The Pope Exhumes a Hero for the Catholics

The left hand drew blood
from the right
and the aqueducts of Rome wailed in mercy
while the thespians of romance
died of tantrum beating hearts
and they effused an ideal until
their hair burnt blonde in the sun
 
Panting, tired Tiber
whose trails entwine the Roman backroad
and delivered Remus to the sun
when his lips turned blue and
he was starved of holy milk [...]

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Perfume Conjures up a Poem (and a Smirk)

Napalm wings, she’s a spark to the sun
and when she burnt through the mist
I was young, I was born, I was done
held up to scorching heat
 
When I saw through deafened hiding
two eyes and sharpened wit
there was a meet, some silent confiding
that broke it’s back upon a stone
 
It was just a razor streaking blood
an accidental blotch [...]

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Autumn for Anne

Jewels on a chain pass
idly through
the porcelain chill of her fingers
her candle eyes in the
gelatinous dark
softly combust into tears
remembering when
the night had hands
and used them

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With a Pin, I Patch the Sky

Needles of rain lace
a head hung in the clouds and
thread the eye of our storm with
perfect lace
 
In flat time, our clocks lay to rest
the funerary minor keys
they ignited our piano but
they could not ignite you
it would seem your snake oil has
rendered you
inflammable
 
The blinking optics of those heavy
sinking heads in silence
never caught a moment
so clean or [...]

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Our Mirrors Walk Again

The leftover scraps of an ocean
are buried in her hands
she stood before she fell
and never stood
again
 
Midnight jive and she’s
long since passed this way
so we ask over coffee,
“what ever happened to the 20th
and all those lost Decembers?”
 
What a joke, some lively hoax
when the blurs faded back
into nothing
but we all knew it to be
a half-ways lie
 
In the [...]

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Farewell to a Hollow Place

Blank-eyed nobodies whom we all know
could never swim
flounder in trying so hard
that scalding awful effluent of
horrid drownings in the morning
it burns through the mason jars
we’ve all lost so much
 
I’m just so ashamed
and y’know, we could all be great friends
if only I knew
the books you’ve read
but I don’t so I guess this is
goodbye
 
Headstone name-carvings could
try to [...]

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Haiku for Feathers Falling

Hers is a sad flight
beating wings to the morning
then, downward corkscrew
 
Her heavy motion
the sloppy grace of the pen
tilt, both, toward earth
 
Surely that poet
carries verbs upon her wings
and escapes constraint

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