
therefore, I was unable to emote.
With my head hanging down,
I felt chagrined because no one
would allow me in.

Up the dark streets I began to walk,
pondering my dreary thoughts.
What had happened to cause this rift?
Perhaps I never possessed a gift.
The playing of the music was sublime
but maybe it was just imagined
in my mind.

It's very quiet and lonely on ths block
except for the ticking of a clock.
The time has come for me to step outside
the fray and determine if there is value
in what I have to say.

Bill loaded the truck with hard red winter wheat
One night so as to beat the scales at morning light.

Before sun up, he kissed Margie on the cheek
And roared out of the yard,
Overload springs sagging,
Engine fierce, but groaning,
Toward the town.

Two miles out,
The scale light said "Open,"
Giving Bill a momentary chill.

Shifting down, he exited
Before arriving Scale Hill.
A gravel detour waited
To take him on the long way 'round
And bring him back the other side of town.

Most situations similar
Go from bad to worse.
The truck eased down into a swale.

Beneath the surface gravel,
A bed of soggy clay
****** down the wheels
And stopped the farmer's way.

The creaking truck began to settle,
Testing Bill and
Leaving him chagrined
As the Transportation Deputy
Drove up to see the mess.

"Looks like you need a pull!"

What could Bill say?

And so he took the offer,
Then followed flashing lights
Back to the scale, and paid
A hefty fee to compensate
For being cheap too early
And learning much too late.

So, it was a dark and stormy night and
Father Larry O’Flannigan
Was feeling excited as he
Maneuvered the rainy streets with
Five extra-large cheese pizzas

Elated and happy because
Teenage catechism class
Had gone so swimmingly well
He wanted to reward them
Hence the crusty comestibles

Crossing 10th and Vine
Rain pelting cars and pedestrians
He slipped and tripped
Pandemonium of pizza boxes
Pell-mell into puddles

The chagrined good father
In an unsettled state
Hurt, wet, disheveled,
Exclaims:
“Jesus Christ! God Almighty!"

A pious passerby exclaims
(An older lady dressed for rain)
“Father! Please! Language!”
The sheepish priest sputters:
“Em, cheese and crust got all muddy…?”

A dark visage expressed
In jest,
But rejected and chagrined.
Unable to conceive a rescind
Of the psychosis
Precipitated in youth by a subtle hypnosis.
A dogmatic view,
Unable to break through
This vision
Of correct cognition
Instilled in all to prevent remission
Of the human condition.

you will only look for which road i have
  passed, with girth of oceans startled
  to hip-curve, bow-legged darling
  hiding behind pretense of rose frailty.

when words ripen, they fall.

from vaudeville of fools to silence
in all its exactness, i take my place
amongst people in stations, machines
adorning rotundas, courtyards to a flourish of twilight-bells, the men with retinas spry behind cloaks of smoke—

        plain, **** drunkenness assaults
the billion-blooded sea, each line fraught
with inebriation: a god is borrowed with
what light fruits from a slow nature, quick
to burst and torturously maimed in stride.

fated to arrive at one morning —
being in total placeness and making merry
once again, the dreary face waiting at
the portico of days collected.

when these words start to wind-hover,
a string of birds will appear clearer,
mounting umbilicus of lines.
as in hounds shear the metastasizing dark,
going back to chagrined kens,
i make truth out of the tragedy:
trace the source of this stream and find
my trampled body, floating with
   the sandalwood. when the still, clenched hand clock-punches,
   make real the insignia of my arrival:

words start with limbs to cross
  this scalped Earth which moves suddenly naked, leaning in, gropes you
in stillness, resuscitating the moon from
the working of insolvencies we rear
in derelicts of days.

drags it closely to ends — left trundling
in woe's wearisome vessel. and if in
this newly thatched home it screams,

let this voice deftly shred
so i may once more lie straight to your
half-illuminated faces, a call i
only hear.

Today I saw a photo of you
Holding a little puppy and smiling
And your hands were in its fur and I looked a second too long at them
And I found myself thinking how much I love your palms
And the creases in them
And how soft your fingertips are
And how you are one of the only people
With hands smaller than mine
Small and perfect and smooth, like a child's.
And the force of how much I love you
Crept up behind those thoughts
And crashed through in a wave
And I looked away, chagrined,
Embarrassed to have such beautiful thoughts
About somebody who won't even speak to me.

"That's the right word,"
I say to myself,
Writing the next line.
Before I can finish,
My thoughts are interrupted
By my boss's yelling.
"Come on," he calls.
"You've gotten your fix.
Now back to work."
My head ****** up,
My scribbling hand stilled.
The boss's words smart,
But I must work
If I'm to eat.
Back to routine's kingdom
I voyage, utterly chagrined.
Memories of my escape
Join the mist's evanescence.
Like the treacherous ocean,
I am always running,
But forever fated to
Return to the shore.
The dictates of duty
Govern my restrained passion.
And thus, I yearn
For escaping through words.
To put it succinctly,
Mundane reality is terminal,
It will **** your soul.
Art is the soul's
First and best defense,
Whether words or pictures,
They represent your soul,
Fighting for its survival.
Survival in the escape.
Answer this for me:
Having just once escaped,
Why would you even
Want to come back?

