I was given, at my first birthday party,
a gift sublime, a lovely, lush garden
I played among its fonts and flowers,
traded baseball cards with Atlas and Athena,
rolled in high grass with iridescent dragons

Then one fine day through leaflets high,
I spied a fat juicy fig, haloed by Summer sun
The tree was poison, I knew, its sweet fruit
most likely bad as well, but in my arrogance
I climbed the trunk, got tangled in its branches

I lost control, lost something never truly held,
and fell, through viney snarls and vicious thorns
Fell farther than I ever rose, to putrid death,
moldered slime beneath the canopy
of verdant paradise on gentle hillside above

I crawled about in mud and earthen warrens
Slowly, year by year, learned to walk again
But arrogant I remained—had not my
lesson learned, and so I doubled-down,
made mockery of this chance for redemption

All the sweet virgins did I ****, and teach
our children sin, in crystalline waters
I did shat on mulched fields, amber and green,
with cigarette butts and baggies blowing
listless on Autumn winds

When Winter finally came, as winters must,
to **** off weakened souls, and make
the garden ready for new attendants,
I did not learn, I did not take the blame...
It's Him, I cried, I have not power to do this!

But then my youngest daughter sobbed
She watched, sadly, out clouded, grimy windows
and, looking up at my limpid, sullen eyes
crawled into my arms one last, lonely time
to face what I could not...

Behold, the Silent Spring

There is a certain moment
in a man’s life
when the *****
of ladies
around him suddenly
and irrevocably
evoke the image of
a stray feline
from his childhood.
Rigid, near the bushes
with a sharply arching back,
engorged ****
and ***** tail.

Their watchful eyes, playfully intent,
reflect
the drops of rain
falling from the naive face
of an eager boy approaching
too close.
Paws haltingly skitter-gone.

Since this observation,
the hallways of our campus
tend to sway,
like the leaves beside
my grandma’s house
with the plastic window-well covers
not yet shattered by the hail
on that spring evening
after the little league
when I nearly had one.

The windsock next door
on my father’s farm
let each subsequent summer pass,
undetected on the heals
of a breezy, desert thunderstorm.
Before it was so tattered by time
unreplaced and frayed
next to the yellow, coregated shed
where you can still see the dent
from my sister crashing that old golf cart.

Years from then, she did her small, black
Honda in Colorado
with a T-Bone
on a U-Turn.

And my dad was in the hospital that winter
but all I remember is a pointless half-time
football toss sponsored by a cola-
company during a Nebraska game.
The people, trained like chimpanzees,
to test their skill one time
and get that life-sized check.
I remember thinking
"What sunken imprint on a folding bed
does it refill?"
After Dr. Pepper's rotation had
ended.

And these books I read
are shaken branches
behind the fleeting beauty.
Their words, silent admonitions for
desire.
The invitations
from those inky bodies,
their full form and sharp curves,
are not meant for my eye.
Momentarily,
their presence ***** my head and purses
my lips,
beckoning
another species--
a life-form
less aware.

I am glad each cat slipped past that
unread sign-post
and made it to the horse pasture.
Unlike those three moldered fur puffs
each bunny became
beneath my bed.

I hope they had their litters--
and their offspring had their litters.
And the nation of cats had its litters.
And the world of cats had its litters.
And the universe of cats had its litters.

But it must stop somewhere,
with cats.

My blood is not red anymore
It is not even rufous
It is achromatic
I’ve seen it go to a watery grave
with moonshine

It drowned
for a foolish fluid  
one so dimwitted
it forgot the word “No”
could be spoken
to bring their negligent ears
into *******

(And not me)

My blood rushed out
In it’s gloom
I wanted to emulate it
and exit my body
just as they entered

What a theft
What a “five-finger discount”
Literally

It was a perfect portrait
A gun kissing the crown of my head
and my indifference
towards the money in the cash register
that I called my soul-case
If I’d even had any left

My lips moldered shut
They don’t like parting anymore
Two buds charred sorely
as a pen
that speaks only in black ink


I searched every crevice of that washroom
for a noose
I found my reflection
and thought that close enough

So there I hovered
hung up on my mirror image
suspended by two claws
honed with dejection

My eyes slammed taut  
My pulse ******* bones in my face
and gnawing itself
with prowling fluorescents

I grazed the scuffs on my thighs
I hadn’t put there
for once

Then I remembered the nausea  
snarled up in their cheeks
Their words like spiders
I don’t know where they’ve gone
and I don’t want to

“Is it that time of the month?’
said the shorter, more truculent boy
and he sniggered

