Nice

P.R.N., IM

    

Was he good for you?
          Was he what you wanted him to be?






Annis MCMLVIII-MMXVI
    

Nice Plumage

Irish Rain

Rainfall casts constellations of drops
                    on panes.

The limp face of a lone daffodil droops
                    in rain.

Melancholy and dry a writer dreams
                   of mains.

Overhears boatswain's curse as craft drifts
                 off plane.
               
               
               
               

Au Revoir Rose

Rose swallowed the globe and paints kitchen walls
with a fingernail polish brush,
arabesques of cherubs every three inches.
Her son chokes from a case of thrush
as she hums a fugue never written.

There is a place,
  a tropic bay,
 where cherubs
    fly away
as, at sixteen,
  her boy
  opens his veins
and pales
   like a pagan martyr.

The day when Rose whispers to a love,
     "You're so much like my son"
             as cherubs weep
            down dirty walls.

Merle Haggard, Pre-Jingo Years

Touch to Flank, Limp Away from Struggle