Hudson River, George Washington Bridge

Unravelled from its rain spool, the mist-spun
River a smeared jewel in the noonday sun
Under a feast of aether. Fair clouds pass
Locked enthralled in their high tower of glass

Like parsley flowers strewn on a hillside’s crest;
Spars or ribs in Jupiter’s mighty chest;
Florentine tresses plaited with wildflowers;
Worlds on a dial of planetary hours

Enamelled with celestial animals—
Flora and fauna that a light wind mauls.
Crushed like unwrinkled water I fall too
Prostrate under this avalanche of blue.

Thus the hours of day dream on the water,
Night-scales and day-scales of the ocean’s daughter
And as time creeps toward his lightless deep
Under her steel-gray dragon mantle sleep.



2/5/2012

The Sphenoid

A sonnet written upon looking at the illustration of a skull in a medical dictionary.


Concealed by muscle, powder, bone and hair
In duplex from the corners of her eyes
The twin lobes of her shapely sphenoid flare
Like wing-tips of a bird of paradise.

The cranium, bound with words: a veil of skin
Obscures its features, like a lady’s fan
Stretched on a frame that—blue, translucent, thin—
Is moist and flaky, like a sticky flan.

Suffused and dripping with the sauce of blood
That irrigates the temple of the flesh
It will endure until the purple flood
Subsides, the sutures of the bone unmesh

And the bare urn lies vanquished—jumbled sherds
Abandoned by the weak cement of words.



1982-1986?

All Points Bulletin

Felicia Foster. Eyes: green.
Hair: russet (when last seen
In a fashion magazine).

Limbs: graceful. Skin: creamy.
Lips: soft. Figure: dreamy.
(She makes your glasses steamy.)

Be on the lookout. Likes books.
Glances more lethal than a crook’s
Heater. Notorious in looks.



1982-86?

Happy Slaves

Every Bulkan farmer glaives
Fieldcorn with a toothsome scythe
In the land of happy slaves
Where the cutlery is blithe.

Oily shingles, pungent lights,
Walls piled high with well-fed bricks—
Institutional delights—
Winsome axes full of nicks.

Here, like stillborn eggs of thought,
Warm glass bulbs containing small
Writhing embryos of hot
Wormlight sprout from post and wall.

I salute you, happy slaves!
Every evening, one by one,
Mother earth expertly shaves
Bleeding slabs from Father sun.



Written 1982-86? (sometime in the early 1980's)