I stood submerged
in hard edged a laugh
that liked to wrench my ears
and make rounds
on nights hot and heavy
with languor

and perhaps,
had I not been so small
or weak of muscle
had I worn a different dress
or forgotten to coat my lashes
had I sipped on tea
instead of *****
I could’ve flagrantly pushed them away
Darted not with my eyes,
but my legs
I could’ve screamed “Get off me you scumbags!”
until my throat shriveled up
into a dried cranberry

But I didn’t

Instead I’m screaming
on a piece of paper

Because the worst that happens here
is a paper cut.

a noseless breather, skeletally pug--

(pura oblivio)

smells the cooler end of air like rubbing

alcohol.

as a moldered dog would thru a dingy

screen, watching a raven that dances

in a series of flops.

the mock-break of wings in a caw of

exilement, as the secret passageways of

leaves fly open.

In Maga heaven
There is no scripture here , only rubber stamped  pre - approved  lobbyists
with tanning bed fangs ******* on
a choir of flesh-hungry frat boy ****** interns
chanting “U! S! A!” with each pharma ******.
Matt Gaetz hideous Botox cartoon villain  face
3-D printed and impaled smile as  ubiquitous as underage prostitutes on Epstein's island
now  with more  ICE  sanctioned “ kids in cages.”
In the smoke-choked outer gates,  a  pearly mezzanine,
Rush Limbaugh dabbing his crusty *** hanky
sweating, teetering, corpulent blob, leaking snapple like a stuck pig
He chortles on an endless A.M. talk radio loop, his triple chins wobbling like pork rinds in a fat fryer.
His 4 dollar cigar, 10 inches of colonial sadism, like his abandoned family  burns wet and slow.
The smoke curls upward, thick as ***** generational trauma and just as sweet.
It drapes the room like a funeral veil made of  Newts scam money and powdered supplement bile.
**** Cheney prays to Karl Rove born on Christmas day
both as ****** as the driven snow.
His skin is waxed like Lenin, but on a hydraulic exoskeleton,
They are fumbling  try to hoist  their cross-shaped catheters to  spoon feed one another.
Whimpering ineffectually and  muttering into a fetus-shaped walkie-talkie about planes in buildings over Guantanamo freedom.
Sad excuse for a moldered ******—half missile, half melted gavel
judder with every heartbeat stolen from Halliburton pensioners.
Each pulse chants "abort this, *****" through a bedazzled maga megaphone
mounted where a human heart is supposed to be.
Mitch McConnell in divine chin contempt and ecstasy,  falls on schedule and is resurrected even more lobotomized each time. ( somehow)
Beneath the bone-cracked  Trump Casino marble, a small out of the way obscure footnote of a rotunda “ the Striated Pantheon of star wars dreams”,
Dan Quayle moans through a diamond-encrusted grill ,
his libido injected with Reagan Era tax cuts and oil futures coated in powdered Adderall from summer camp  spelling BEES, 1987.
His ******* tattooed with  ' Tipper Gore '  twitch Morse code for “trickle-down, tickle down  trickle down”
and each spasm sends a ripple through the latex Fallwell hymnals glued to his shriveled under developed thighs.

  Oh, but make  way fools  !   For  you have  no say over  your  body  Trans or Female  as Clarence Thomas drives his big block Winnebago like he rides a tricycle the size of the Lincoln Memorial.
His scabby ashen elbows jut out like battering ram from each comic window.
Forgotten Jared K stole his custom Supreme Court Rascal,
denting time and space with every vow and a slow ritual bowing .
Clarence drools thick black sludge over his Anita Hill poster
legal ink, congealed into constitutional back alley abortion cancer.
His gums gnash "textualisms" as a  hymn turned lullaby
corpses of past rulings slough off behind him like the bribery bloated garbage snake he is.
Kristi Noem  breaks the reverie on all fours beneath a dripping taxidermied buffalo chandelier,
a pulsating greasy ******* protruding with corporate logos blinking in synchronized gun show glory.
Fur bloodied, mangled—coyote, dog, child? No one asks as she is paraded past Sandyhook again.
The plug buzzes the Pledge of Allegiance in  maga Morse with a URL for granny donations pls.
Her eyes say thank you to truth social. Rights vanish like the separation of church and state in this bloated degenerate unqualified puppet show .   Mega churches handing out loaded AR-10s.
Tacos and Manatees cavort in orange Cheeto dust and bedazzled glue guns.
Stormy Daniels *** dolls hang from scaffolds meant for Mike Pence
and everyone wipes their *** on stolen nuclear secrets.
Amen, Karen, Amen...