10-29-2008 Detention Cupcake

Broad thunder taps the dial as seconds stroke
the watches face. He would not be without
the wait. He is response. A flash invokes
his rumbling belly. Oh what happy shouts!

He stalks the lightning’s jagged heels with love
one hundred more one hundred times. Ears ring
around the cupcake sweet communion of
the hunt. He booms. He looms. He sings. He clings.

Slim lightning can’t resist.  A charged release
without reason, he’s caught – flick‘ring smile ‘crost
his chin – a wisp of smoke – a ling’ring piece
of ash glowing dull orange above the frost.

A final echo gathers and sustains
a brief period longer. Then it rains.

10-28-2008 Archie’s oil guzzlin’ jalopy

Oh fair and eager maid, your lover does
not hide his heart beneath a hood and go
to play the monk. He wrenches at the buzz
of wheels grinding unbalanced. Lady slow

your suit to match the pace by which
he tinkers obtuse angles squarer. For
your trapezoidal charms tilt his words. Pitch
those spare confessions to the grease-slick floor

and learn his meaning from the action of
his toil. His brows don’t crease from wallet pangs
or furrow dark from wanton waste. He shoves
his sweat-limp collar to his face and hangs

black smudges there between his tireless need
to fill the space where inner frictions breed.

10-27-2008 Jughead is Prepared

1.

Wonderers strut between the chamber doors
with wide insistent eyes. To cut words thin
before one meets such men befits the more
prudential lords who wring their hands within

deep pockets. For they know that notch-faced time
will ever cue the wails of curse, demise
and failure from prophetic hags. The crime
of not heeding a truth proved later lies

much closer to conviction than the one
of marking every sooth from every grey
gummed tooth that gapes beneath a snarled cowl spun
with ragged faith. And though the fools will say,

“He should have changed his ways.  He should have cared.”
No shift of Earth will find him unprepared.