03-27-2009 The Secretary-Debutante Time Paradox

Your fields are full. And I’m no more than one
obedient unemptiness upon
a curveless row – hands rising with the sun
and falling with the earth. My heart has gone

someplace the rolling present cannot reach.
Here I am: hear me, see me, touch me. I
am here so you can measure who will breach
your rules the most. But deeper urgings try

to part the raging seas cresting within
a sloshing bucket – waves that will thwart the arch
supported balance of your stride like ten
columns of chariots against the march

of vengeful waters. Here raging before
the calm, my heart will want, will seek, will more.

3-06-2009 Mr. Clenchyfists and Helium Head

The I -  me – arching ε – the archery
Zeno’s arrow and elbow drawn to go
wherever never afterglowing she
wanted me wanting her to know, “Tiptoe

slow past the god-father figure it out
for yourself-righteous indignation.” Wide
eyed, Mister Hideandseekanddestroy spouts
smoke signalled shouts from moustachebristlingpride

of lionsmane. Horizons strain the star
acrossted love entangled in a brain
unangled by the harhar manglescars
so far so goodygoodygumdropped plane-

same as the monkeystones we fit to be
to gather up an arch He thought was me.

3-03-2009 Versace’s new Bibbidy-Bobbity-Boo collection

They’re dancing now in the dark ballroom. Are
you almost ready? Let us gather night
around us and depart. I’ll draw the far
entangling darkness closer that you might

adorn yourself in gleaming stars. The moon
and planets will not say a word. For they
are too enraptured in the spin to swoon
about your beauty…so am I. The way

a dew-dropped flower clasps the dawn is no
more good than bad. No, I said no, it’s just
an urge. It dances. Yes. It dances, go
no further with your lips unless they lust

to dance with mine. Silently kiss, we kiss
again we kiss in utter speechlessness.

3-02-2009 At least he didn’t start singing a song from that Broadway musical about gangsters

The dawn illuminates a dark, potbell-
ied votive sputtering benedictions through
its transubstantiating throat. As el-
ements hiss, steaming liquid flows into

the holy vessel. Cracks transverse the rim -
a perfect match for his imperfect smile.
He sips. The lords and crown ruled realms are trem-
bling, lost like shifts of silt that can’t defile

his constant sea of ritual. Without
the sacred smell of coffee, would suns rise?
Would fate listen to what a frothing spout
of milk and bobbing sugar might advise?

Foolish intent is all man has to charm
uncompassed awe an inch beyond his arms.

2-27-2009 Son of Andrews, kneel before Lodge

You credit not your father’s heros, nor
the scavenged skins they wore. Re-taled pursuits
like theirs don’t interest daughters that adore
winking talismans from the cult of cute.

Yours are relevant relics – dangling for
a moment from your ear. But they were charged
by speed-ball expletives your father swore
in his kinetic fields of youth. Enlarged

commitments may have overwhelmed the rage
of boyhood dreams, but they remain within
that phantom zone behind your need to cage
limitless worlds in brittle plastic. When

the numbers fade, when Earth’s four corners bend
whose wrath will fund your appetite to spend?

01-31-2009 Few modern artists want to deal with the pince-nez 31

A face finds form in points of chin or through
a single sweep of nose. Symmetries rise
to frame an arcing brow. And two by two
unjungled beasts stagger aboard. The eyes

pursue a flatt’ring bulge. The ears ensnare
a fate. The lips dissect what’s not quite round
about an unspun plate. We climb our stares
desperately searching for familiar mounds

of flesh and mold imposing figures from
our widely rooted dreams. Hope reconciles
itself as every oblong need becomes
another shadow twin. For those rough piles

aren’t vast enough to hide the self we say
we see in every hungry lump of clay.

11-20-2008 Why does this floor smell like herring?

With lead feet I slide into fortune, cast
in poses of bronze. Zipper straight, I right
myself by trusting only in the fast
assurance of a smooth, endless delight.

Faith loses me. Between the meshing teeth
of fate, all that I am is jagged bends
of knee bowing above the ground, beneath
the sky. I am an up that must descend

to follow more familiar downs. Some place
beyond the reach of cosmic janitors
who wink white-whiskered at the fallen, grace
will find me in a clumsy heap that stirs

where no horizons hold their timid thread
to bind the stars that orbit overhead.

12-30-2008 Ben Franklin didn’t invent those so you could do girl push-ups while reading “The Secret”

Hit your nemeses. Hit your cages. Hit
illusions you can push against to lift
your smallerrelativemass high. Submit
your mind to measure every minor shift

of thought and flesh – each consequence that comes
from challenging the ruler-headed gods.
How can you warp a word to fit a sum
of endless terms? How can you know a nod

that can’t consent? Creations spawned like jars
of lightning from mans quaking thighs may pull
your vision tree to page. But how the stars
or mitochondria see you swells full

of acts for which there are unequal
and unopposite pleas, wheedles and demands.

12-28-2008 Where’s that pencil going next?

Come near the splashing, near the stream. Come near
the waking of my dreams. And let your wrists
fall flashing cool, into the rushing fears
that you’ll remain unkissed or I’ll resist.

Such slender stirs improve on eyes that sense
a bloated branch arise and claim they know
my passage well enough to bridge and fence
my swelling undertow. Let currents flow

as others carve their ditches there in haste
to irrigate their arid minds. The drips
they catch will dry before a mouth can taste
their lies. Come near and dip your fingertips

between the wav’ring emptiness, and hold
the shiver gently while each moment folds.

11-18-2008 Betty Likes the Present Tense

Your ankles intersect the ground the same
as any others might. But none can reach
capriciously, ascending knees to frame
the worlds where they have walked, so well as each

of yours. Ribbons would split were they to slip
around horizons like your thighs. No bow
could ever bind the heavens like your hips.
Crude bundles hold a single murmur. Low

and gentle moans like yours unfold from where
the present ends and futures blush. And you
can no more hush the swelling sighs than tear
the thunder from a stormy night. Up through

the calm there calls a clear ecstatic voice
by which the whirling firmaments rejoice.