Legs dangle, arms crossed, nestled in the humming lilacs,

oblivious to all but the playful patter of unicorn hooves –

a wax doll flays a panda and steals a school bus

like the lips of Judas kissing his friend.

There is a flower, stamen intact, but anemic to incursion of lesser bees,

boasting contempt for unadorned suitors, never met.

Sweetest honey, end game of lovers and shared hives,

cannot match the preferred taste of a bloodless friend.

Pen at the ready, the steady scratch of solitary ink,

the price of life pretended, unlived living gets written instead.

Freedom, pillaged by cool tranquility, sits aloof on a park bench,

munching contentedly the bones of a dead friend.

Drifting, like the Lady of the Lake on a

fairy tale palm frond, someone catches a reflection –

a presence, vaguely recognizable, still unflinching,

puckers again the brutal kiss, in full view of no one.

Yet even Judas was brother to some, friend of one.

A silver mouth overlaid with the tarnish of deceived deceit

was still not enough to steal compassion’s face,

bearing down on the grain of a lost friend.

Image: “The Kiss of Judas” by Caravaggio

Accessorizing a borrowed life with faces –

no names – they’re unnecessary.

Don’t complicate the process by streamlining

a story made prettier by scar tissue, scabbing.

A fault line runs through the doubting  

air, fat on it’s own labor, like lighting

cigarettes on sunburnt backs. The first one always

clouds the breathing space

like too many clouds in too little sky.

A single teabag in the bathtub where

life gets stored, wrinkled-skin shining

toward a sleeker consumption. Borderlands fold inside out.

Don’t look anything in the eye. There’s a smoke

storm coming. A cigarette exhaled in someone

else’s kitchen. Riddle-red cheeks fade back into

other-storied guests.

We’ve been here the whole time.

________________________

Image found here

Fickle, flaky, Freudian in

the way of a nasal winter –

hiding on a park-bench

pidgeon’d hole o’ Gram

pa’s forgotten stash.

Dive, dive, dive, oh wing-ed

wonder, wallowing on the shell-

crusted beach, almost in

noon-sleep, snoring through

whiskers thick with doubt.

One can only shiver

against gulls, gobbling

a breakfast, marooned and

still. Shout at their noisy

music, with sea-shanty poker-

faces. They may be raucous,

but at least they choir.

Morning bones, cracked at the seams,

splice themselves into subway-tag poetry.

Ignore the crowd, they’ll trace

their own lines

back to when the post-

man knew where to go.

Still damp letters in stilettos

march and fall through city

grates that can smell soar feet.

But these feet write semaphore

that only sing

when you read backwards on

pages wind-blown forward,

east of the garden.

Words, stolen

from other people’s lives, hearth tales, fireside

songs, thirteen-year old misfit

adventures crouch and whisper their

secrets

out from

the corners, feed

a hungry pen, growling

for colors on gray paper.

Once you can no longer smell the parchment,

eyes adjust,

and life begins.

The ghosts are hungry for more.

But chiming bells overflow the glass

and teeth chatter in the gray sun.

There is music in the gravel tide,

washing up like red medicine –

bloodied capsules of cotton-talk,

gauze-word, suture-see. It only

gags the throat of a traffic laden wood.

Clouds crippled by the old songs, are still

just clouds.

Can you taste the buds of blue, jagged

sweat germinating tomorrow’s winter

garden, stuffed in a teapot on top of your lone

May Pole? Maybe the French kiss

nightmare taught a thing or two about that

unnamed wishing well world?

With hunched-back scar-tissue tongue

you lasso the last, unlucky

stragglers from the playground of ordinary

sights, you suck the juice out of the sunlight.

No more wrought-iron tail feathers for

this sidewinder peasant.

Suckling the teat of frozen landscapes, you

always forgot what nourished most

until they circle back round and

stump you from behind –

where all the best tales are.

Image found here

He ran out of words right about the time

his hope hit a wall like winter in June.

Lucidity escaped through loss, and

a life runs its twisting course

beside another’s parallel stream, just out of view.

Where to the waning West became of

words that once transfixed golden-souled,

silver-penned pirates of the journey?

They scaled the hull of pitch and yaw ships

laden with gifts from the sand of distant shores.

There it is again, once song of the Muse,

now the Siren’s cry like a whip of lustrous thought,

piercing ears, thirsty for the music of sojourn.

“Listen, listen,” she sings and, by singing, hopes

to be free from something that never bound her.

He would answer but his voice is drowned

in the shriller insistence of a mermaid’s lonely tale.

A single wave-tossed rock provides her stage.

But loudly though she sings, louder still the waves

that divide. All others are silenced against her solemn tones.

Laboring under misapprehension of invisible dangers,

she notices not that all ships have left. The song she

knows well has merely chased all hope of rescue.

Soon, her shrinking solo speaks no longer to gods nor men,

for without a voice, there are no more voices.

Picture found here

You may feel sweet and affectionate to the touch,

sporting so pungent and perfect a fragrance,

look inappropriately wild of color, heaven-hued,

in your pinkling glow of impish immaturity.

You may wink but an eye, lilting out

your childish humming in Spring-borne perfection,

and sit, alluring and still, batting new-soiled lashes

in expectation, summoning your lovers.

You may catch us staring and return a wink,

a petaled exhale, whimpered and whimsical,

breathing deep your own headiness,

oh silly girl, so boisterously quiet.

You may be all of this and more,

but to kiss your lips, folded and full,

is to kiss the longing lips of heaven.

It is God teasing us with a daffodil.

Picture found here