Holidaze

"En ce temps que j'ay dit devant/Sur le Noel, morte saison,/Que les loups se vivent de vent/Et qu'on se tient en sa maison" François Villon, Le Lais.

Nyxed

Dusk unadorned
                             (shade figures
                              all bodies in
                              brooding relief)
awaits opulent Nyx.


She lets her hair down
                                      (festooned with diamonds
                                       sometimes dimmed by
                                       a large pearl brooch)
and untangles splendor.

Cradle Moon

"...and in the soft, pale brilliance of the night she sensed a preternatural stirring, the tremor of impossible hopes, as though bliss were on the breeze."

Limbs Read

"I have witnessed the wood's insomnia/And the fields at rest."
Milestones, #65, Marina Tsvetaeva.

At the Protest

At the protest with the committee approved placard and appropriately colored
hat you showed respect for authority. You thanked the police for their service
as they arrested you. If their fellow officers roughed up some of your comrades,
maybe they deserved it. When you were quickly bailed out the pride of accomplishing
a civic duty filled you. You rushed home and told family and friends about your
adventure. How you behaved with strength and dignity! Alone you managed to spare
                a thought for your less fortunate friends still locked up.

Cannae

Fond gold of full summer Moon kisses skin like smitten Sun.
Under heaven's favor en route to the crowded concourse
my heart was pure, no expectation polluted
blood flooding my body with tenderness.

Doors opened and there she stood
exquisite as a deposed Queen.
Never so stunning in white
that bound and abashed.

Kings long passed slaughtered thousands
for a woman's favor and I understood.

To dishevel her hair I threw the top down.
The stereo blasted to nix small talk.
Inhuman to look so captivating.
Incensed, I punctuated a terse "goodnight"
with violent embrace.

Home,
spirit and sense snuffed,
I curled like smoke
under red sheets
and dreamt massacre.

My Little Angel

"Dogs read the world through their noses."--J.R. Ackerley. (Angel's expressive eyes tell a different story.)

September

Tumble of buds when leaves blush hues.
Summer brides and grooms imbue
Harvest Sun's mantle.

Rain dampens tender
as maternity's kiss,
life dishevels hair.

The crisp scent of bark,
carried by clement wind,
assents air's clarity.

Fire This Time

The crab's girdle fastens tight and the fire this time stops breath.
Wheezing poets cough up spiritless ash not verse.

Amazon's crown fires glow infernal
as composed blue blood flows formal.
Abattoir sans souci douses alarm in tranquil
appeal to the practical grace of technology.

The Amazon still burns.
Buy Oxygen tank shares
and profit off the prescribed
sharecropping of fresh air.

In every holocaust there's opportunity.
Let it burn, strangle billions to death,
to rake up greener leaves with impunity.

Yes, darling, the Amazon is burning,
but will our world ever stop turning?

Tiny Bird Bows Under Chalk Mark Moon

Every Limb Stretches to Sun

We're All Watermarks

The Sky and Bonfires

Atrocity Camp

Poetastrophe

Breathless and garrulous vendors of spirit,
ambassadors of banquet table homage,
itinerant apostles of eternal swindles!
Ten thousand mirrors in space
capture it all!
Paeans for every matricide and rapist,
the glories of war and rapine,
how sweet to sing famine
gorged to the chins!
Laying waste forests
and naming it a piece
for a negotiated percent
from the publishing house of
Penbuzzard and Accidental Hovel!
The Muses sold Helicon avant crash and reside,
luxuriously enough to make Sallust blush,
at a Château just south of Perpignan.
Naive, Inc drains the Hippocrene
to make energy drinks
for fitness club Dandies
                                         as Poetasters cram reams and screens
                                         while Poets in urbane garrets die of thirst.

Curtain Fall Oak

       Limbs rise
     to open palm
         leaves.

   The sinister wrist,
shattered then broken,
     never touches
         ground.

Gold curtain heavens
    overhead tempt
  like beauty's shade
  behind translucent
          blinds.

Angler

Seize strains
  of Sun sweetly
 falling string.

Dive deep
  with temptation
 impaled
  shiny hook.

I've cast deep into blue.
Impression dilates
in concentric spheres.

The fatal moment
  when mouths close.
  My stick bends
 to the sad weight
  depths hold dear.

               In the clear,
                  twist tail, gasp on thin air--
                          find breath in a bucket.

         Your vanquished eyes
               never close.

Tares

We bend to abstruse meandering but
  poets sup on wishes to be written.

      We shun the inexorable end,
 while poets sing want's incantation.

     Essence true unthinkable
         with so much plastic
                   within
             this hunger for
      the captivating twilight
                of covered
                  mirrors.

Sebald's Lust (A Death Machine Farce)

                   Sometimes devastation is like being carpet bombed with pleasure(Written by me as a line Sebald would have composed after inspecting rubble of Raqqa).



(No surprise W.G. Sebald tirelessly labored to bury ruins under fine phrases like Pentagon/NATO spokespeople gallantly regret leveling cities far from their "homeland".)

Calypso's Tears

He was false,
  but dawn rested
 on his word.

No Adonis,
    but he snared
 with net surer
   than Hephaestus'.

His arms warmly
    received me.

  With words sweet
as curséd pomegranates
   his cool breath
    stole into me.

This song
  runs aground
damp cheeks.

To him it was.
In me a sunken whisper remains,

 
         As the white mote grows fainter
                on monotonous blue.





 

Hairfall

One "t" bends knees, a plaintive close of eyes--canticle of delicate gestures. 

Bright Acre

All eyes heliotropes

Birth of a Rose in Monochromatic Bliss

Eyes dazzled by daylight's blast.

Belle Chair

Asymmetry is the croisée of seduction.

From a Terrace (Aosta)

Sleek hair spills cursive on skin,
hue cinnabar scent hyacinth,
spells forms pliant.


                                     Bise kiss gusting
                                     as light tucks wing
                                     to brisk evening.

"...in this great convict-settlement"

     "Wealth and despotism easily know how to engage those laws as the coadjutors of their oppression, which were first intended for the safeguards of the poor."

                      --- Caleb Williams, William Godwin, Vol. 1, Ch. IX.

"...quick to capture the fleeting apparition of spirit?"

Je suis le saint, en prière sur la terrasse...

Miscarriage

Miscarry,
broken berth,
nothing's mooring.

Pregnant absence
lifelong for the
lifeless silence

That breaks earth in
the heart beating
solely for two.