Away into the future in days we don’t know
Lived a girl with her dear mother’s wife
And abandoned traditions of decades ago
Made no impact on their joinéd life

The profane was normal and it was expected
That gender give no weight to love
And long dead protesters long since had defected
Though they lose peace long sought from above

But this girl was among those chagrined by their fate
Doomed to carouse in shades of grey
For no matter the forward evolution’ry prate
This upon her good conscience would weigh:

She cared not for caresses of sexes together
But feigned the feeling for fear of misuse
Resignéd to normalcy’s smothering tether
For her one-sided view was to others obtuse

They did not comprehend that her dead eyes did gaze
Upon silhouette man for whom her slow heart beat
And sat quietly she for a number of days
With contemplative question, enamor discreet

‘Till her lips formed the answer with truth late in coming
With sentences all but forbidden
Breaking the chains of society’s numbing
Sympathies quoted unhinged, unhidden

A love once forbidden by color of skin
A love once forsaken for money or pleasure
No more to be bound by the horror of sin
She opened to her mouth to declare without measure:

Affection is lessened by norm that encumbers
To love someone mirroring their ways with thine
It may disgrace you that I do not count in your numbers
I’m in love with a differing gender from mine

And lo that day not a jest was utter’d
To the maiden now soaring with spirit unshuttered.

Losing hope, losing faith
I think it’s because I hate to wait
I hate to wait to be better
so I just cower
in my own pitiful  silence
I just let myself get eaten by despondence
Get numbed by insecurities
Get beaten by realities
of the illusion I’m in
of how I’m consumed by sin
and I don’t know how
How to get out now.

People are trying to pull me
But it seems that my body
my mind, my soul, my entire being
no matter how they want
to go back to the light
go back to His light;
they just can’t.
They can’t because it is the unity
of myself that don’t agree
It is within me that they choose to not flee
It is within me and the evil
the devil inside that puts me in peril.

I’m losing hope and I’m losing my faith
I know how to wait
It’s just that I don’t know
If I’m still waiting
For something
Some sort of miracle that will save me
Bring me to pinnacle and tame me
then cleanse me and make me worthy
of His love again
even if it’s the last thing I’d do before my end.

Lifeless and lost
And it’s all because
I don’t know what to do
My mind is chaotic
My heart is confused
My spirit sympathetic
My soul is chagrined
My body all drained.
How to redeem myself?
Looking at the bible sitting in my shelf
All dusty and torn
Like my loss, it mourns.

Is it still possible
Will I still be able
to just come back
even if I lack
the passion and the fire
that once ignited my love
and the music of the lyre
of my heart and my faith
or will I just be a wraith
to a stranger soon
like a silhouette on the moon
waiting for my end
to where I’ll be sent
accepting my fate
without any hate
just ready to take my flight
and end me being lost in the light.

The man I met, short of height
was lightly built, with pale skin.
He was covered in dripping sores
As if to vent the ill within.
He was decayed to the core;
it had worn his frame thin.
"Hello, my friend," his mouth extruded,
Saliva flowed upon his chin.
"I have no want," I replied,
"For a beast so full of sin,
that his body has surely died,
long before him."
His brutish face contorted
and he looked as if chagrined.
"Don't let your eyes deceive you,
I believe you won't again,
once you've tasted of the power
Of Rumpelstiltskin."
At this, I knew for sure,
If I fought, I would not win,
So I listened, and I thought,
That I felt frost upon the wind.

{tale of the mouse famous long ago}

Little me said to big me: You may
Be Big but i am the One who first
Imagined you-you really are but a
Small part of me.  Big me grinned
Like a cheshire cat and said: You,
You imagined me!  Now that is a
Joke.  You aren" worth a purr back
A small bite and showed him his big
Teeth like a king looking at   a cat.
But I was not chagrined but said if
You will please step aside I can open
A tin of your favorite fish, what will it
Be tuna or
salmon what ever you say
He sniffed the air as if uncertain and
I not to be out done said say what you
Will I am your servant but the choice
Is mine to believe what I believe... and
You are my beloved cat,my Jezabel;
And low she purred for little me so the
End came to our meaningless dispute.

Trellis twines and weeds unthrift, fruit hangs heavy, boughs low
I sense the power in those moves
Are you by the gate?

Full of dust and dried hands, whole day on the feet, shaking so
Sharp twinges in the back of calves
Are you by the gate?

