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.

11-17-2008 Another One Rides the Bus

The dew-slick dawn wriggles with yellow chirps
and rumbles. We sit thistle gangly – spines
slouched so that we might match the huddled slurps
of youth – our long legs too stiff to entwine

the journey’s vastlessness. Without the shiver
that rides the stubborn twisting morning, we
are nothing more than hot breath on a sliver
of window. Nestling frost rapidly

obscures the backwards letters of those names
we should have written in fiery runes. No chants
will spring from hooded lips. No gnashing flames
will gather back the smoke. No girls will glance

at fading shadows. Never will we bend
the pliant incompliance of the wind.

11-6-2008 Weatherby gets you in the end with the 27% interest rate

Hold not my face so firmly. It must leave
you when you slumber. Though your dreams may hang
a mirror mask on tangled stones, it cleaves
as close to me as names, that minstrels sang

in torch-lit halls, approached spear-splintered fields.
So sleep my lord. So sleep my love. Curl not
your lips. Trade not a daggered glance. I yield,
by debt and duty, to return each spot

of starlight to the night. A moment’s toil -
the dawn widens its stenciled door, and I
am with you once again. The seconds coil
around us as the day unravels sky.

So hold my nostrils, earlobes, cheeks and brow
impending evening will not find us now.

11-5-2008 The Little Archie That Could

A circuit splits. Heirs to the cobwebbed throne
of Abstrusebury march with measured feats
up to the fact stacks highest point. Their moans
melt in the lip-parched wind. A circuit meets.

Resistance does not halt their swift retreat
back down the hill to spill on rustling paper.
Thatonegirlsass, stirring between the sheets
of mist, haunts meme-mounds to the east. Shiftshapers

of the more modest grades cannot escape
the cloud-crowded branches that bore or will bear
unknown fruit. Circuits split and meet. Sky scrapes
some rusty leaves in a  clenched pile that stares

perpendicular to the plane of thought.
Awareness gathers on an empty plot.

11-04-2008 In which Jughead remembers to wear his condiment

Cast in the garden of a thousand wings
the mustard seed spreads wide. Fowl of the air
lodge in the weed wild branches. A finch sings
bliss-snickery songs about the down she wears

upon her dark Autumnal breast. Winter nears.
Within the shadow of the boughs, none wove
a nest that did not brood a corpse.  They hear
her chatter, but recall no grief.  A grove

of cypress stirs. A spray of yellow falls.
Needles collapsed beside the dung and husks
of empty seeds shudder. A sudden squall
of feathers try to catch the trailing dusk.

Life and death fashion a final crack
of twilight, shake hands and consent to black.

11-03-2008 Archie orders a triple dose of single malt with the worst Scottish accent ever.

Were space but all we needed, I would tear
it from the stars. And though the distance spanned
galactic amplitudes, I’d wrap your hair
one million, million times with vastless strands.

Shift by myrmecoid shift I can retreat
from you, but padding steps will still relate
us by the inch. Don’t trust our measured feet
to launch us to a world that separates

us from our emptiness. For we are space.
No choice could force two thin clouds on the edge
of skyless wonders to join hands, embrace
and whisper ages of the moons they pledge

their love will live beyond. We are here now -
no further than the closest thought allows.

11-01-2008 The once and future slacker

It does not matter where you flee, my lord.
behind a stone, upon the highest tree
across the misty moors and past the sea
to Avalon. She’d come where devils ford
infernal streams to make you dull your sword
to cut brocaded bolts of silk so she
can fashion drapes. So do not rapidly
forsake the comfort that a couch affords.

For lo, the game may not be lost. Her skill
lies in pursuit, not in remembering
the reason that she roars. Ravenous suns
have long set on her brow, gorging their fill
of memory. Between these ravagings
claim that her lost demands have long been done.

10-31-2008 If you stare into a mirror during a full moon and say the name “Veronica Lodge” 3 times, she appears and gives you the worst home perm ever

Today, my ears have edged to sharpened spears
that prick apart your words. My teeth have ground
to daggered spikes that punch through your sincere
desires. Furry longings grow dense around

my skin and bristle at your piercing wails.
This monstrous face is but a mask – a roar
that can be shed like water from the tails
of dogs drenched by a clumsy puddle. Yours

can not. Baptismal fear nourished and spawned
a beast within. Mist gathers thick and cold.
I see unfocused forms wav’ring beyond
the haze and call to them. They must be told

about the horrors ready to befall
before your molten anger dooms them all.

10-30-2008 Paperboy Pizza

A noble tongue withers to taste the toil
of noble hands. His work would best entice
a dream of peace or gather worldly spoils
than bring about a belch. Besides, no spice

bewitches lips so much as morsels served
by joyful hearts. When a kind ruler frees
his heavy gates, subjects will fling trays curved
beneath a mass of meat and bread and cheese

in hopes that he might bless them with a bite.
The offering’s flavor can not matter. Veal
and rat both brim with grease the same stuffed tight
within a sausage. If he trusts this meal,

each swallow foretells changing social views
as swift as youthful messengers of news.