Tower of Thrust

                                          Upon your white unblemished thigh
                                          O stained with rocket fire sky
                                          A wound erupts at evening shine
                                          Orange as Christmas clementine.

                                          Patience climbs the tower of thrust.
                                          His foot dislodges flakes of rust
                                          That shimmer to the ground and sigh
                                          “The window of the launch is nigh—

                                          “Open your casements, rain soft fruit
                                          Upon our undeserving suit,
                                          Star fruit, according to the seasons,
                                          Absent motives, absent reasons.”

                                          1/1/2014

End of Dream

At a place where the earth’s eye (the sky) bathes in mirror and conceals its nakedness with pure light from the callow fecklessness of man, an excited four-pound monofilament fishing line connected by an exquisite hook to the most sensitive lower lip of the earth’s rainbow tugs at nerve fibers and sticky, clotted viscera in one’s vital areas, evoking panic and death. Will it jerk an emission from one? At the back of one’s cave an old hunger awakens. A patterned china plate is littered with sickening bones and gristle. One must wake up one simply must wake up. End of dream.

(Last entry of 2013)

Love's Fist

                                        One drop of night’s black ink a rarified
                                        Blue blood smear on dawn’s laboratory slide
                                        As stellar consternation’s scruples mount
                                        Anent earth’s elevated white cell count,
         
                                        The town begins to stir. A distant car
                                        Sneezes to life. Its starting leaves a scar
                                        On the slashed silence. Trash cans sing
                                        As drivers feed them before motoring.

                                        Thunderous birdsong floods the ear and wheezes
                                        As love’s fist grasps a feathered heart and squeezes.
                                        The fist that wrings the poor bird’s soggy heart
                                        And animates its limbs in every part

                                        Massages pistons in the engine’s chest
                                        And quickens matter at the wind’s behest.
                                        Some sodden cars parked street-wise sweat with dew
                                        In the cool morning air’s metallic stew.

                                        8/24/2011

Night Prayer

                                    Tactile sky, a child’s bedroom wall at night.
                                    A blue star like a gas fire pilot light.
                                    Wallpaper frieze, or drooping elm tree clusters?
                                    Night-lacquered saraband of interlaced leaf lusters.

                                    Presentiments of deluge, featured in
                                    The walled sky’s membranous translucent skin;
                                    A bleeding-through of humors, held the while
                                    By nothing but the muscles of a smile;

                                    Ready to burst, an eyeball fat with dew,
                                    The ocular tumescence of a view
                                    Galaxies-wide in compass, in whose girth
                                    And argent perlustrations drowns the earth.

                                    Night vault, in whose ideal rotundity
                                    Thunder awakens, cloud your eyes, as we
                                    Breath on a lens; your deafening vastness this
                                    Will sweeten with the moisture of a kiss.

                                     1/6/2012

On a Company of Female Athletes

                                                  Some women, chastity their sword,
                                                  Under the star of battle seek
                                                  Glory in war, the past restored,
                                                  A breath of things uniquely Greek.

                                                  Nude to the waist, each handsome bust,
                                                  Gives off, amid the scent of flower
                                                  An awesome scent of stadium dust
                                                  Rose oil and sweat and milk gone sour.

                                                  Their loins unclothed, their limbs unfresh,
                                                  Into the shower rooms they fleet
                                                  To rinse their battle-weary flesh
                                                  And stanch the sour smell of defeat.

                                                  (1981?)

The Elm

                                               Harsh wind rifles and harps
                                                           In the fleece and bones of the elm,
                                               Rocks it inside and fillups
                                                           Its leafy ribs with its fingers
                                               Tormenting brilliant storm chords
                                                           Out of its sea-green welter,
                                               Imbuing with blue-flash lightning
                                                           The somber heart in its slumber.

                                               Pellets of fish-eyed water
                                                            Glide off its green pelisse.
                                               Myriad post-storm droplets
                                                            Glitter like broken glass chips
                                               In a hallway of shattered mirrors,
                                                            Ensnared on fishhooks of light.
                                               Everyone shudders to see what
                                                            The storm sees, throned in its tree.

                                                                                               12/21/2013