“Hatchling”

“Hatchling”

The implication here is from the ancient; flee, then, hatchling, see to it
In some sweeter novice, some slight discretion, some light elective. Festoon’t,
Then, the nowly constructed, bought in haste, a fine young cocoon,
In binding shrouds’ thrice millions iron-silken chits
That glitter, blind those bloodless tones with proper milk, drawn through
Finely fashioned sleuce and straw arranged beyond your knowledge long before
You ever had a name. I knew you well before you were. I, myself, have worn
The vice-connecting tethers and gaudy ribbons flowing loose—
A wandering, breathing hydra gorging—presaged fate, itself. Without your eyes
You’ll discover soon enough your middle and latter twenty doubled, twice
Again! and thoughts of me will be distant memories’ banquets summoned by
Exclusions festering in mirrored eyes of fond admirers (sound advice)
From your graceless passion-grasping salad days. Their winking votive candles
Fire all in be-all Vegas chapels with or without witnesses and guests
amid all those clinking glasses and clacking sandals

“That Message Comes Too Late”

“That Message Comes Too Late”

That message comes too late; the box long placed in escrow rusted
From disuse, and I with lungs too aged to bear perfumes and polish;
Meretricious meddling as grace notes in the prism admonish
All the senses, blur the lines of intuition but with gears so rarely dusted
The damn thing keeps on running just the same–behold! it
Must devour distraction, shed its excess in deflected rhyme
And, while the lotus blossom blooms but once, for a time
No one’s close enough to close in for the kill. I know it’s
Hour has come. I prefer to walk and leave the seasons
on the broken highway line.
The forced march rides blisters here and there
But these are welcome and with the sea breeze on the stairs,
The fields, the feel of billowing folds of shirt and pantaloons with brine
Scent heavy in the air, I follow sentinels, ambers of my memory like rocks
Strewn about the stream until I reach the shore I see. I pray
I cannot hear you now and as the Ocean lies before me friends,
I’ve little more to say.

…paintings by Andy Denzler…

“It Matters Nothing”

“It Matters Nothing”

It matters nothing in the lightly screaming
Thoughts of what I might have done
Had this not gone so far; the early clusters, the latter stars, the sun’s
Eternal meridian, no matter what the clouds, the veils, the feelings,
Midnight’s nightly thinking on the path through Saturn’s rings
Remains the same, and in the end, illusion never dies.
So constant, time in winnowed wanderlust, the skies
The seas, the cosmic meadow’s breeze where only quasars sing
The simple measure pleasures of a thought made longer than a dream
That I may walk beside the old canal that leads to even older docks.
Yes, of course.  I might have visited more often.  But clocks
Are stormy petrels of eternal days that leave their stain on what’s deemed
Meet and seemly for the time and so while I frequent these familiar lanes I think
On what I might have said and how I might have stayed awhile,
and wines I’ll never drink.

…photograph above by ECU…

“How Many Transfers”

How many transfers, how many lives
And never mind the pain;
I ascend descending steps and reign
For miniutes on the platform sans fatigue, forgetting strife.
Less the aromatic oils of obstacles, reticent, perhaps, for yet another year’s
Summer’s breath. This station welcomes that train
Long before it leaves. Weightless freight speeds gently seen through panes
Of plastic;  the métro’s brilliance holds nothing more pernicious than it’s dawn,
while evenings’ dusks merely signal calm amid collective progress in arrears.
Knowing anything (a slight surprise) does not smooth the way,
No urban superstition nor phatic prayer, no tragic flaw
Abides dissembling diatribes to thrwart decision.  Intervention
Needs not advertise a lack of means to champion fixed decision
From nothing more than daily pundits’ milk straight from the elect;
No thing in heaven or in the earth is ever quite remembered
At the baggage claim as all my January’s premonitions die as early as December.

“Surprise Her”

“Surprise Her”

Surprise her, then, and let her guess
What took so long; he waited patiently,
She took no notice; he was as he was wont to be,
She had no time. The rest
Was lost on both of them; they didn’t care
To tip the waiter, neither bore the blame
For carelessness in choosing tables (lame
Excuses mumbled that the tab was somehow unfair!)
And, after all, the caf thrives on its frugality,
Wastes nothing on a knife!
Bread comes whole, unsliced,
A little primitive and only slightly baked, reality
For both and somehow consciousness of something dangerous:
Read the label, then, and mark these subtle strangers!

