Absence

Monkeyshine
swing brightly
so circus
shine
Cheshire-grin
two-in-hand
tarnished
ticking tango
it's trillium time.

Quicksilver current
queen of shades
on an Andalusion
tide-riding
time machine.
Brothers three
Castor, Pollux
and Old Jim Beam
she's
eclipsing Luna
and it's only half-past twelve.

Claim-jumping
(you've got)
two talents
and a burlap bag
always the rush...
and that right now
Mr. Forty-Niner
fax me
some of that fool's gold
I'm asking
I'm prospecting
asking alchemy.

Ode to Love and Appetite

Venus could be instructed in the use of her charms
Advised in the art of endearment
Love, though too often confined to the loins
Engenders itself best to the palate.
No embrace, no kiss, nor ecstatic utterance
Tantalizes as does a slightly teased souffle.
Inciting pathos...
Negotiating reluctance
Enabling rapturous gourmet bliss.

valentine

ode to an oval office

If I connect - I get connected...
self-important - self-elected...
and always paychecks before personality.
Oh, sweet superficiality!
Oh, blessed greed!
You're all I need...
I'm alone but I am number one.

"Yes" I said, "I agree."
I heard myself "What's in it for me?"
My attention - my personal Christ.
My lilting soul, profit, the heist.
This the test, but it's been forty days.
Do I speak the violence or am I the prey?
I'm all alone except for the sun.
I'm alone and I'm still number one.

Winterborn

I am Winterborn, boreal, cheerless son...
the melancholic bard giving birth to oblivion.
I am freezing rain that bites raw skin...
slushing blood with stinging wind.
I am the dulling stupor entering your mind...
the driving blizzard leaving you blind.
I am heavy sky, hoary and bleak...
days void of sun and draining you weak.
I am barren trees and frozen waste land...
the jagged ground that rips the hand.
I am hardened lakes and ice that groans...
the wolves of winter that ravenously moan.
I am frost ringed moon and crystallized breath...
cracked bleeding lips and comfort's quick death.
I am the arrival of dread and the resident forlorn...
the old man's heir... I am Winterborn.

Emptying the Ark

Nothing has changed...
equilibrium has settled upon me once again-
a 2:1 ratio of salt and pepper
ecstasy and angst
affirmation and masochism, etc.
And you?

There doesn’t seem to be any flooding here.
No roiling crest spilling over the banks.
Brine.
That’s what they call a salty solution of some noxious liquid
found in back waters, basements, and tidal flats...
Are they evacuating your neighborhood?

Holding a heart shaped chain letter and pondering St. Valentine,
bless his holy name,
I was surprised to feel the Holy Ghost come upon me...
and I got the Power.
If St. Patrick wouldn’t have vanquished all the snakes
I could have demonstrated my faith.
But alas, no serpents,
save the one wrapped around my heart
who keeps force feeding me apple sauce.
I was resigned to speaking in tongues-
forked ones at that.
I know, my diction.

Now the sun is shining
but I’ve been in this tunnel so long it hurts-
like a bright light glinting
off a gin bottle in the ditch.
But I’ll be ok
cause I asked for automatic polarizing glasses
from the Easter Bunny
and the government said if I was good and ate my apple sauce
I would get them under the Easter-egg tree.
I’m trying really hard.
Cross your fingers and say a prayer for me.

Waterford

Having experienced your clarity
your claret color
bouquet bazaar
and incidentally your cuts
filigrees and flutes...

I have chosen to drink
and not to taste or savor
but to empty
and finger a song.

Sing to me
in your singular tone
as a Siren brings men
to their doom.

Sing to me clear
though the wine is alone
is raging
is rakish
is resting
with a touch
here in my room.

Violet

A Winter Solstice

Dawn, just a memory
daybreak a dream
the morning lost in mist.

Dusk, dripping scenery
rusted it seems
the fog says hello with a kiss.

What of the day
the hours without shade
the heat that sustains the living?

Her warmth kept at bay
en route, waylaid
and no prince for the crown she’s giving.

Oh cruel Sun
light of all light
how we long for your return.

Darkness shun!
Shed black night...
the murk, this fog, burn.

Yet no blaze appears,
no dazzling array,
only stealing gray I see.

An eclipse, I fear,
has come to stay...
oh Sun, set us free.

Spring Fling

Sometimes spring comes
but briefly
too quickly overtaken
by the howling winds of hubris
and the naiveté allowing for
sowing, planting, growth
premature
as always
subject to black frosts and
deepening drifts
and a shut-away sun.

Flore de Victoria

2000

It was the darkest night of the year
or the longest at least
and yet the fullest moon in one hundred.
I was privately searching for my very own solstice
amongst the star bright human light
when he shattered my crystal fantasy.

He stopped suddenly and stooped,
reached a gloved hand down
gingerly plucking the slender blue
treasure from the snow, hardly noticeable.

“It’s an ‘H’” he said, rather sheepishly, “they’re softer...”
while displaying it at arms length, point up
with irresistible boyish triumph.
I was relieved that at least one of us
had discovered millennial meaning.

Negabliss

Archetype 1 (at a Jackson Pollock exhibit)

She, covered
in Gotham City black
pink under, yellow hair pulled back
intent upon number 11A 1948
(black white and gray)
and I, today the cad
busy
fomenting a first foray
until she exited, without the black
hailed
and walked away.

An earlier version of this poem appeared in the "HazMat Review," Vol. 4, Issue 1 Fall/Winter 1999.

Missed

Missed
missing
mistletoe-
she glittered me once more.
Last time through
that dice shake
quick take
minuet
and that crushed
velvet
door.

Stll life-Bean and Egg

Darkest Night of the Year

darkness is not fear
the absence of light is near
closer than you think

Riles Rum

No rile, no roil
five strings not strung
neck’s warped and the chores
undone, undone
all that which lay
before us, become
the chemistry, the physics
the knowledge, the sum,
of the victory won
before the report of the gun
the farthest, the furthest
the fastest, the fun
the fans we’d have
the wounds we’d heal
the glory we’d halve
the truce we’d seal
the songs, the songs,
the sonnets all gone
let slide to nuptials
and sunk to nativity
lost in the triune
and the fear of a prophesy
and the fear of proclivity
for strife, for wife
for riff or for rife
and for the beat
of a distant drum...
and the rum.

Crucify

Christmas Scarecrow

Vow...
just say the rope

is ours.
Tell me now
that the bend

these bends

this bend

is only ours
that those innocent

tics

tocs

hours
at the water’s edge
belong to you
and to me
and to the white

geese
and whatever they see
saw...
you liked the straw
the rustic

rebel

roustabout
of it all
while I trudged

through mounting irony

self-conscious
like now
a scarecrow
naked
in the snow.