Fall Ballet

A voice tumbles
out of a secret wind;
there is no shelter.
Darkness settles
like a friend;
exquisite blanket.
A boy trembles
in a doorway, waiting.
Siren wails somewhere
deep in the city.
No sun today can break
the certainty of
this song.

Redline

She stares at me without looking, without
even knowing she stares
and me at the bottom
of the stairs waiting
for a moment, for
a second hand
minute to
ring the
bell
and rain
will fall again
if not sooner than
later and the million
drops will sing a song
of waiting at the bottom
of the stairs while stars bloom
hard in the midnight sky to relinquish
the myth of misery
that goes around, that comes around
many times in the course
of a day
like today.

Medication Junkyard

It’s a game I’m pretty good at; take a bite,
find the delight, crave it and just try
to walk away. You’ll cry all day
and night and finally cave and there
is always another doctor, another friend
to lend you the hand of helping, of relief
for at least a brief bit of now and then. Today
I threw away
a prescription, laughing as the remaining
tiny blue bits of nervous confusion
found their way to the dark waste
of some other receptacle – this time
refusing the contusion, the metal taste
of spectacle in a head that cannot sit
in meditation without spinning into
fear and hesitation, illusion and at last
the restless conundrum that becomes
my daily day. I threw it all away and start
anew tomorrow laughing rough over
strains of sorry when I let my doctor know
the sad truth of my tiny revolution.

Safeway Meditation

Those twisty ties are my soul tonight,
keeping the bag closed
around the goods but tenuously
and without much design – my pear-shaped organs
and lettuce-like lungs all converged
beneath this melon head (but above
the stalks, the tubers)
any minute some kid of a clerk snarling
“paper or plastic?”

Passage of Minute Empires

Dynasties that have blossomed and fallen
in the course of today, relegated now
to internal history lessons
and the oversight
of a less-than-generous
gatekeeper, they lie smoldering
or overgrown or crumbling,
over-serious empires
that came to see
themselves as
righteous or
real, this
time was the anvil
that fell from the sky
onto the heads of the emperors
who could not encounter strategies
more cunning and victorious than simple
passing of minutes, hours – the ticking
rituals that summoned the barbarians
of distraction, sorrow and fantasy
to tear down any and all reason
that might have emerged
from the muscular ambitions
of my thousand intentions
today.

Ticking

Terminal, a place
to wait for the ride – a river
hard and wide, come on:
juxtapose the poetry
with the prose – you matter
in the pan and the fire
and you matter after
(thus the laughter)
so quit picking at the bones,
toss me a coin – heads/tails,
the slice you find hardens
on a hard sidewalk in shadow
where the wheels wheel in
time and again and even
again all yellowed smoke
like scorched butter against blue
bruises where tears stain flecked
in pale remorse and I
grab what I thought was
a handful of hair but it was
just grass from the ground
where I fell unaccounted
when the door opened
from the other side
and let me fall in
like a man on a ride.

Novel

Subject: the hurricane of your heart.
Object: the red-hot stone.
Article: the perfumed scarf around my memory.
Motivation: the answer to taut and swollen flesh.
Obstacle: mountains, horses, clear-running winter rivers.
Protagonist: divine heart beating out a sunrise.
Antagonist: my greed erupting across the divine.
Part I: our kiss that never was.
Part II: sanity returns and you flee.
Part III: I remain, a minor character sweeping shrapnel.

Horses

I ride a magnificent steed, white as steel
breathing fire as it rears
elegant frightening elastic ready
to run no to glide no to fly
on magic muscle barely straining over
ground as hard as stone but soft
after we pass and me the master
the rider at one with this beast
abounding. . .
as my own two clumsy feet collide
with the earth, the spongy dark world
that moves so slowly around my own
sloth the blanket I cannot unweave
like the hours that crawl and breathe
no fire but ponderous predictions fears
feats of cowardice and addiction and no
applause occasional catcalls from inside
the mushy head still today
a slight sun summers through the blanket
and your smile – rather the thought of your smile –
threatens to pummel whatever ditches become canyons
whatever mules become dragons whatever roads
become rivers whatever focus become visions whatever
children become prophets whatever becomes of
the steed upon which I ride to thee.

The River

Sink into summer, as summer sinks
into me, languid, half lost in vague heat,
restless among this hissing
kiss of brittle grass against
my ear you disappear
again,
hair red a sunset rising against
moon with Venus
rising
sit there with me a moment, just
there but you are gone again,
the current just a name, we name
what we cannot hold, it all flows
out of our fingers (at least wave)
the waves tiny against either shore
heavy now with sodden stones
that hold at center my heart
unwashed but willing to watch
the sun urge on what we call
current against the sound
of some ancient forest
waiting to burn.

Right After This

The shadow screams from distance, screams
from light, screams invisible
and sacred and scared
in the middle of my
workday, screams
when silence
runs the
gamut.

Rails smooth running right down the tube,
slick sliding not quite silent and the
shadow screaming from the walls
well lit and light perpetrating
the crevices and corners
of this conversation
you insist on
having now
for God’s
sake.

My country ’tis of theocracy and insanity
I sing loud and long and luxurious in
the bubble bath of free time given
to me by the masters of fate
those poor bastards who
plan it all and take the
plane to destinations
unfounded and
desolate into
desperate.

So the going has become the staying put
as she puts on makeup and sings a
tiny silent song you can just make
out as we used to make out in
dark corners of this empty
house before it became
the anvil dropping on
the unassuming
head of the
coyote.