“‘And What About Companionship?’”

“And what about companionship?” she said,
“Do you really care to die alone?” she added
To the thought that I’d misled
Her, the presiding illusion on delusions to be fed.
What had made the whole strophe sadder
Was the thought that she’d be madder
Two rungs up on the gilded ladder
With the truth than if I payed out the thread and bled
A lie with softened smiles alive with some sweet
Calcified emotion in the two of us
With no more hope and substance on the antistrophe than the reams
Of poetry I’d written to that dear lady, darkly, or the sound of baby feet
That seemed to be the clandestine plan reducing former plans to dust
Or love I’d may have wrought when both betrayed my trust.

…charcoal drawing at bottom by Amber Senna…

“Then Again”

“Then Again”

Then again, we’ll meet in time. Paths that wind
Through years connect, diverge and merge, and we’ll drink
To one last dénouement and all it took to get there. Think
These annum as seconds, waves, moments as the tide rescinds,
And decay’s collected neatly in a single wooden box.
No wonder, then, that ancients seem
To worship gods above the One and only; they dream
In mantras of devotion to trees and rocks while tending flocks
Whispering insecurities behind contorted masks and gilded fans.
Recollection swallows voids and fills the blanks; the fetid page
Records both curse and antidotes, the withered whine of sages
Mourning lost superfluous ciphers spread broadcast as the sands.
What shame, what loss, what wanton waste these precious lines
That honour phantoms, worship mortality as delicacies in ancient rhymes.

…paintings by Jose Roosevelt…

“A Pyrrhic Victory”

“A Pyrrhic Victory”

A Pyrrhic victory at best, hours after yet another year’s
Bitter cold before the coming estates of sweat, insurmountability’s
Surmised but never publicly revealed. Accountability’s
Moot when age transmutes abundant copper into gold, drowns tears
With astringents of patent patience, maintenance, and losses dear
But ever too late for death to gloat no matter the audience. Flexibility
Of course is needed, reticence too calm for promiscuity
And not a whole lot larger than regret and nothing left to fear.
What then, comes next; what must? What highway markers point the way
To some fresh spring or more than nocturnal notches at the oasis?
Longevity rests its case while youth is lost in grasping straws
And twigs of self-control with nothing guaranteed to thaw
In time for dinner. Long since the urge to worship heady homeostasis
Yields mere noise, the debris of mindless predators at work or play
Whose highest aspiration is passion’s demand and supply of endless prey.

…paintings by Jeanette Bessette…

“It Has Always Been”

“It Has Always Been”

It has always been a stretch between the litigants,
the overweening permanence of existence in this world
collective notwithstanding its apparent docking at the end;
the coming to port, the arrival at the point of destination,

the fallacy in any journey, the absurdity of certainty
that would it were not so whether for the curse of hubris
in despair or consummate glory in humility,
arrivals and departures cannot avoid one another,

and if not pronounced in every hour even if extended
blissfully to days and weeks, possibly to months
and to what is deemed to be a lifetime,
still, natural siblings must hold conscious council

with one another no matter what the gravity
or length of either sojourn or the journey home.
All despair is intoxicated with this wine;
all joy suffocates if the cup is drained.

…painting at bottom by Michael Zeno Diemer…

“Quit the Place”

“Quit the Place”

Quit the place, then; test fresher waters. What bridge
Is not worth burning if in the touch—the match
To timbers—means a turning back is no longer fair? The latch,
No longer there, is permanently disfigured,
a threshold bled of overweening privilege
In false familiarity where the home and hearth no longer bar abuse in sacrilege.
Raise the spectre, then, of shame of arbitrary schisms
in sacred shibboleths within that patch
Immortal wonders from without through to lethal exposure
to the elements and rabid demons that scratch
And mar the surface of all that flesh and cartilage.
Bone and sinew must attend before the altars of precaution’s dusk
That presage fear and trembling at every fleeting dawn. Midnight’s
Inky vision fully hastens to its coming noon
As does the glory of the moon
Presume the presence of its sun. If certitude is trust,
No flightless blight survives beyond its sightless night.