*S*T*A*R*
for Megan


Suffer a witch to live, thou shalt not;
The love of money is the root of all evil.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet;
Rats live on no evil star.

*

Seize the day.  Carpe diem is Latin, dead language, for 
take advantage now.  Of the sound, sense,
aroma of this time.  Dying put the death grip on
remorse, bruise it until unrecognized as synonym for past.

*

Sit quiet.  But prepare for the trek while others
talk.  This is a game.  There are rules.  First
among them is a limit.  Everyone
recognizes, but no-one can tell you this.

*

Summer trickles the sweat of seasons saving themselves
tackling the climb of faith through winter.
Autumn glides gracefully into what we would
rather not.  The star, the glimmer.

*

Sun
temporary
always
returns





Breaking Up/Out

In the mirror my complexion is clear as forever.
Resisting crisis acne as if in spite,

as if a camera shifted from the third strke en route
to the statium panorama.

Summer busts clear.  Something new
fooling us into acting young.

Child-skinned, uncertain, shaky,
and interested again in the mirror, 

in the wide angle.  Damage control,
baffling down the flames before they

baffle us.


This mirror is the baseball card
of a so-called professional, someone

who professes to have lived.  The stats, as they say,
speak, and we wish for another language.

Air meeting the bat the rule, sweet spots too rare,
and the requisite, in time, furrowed brow.

The face meets a new wrinkle.
The game's complexion changes.  We take it

on the chin and psyche, that combination
of breaking pitch and wrecking ball,

another one we can't hit.
Busted offguard and waiting, always waiting

for the elusive fastball
with no hop, the straight line
the shortest route to death.





Nighty Night


Stop, stay, stagnate, rest,
definitions, pejoratives, nuanced synonyms.
You roll on like luggage, the small belongings,
dresser casters six cylinders strong,
inertia seeking
a new change of clothes.
Or feathers, it's been a while
since I cleaned out my cage.

Well, I'm here, same not and knot
always, convenient meanings
form the relationship, the poem.

Rest, and the rest follows.
Not much here
but guilt and association,
traveling as usual

in pairs.




Paradigm Shift


Understanding is simple walking at night,
the easy uncertainty of beachside, all horizon.
The shadows array into bushes, buildings,
and us.  Still we start at any motion,
even the shadow
of our own.

So experience your murder,
no more pressure or fear.  Coal burned
with no hope of becoming diamond.
The sudden smell, acetate smoking filmy
through an old projector, the hole
of day, snapshot.

Wake carrying a window
fashioned from beaches.
Ear, eye to the pane:
a whisper, a shell for oceans, a glimpse
of Pacific in the pane before shatter.
Eyes, sockets, landscapes,

canvas cracked, painted over
with fierce volition.
This is stepping toward us.
The passion, the savor.
The window understands depth, dark,
the rush of relentless fear.  Ignores.

Love, the eternal beachhead,
the background
that turns the window mirror.
The funhouse, wavering,
silica whooshing in, out, selecting its rate,
steady in the structure

of everything,
so slow like a shadow 
it lags behind us.
We can hardly see it
clearing, ahead,
with the black speed of coal


rushing toward diamond.





Winter Dreams
A Haiku Cycle.  Title Compliments of Tchaikovsky.



It seemed October
was not the proferred carrot
the hung withered leaf


A pork rind fried alone
rustling amidst a salty
grease smear in a bag


Too transparent.  Hope
hangs here limp and sudden.  Branch:
dead man's arm dangling

Quietly It Passes, Quietly You Pass

Before the Internet there was the world.
I sat there, too, refused to participate
in mindless chat, kept my head up
and my eyes lowered.  Always on the road
and avoiding contact.  But watching,
the spinning of the wheels, the circling
of the orbs, outer space and inner vacuum.

I sat here, I guess, till I grew strange,
like Sexton's little girl
ritually buried with her dead father.
Just watched,  and unlike most folk,
who watch and talk together,
I just kept things cubbyholed.  Some might call it a hobby,
although people say I'm funny, I have no hobbies.

But I've got this collection and 
it's a dilemma.  I was frightened when my ex-wife,
the painter, faced me with the reality
that when an artist sells a painting, it's gone,
your work belongs
to someone else.  So do I sit on this egg,
not knowing if I have the biology to hatch it?

Or pass it off to someone who'll break it,
fry it, smack the shell on a Lexus
at Halloween? Mostly I'll just sit.
Listening in meetings, in bars,
to the breeze flowing past solitude through my window,
with that vacant glaze over my eyes suggesting
that I know nothing, am spacing out,

when I'm watching,
feeding, the vampire
you've invited in,
and my foot
in the door
is yours

in the grave.




Slime Trail


The heart fights the mask
it finds in the face
eyeing itself in the mirror.

This didn't go retrograde yesterday,
just seems like the linebacker
gained a step on you, caught up

--hey, you knew he would -- sooner
than surprise.  The slug faster than the dirt
it lives in.  The snail slopping from shell

to nudge a little close to nothing.
Facemask, pulling your neck
out for the chopper

and there's no penalty,
the tackle is legal, just doesn't seem
fair, little rumblings turned to footsteps

then the swift snail closes you
in its shell, nothing that had a face
to stare at to begin with, just slime

and horns, but you knew that,
didn't you, you knew how elemental
this game is.

You wrapped it so tight
in a spiral you never encountered
it twice.  Death, the slime and shell,

passing so slow it seems like life,
doesn't it?

Didn't it?