Oracle

Blue skies and blades of grass,
Rising seas and red leaves,
Exquisite the scaffold
and tyrant's severed head
as flames lick armories.

The Hulks

  I'm never the shipwreck,
    but ever the wreckage
     
    Lyre like lungs sails
       plucked by tides
       and sea monsters

    Bones rotting wood
      dismantled by the
        circumambient
     vale of briny tears
     
  From these depths
  the Sun wanes pale
   as an unreachable
     pill promising
           peace.



   

Australia is on Fire

Saturn

Shackled in shame behind the Sun,
thoughts ripened
by everlasting night
and set on vengeance,
He returns from exile.

Ravenous,
He craves
all living flesh
that mocks Him.

His hunger never sated.
No rest until,
belly bursting,
splitting a grin,
everything taken,
proudly He leans back
pruning the masticated.

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.