Vampire
     
     
     Most of the time it moves around us
     swathed in fog, the grin
     flashed at meeting another
     in a crowded hall.
     
     It seeks blood, the gasoline
     it runs on,  refueling when the tank
     is empty.  It will not
     cross running water
     
     because tides disturb
     the forever still.  Undead
     is a state we willfully seek.  But why?
     If we stopped to answer
     
     perhaps a tooth would snag
     in our blood, we would pause forever
     at the drive-through,  Wendy's would clog
     until the night woke us
     
     to our new life, seeking out the stake
     as we lived out the dumbness
     of death, not knowing, here.
     Meanwhile, the drains 
     
     eddy daily, the days we so fear
     passing in righteous anger, taxation,
     and, well, moving toward death.
     
     *
     
     Virgil knew the exit to hell
     was at its very center.
     Here, close to the exit,
     fear ticks like the footsteps
     
     of the mob, chasing the hated something
     up a blind alley where 
     it encounters a broken mirror.
     Contemplates the times it has looked itself
     
     in the face, square on.  And seen nothing.
     Perhaps you've seen those times.
     Perhaps you can count them
     on one hand, the one
     
     that holds the stake.
     
     *
     
     I don't want to look
     in the eyes of something undead,
     undone, the nail lifting
     like a spiral little worm
     
     back out of the coffin.  I raise
     my cape, cover my eyes.
     Give me blood.  I squint hard at the mirror.
     In the cracks there is something like a reflection.
     
     If I could build
     that glimpse into flesh, what
     would it mean?
     To live.  To leave this languor
     
     behind.  To be what I am.
     To hang the fog near the exit to hell,
     a cloak for when I need it.
     
     
     To do this all over again.
     
     
     

        
     
     
     How Kundera Encountered Lightness?
     
     
     Tonight my ex-wife admits
     she loves my soul.
     
     It's the enormity
     of the 140 pounds it's wrapped in
     
     that crushes her.
     And that crushes me.
     
     This is how one
     develops a soul.
     
     
     


     
    Ghost
    To a lost idea
     
    
     
     Something slipped by me tonight.
     Like so many notions,
     returning to the site
     of the haunt; I felt the nudge
     
     as it lost its body.  It was not
     the usual phantom, Youth,
     but something I wanted to say
     to you.  I don't know
     
     what it would've meant.
     Because I didn't record it, 
     you get a ghost of a poem,
     this infrared photo
     
     of a spectral salamander
     slipping its head
     through a crack
     in the nonexistent.
     
     **********
     
     I hoped this shadow, this replacement
     would spur me to remember
     the ghost that gave me up,
     In writing this, I'd watch it
     
     emerge like an apology
     for our black-hole youth _
     shimmering on the event-horizon,
     a snapshot planted firmly
     
     in its hand.  But I still forget 
     what I owed you in the first place.
     Now what we owe ourselves, ah,
     close your eyes.  We will talk forever
     
     about the possibilities.
     We'll imagine ghostly trees,
     tell each other
     what shade of fruit they bear.
     
    


     
     
     This Light, That Portraiture
     
     
     We sit till the light on the mirror,
     bent by time, resembles our face.
     Or someone's; we will settle
     for grubbing the pocketbook bottom
     when we have lost something.
     
     We want to paint now
     but we have lost our signature.
     So now sits naked before us
     as we fumble for car keys.
     We want to show our etchings
     
     but they're blank.  The acid
     can't autograph the surface,
     as if it's moving too fast.
     
     ++++++++++++++++++
     
     Light floods the study.
     It's a grand ballroom, studded
     with portraits of the magnificent dead.
     When life called, we followed.
     Never occurred to us
     
     that it wanted to dance.
     So down the neck into the bottle
     we filed, and from a full ship
     looked out on this light,
     that portriature
     
     waltzing,
     assembling
     before us.
     
     
     This Light, That Portraiture/2
     
     
     
     ++++++++++++++++++++
     
     The sun on our backs
     sends metaphors, warmth
     and shadow.  Art tells you only
     what you feel.  We spend sun cycles
     learning the tricks
     
     of the trade.  Burned by exposure,
     the light only heat,
     seeing the portrait's illusion
     in an empty mirror:
     The image of a shaking head.
     
     
     It's all trade.
     There are no
     tricks.
     


     
     
     Haiku 1
     Wearing pantyhose
     and boxer shorts atop my
     shoes:  Undefeated
     
    

 
     Haiku 2
     A soul mists my face
     life holds rain suspended now
     fat drops beyond this
     

     
     Haiku 3
     The autumn rots today
     it has nowhere to go now
     winter sits fertile

     
     Haiku 4
     a suave pastiche rapes rain
     right out of the skies, tonight.
     cloud, cars, backdrop:  grey
     

     
     Haiku 5
     Wish I had you back.
     Autumn is cold and whooshes
     Car smashing changed leaf
     

     
     Haiku 6
     Sample morning.  Snack
     on evening.  In between
     sandwich ... You write it.
     

     
     Haiku 7
     Rainy and marking
     time:  4:45 a.m.
     Basho smiles, somewhere.