The way a candle weaves its light through darkness.
How a snowflake trickles down from heaven above.
A virtuoso plucking guitar strings masterfully.
Your glamorous eyes, delicate face, memorizing body.

You sing an enchanting song, full of zealous love, and I cannot help but lose the breath from my lungs.
The fireflies dance and twinkle with grace, yet they are put to shame by your marvelous beauty. Each twinkle of the stars is a testament to their jealousy of your resplendent soul.

This must truly be an angelic dream!

Your voice carries across the air smoothly, eloquently, serenading my unworthy ears. Would you reward my boldness if I were to trace your lips with mine?
Take my weak hand and dance with me. Dance with me under the fairytale night. Step by step, hand in hand, unlock the fortune of this tragic heart. Hold this tragic heart. Love this tragic heart.

You are full of grace, a bewitching vivacity in the recesses of your heart, deeply entrenched and guarded. It is why I admire you from afar. Why these words spill from me to this page. Because of you.

I had a friend, a botanist by training,
A florist by design, who purchased
Two & a half relatively fertile,
Well-water irrigated acres in
Southern California.
(That’s about a hectare for you
Metric freaks.)
The land, Katie Scarlett:
Moreno Valley, Incorporated,
Part of the hilariously misnamed
“INLAND EMPIRE,” to wit:
Riverside and San Bernardino,
The latter county already this year’s
****** Capital of North America.
Last year’s too and the year before that.
ZAP! I am neuro-linguistically
(Thank you, Noam!)
Pre-coded to check the numbers:
The IRAs and bank accounts;
The living trusts; the Gary U.S. bonds.
My safe-deposit box, and right on time,
With a puff of smoke, a drum & cymbal smash,
The Confiscatory Duke appears.
The Duke-Duke-Duke of Earl,
The eternal, the infernal—
Internal Revenue Service:
THE I.R.S. hurdy-gurdy 1040 Man--in this
Case Men--stiffs in dark overcoats & fedoras,
Official 1040 Men, thank you very much,
With a tip of their green eyeshades,
Polite debt-collecting blokes,
No “Break-a yah face” guidos,
Just subtle government lawyers
Garnishing what’s left of your future.
Whoever came up with: “In this world,
Nothing can be said to be certain,
Except death and taxes.”
(Probably Benny C-Note
Go Fly a Kite himself,
Benjamin Franklin, one of
The so-called Founding Fathers—
Need I remind you all, who gave
Alexander Hamilton--an out-of-wedlock
West Indies *******--- Poor Richard’s blessing
To create the U.S. Department of the Treasury,
Which oversees the Revenue Bureau.)
Yeah, Death & Taxes--
Benny sure hit the nail’s head.

But I digress . . .
My friend Louie, the Botanist
Plants two & a half acres,
A hectare of flowers,
Broadcasting, strewing
Like alfalfa grass, many thousand
Bird of Paradise seeds,
Sal’s bird—if you catch my drift—
The Bird of Paradise,
Strange plant, N’est-ce-pas?
Looks like a punk rock
Woody the Woodpecker,
Day-Glo orange plumage,
A strangulation collar,
A ring around the collar of
****** blue hickeys, those freaky rings,
A veritable Sprezzatura!
Louie’s field of simple joy:
Mother Earth at her best.

In the afternoon of a Sunday evening, all painted
in the dust lingered in sunshafts, a giant
though smaller in person, entered my life.

She spoke in common prosaic, until she didn't.
And when the sunshaft lowered itself as sun did
in the evening horizon; so did her native naivety.

She met once, or more, a man who with hands,
acted as God. And in her life he swelled around
her heart a strangling deluge. Inundation of temptation.
Regret like the pirouette of dust as faltered in dusk.

By now I saw her stature as looming shadow,
and in moonlight I read her leylines.
Runed with the abuse of self and worth a penny more,
than the collection plate gathered at friend's expenses.

I watched a stumble in her walk that never molested her gait.
In her a sprezzatura, and finally, a person deserving of the word.

She woke me with a lantern, once, and pointed to the halo--
the beam encircled as accretion disk, the darkness pulled
and we were the gravity.
And so danced the dust, again.

As of many thoughts, and her my imagination, she had to leave.
A must. A certainty. And I will never be the same.
With each stitch I sew, forevermore, her will shall exist braided within.

Somewhere in the sinews of my chasm breaths beats in pace with love.
Saudade creeps into the same cavern, now darkening;
sonatas with no moon,
shafts with no dust,
art with no art.

I took a ride to Hell and back today during that half second when you looked away just as I met your eyes. When I saw those eyes, those hazel eyes drunk on the wine of the young, your straw hair unkempt and your clothing exuding that imperfect sprezzatura that I loved to memorize, my stage-smile fell. Do you know how long I’ve waited for you to come home? Seven months of pretending, crumbled in half a second!


I took a ride to Hell and back today, staring at the mismatched bowtie around your neck. I saw it, but I didn’t see it.