Graying sulk, brand new phase seeks you every day, chagrined
My nerves full of you, futile dream
Never thought conjured.

There is a smile
Slightly chagrined
Light red grin
Adding clear lake reflections
Of soft water sorrow

Existing on the verge of
Partially forgotten loves
Chapped lips partly parted
Nearly whispering
Almost trembling
With the pain of
Remembering

Night clears the fog
Dulls the deadman’s drums
Slows the engines hums
Bidding all old thoughts
Enter anew slightly renewed
Some pleasurable
Others come unwelcomed

Specifics exist
But abstractions
Are better fits
Vagaries are safer
Smiles grow smaller
Tightening till
Their terrible weight
Explodes and dissolves

Breitabart was permitted entry of course, you know
'Expel All Muslims' Breitbart, & CNN NYT, & LAT were all
held back by some panting freshly-minted Republican staffer & had
to wait all shocked & chagrined at the closed door as one blank dead
eyed maniacally grinning young newly promoted Lieutenant Miller and
one bull-heavy Bannon strutted like obscene vulture marionettes in their favourite special-wear searingly shiny knee-high Wehrmacht boots which had just been licked mirror clean & furiously polished with their very sweat by a heaving gaggle of simpering craven Republican lackeys who had come comically dancing & prancing when summoned from the floor of the so-called People's House with a "yes sir, no sir ... what can I do next sir" to grease the skids on the Fascist Express with the their very blood & the tears of the innocents gathered so fresh that very dawn with no stops till the sun rises on your New World.
.... oh yes indeed.

Once there was this little tree
Whose soul was completely free
Branches like willful souls
Fill them in tropical bowls

Whisked onto a sea of pristine canopies
The world itself slowly atrophies
Every word itself an apostrophe
Not even trying to avoid a catastrophe

Wondrous flights shape the continuum
Swallowing speech by disarticulating consonants
What will be the clouds departure
To see that the rain falls through the aperture

Come to see the creations so dexterous
With a resonant jewel in their necklace
Underplaying the quickness of the wind
Just with a dash of feeling chagrined

beard, ashen grey, swept by the winds
of years and centuries, aeons gone by,
misunderstood, forever chagrined
by the earth and the men and the sea and the sky

on staff he leans, weighed down by sins
of the heart and the mind and the hand and the hip
wild hair and locks bellowed by winds,
white shredded sails on wreck'd mast of ship

he'd put down his scythe, his sickle and reaper
bought a break as death's doorkeeper
but the hubris of world dictator
bade him grasp the detonator

soon swarms of poppies blood-red
scarlet and pink as tired sunset
angry as the blood of maidens
blushing as illicit bedspread

scattered as myriad bloodshot eyes,
of mothers mourning as child dies,
as gore spurting in the skies
as brothers shot amid war-cries

ploughed the fields with hearts that bled
plagued burnt hills as barrows of dead
mutilated, youth-abated,
limbs of lives amputated

the squeal of babe, the cry of lamb,
crushed as raspberries in a jam
mulched the fields in pants o' breath
****** by masters of their death

for death now trampled underfoot
the innocent boys, girls and babies
turned their skin to gunpowder soot
ravaged their limbs with famine 'n tabes

ash and hail, desolation,
earth reeling from stagnation
sent death pleading for abation
from the lord of creation

but 'twas nowhere to be seen
not in the heavens with his queen
nor in the throne-room overseeing
for he is forever the elusive being

now hiding from celestial choir
now living in eternal fire
now head burning in funeral pyre
at one with souls as they transpire

as the madness and the envy
mad desire, lust and frenzy,
continue, continue, unabated
till all consumes, as is fated.

broken, bent, o'er his staff,
bent over countries in bloodbath,
o'er the bodies rent in half,
o'er waste of human wrath

over the greed that never ends
never pays dividends
devours 'n divides family 'n friends,
itself consumes, in the end.

I grew up in a tree and believed it to be,
safe as the branches enclosed around me.
On strings of breeze God may pull as he please,
the life over leaves dances with ease.
But when I watched by bees and birds as they fly,
my limbs chagrined as branches down wind.
Unaware before, I then yearned for more,
now feeling bound to my link in the ground.
Shifting my gaze, grip turned to graze
as my eyes slid down to the trunk I had found.
What could it be that afforded safety
as I sat above graves among the leaves and the aves?
Was I anchored by tombs no man can exhume,
or was this decay the cause for trees' sway?
To the mound I fell by gravity compelled,
but when I did peel at what earth had concealed
I found vines much stronger than ivy.

Now posture is prayer so I look to the air,
thanking the roots for taking such care.
But before I feed fibers completing the rhyme,
I must find time for the trees I will climb.

I swore to move on,
But chagrined I must tell
I still sleep on the grounds
Where you shadow once fell.

- p. winter