BLUE

Those occasional
moons, which ought to be
waning, but go on

unmercifully hanging,
haze-distorted
and fuller than usual

in the humid still-
blue gloaming—only prove
to me now

how I never loved you
more than those
nights you weren't home.

NEW

These days
after long rains—fecund smells

on the humid breeze,
and between

the sagging trees dart
yellow finches—wings beating

a few
soft ripples

across the face—of the
parking lot lake.

TETHER YOUR HOPES

Say a little prayer
that—

furious, the feral cat
keeps

napping
in those daffodils.

INCIDENTAL

Brisk chains of eighth notes

chiming down the treble staff—brown finches

on the power line.

SCHOOL'S OUT!

Still-vibrating
with the smoldering
residual energy

of a brash profusion
of high
summer night fireworks—a plangent constellation

of residual translucent
rainbow-

colored
gummy bears—now stains

the blue-
black
void of playground asphalt—

attracting
rats.

REFLECTION

Little sun-
silver mirrors

hung—all along
the out-
stretched length

of this
waxy palm

leaf—what do you
have
to teach?

NONESSENTIAL GOODS

In the cool of the
evening,
after the last day

of the
yard sale, God walks

the back
garden patio,
ringed round

with nascent
venereal blossoms

and hailed by ancient star-
burst candy-
colored flowers—

and gazes out
and down

with dismay
at all
the stuff that didn't sell.

CHICAGO BUT NOT BY CARL SANDBURG

Hog butcher, wheat stacker,
freight handler—doesn't matter

how far
you've fallen,
what sort of miserable

scoundrel you are,
there's always a weathered neighborhood
stoop around here somewhere—

that's warped
and sunken just low-
down enough to suit your posture—

with lots of peeling paint
designs, to hallucinate

their
disappointed faces in—
and a nice red white and silver

Pabst can
for the butts and ashes.

PURGATORIO

In one corner
of the warped overcrammed deck
which still marries

this doorstep
to the back alley,
that gaudy glass

bowl
fills slow
with gray rainwater

which used to hold
more
bright fruit and windowlight—back

when much sweeter
mouths than mine
still lived here.

THE POWER AND THE GLORY

I never
would have

seen the light—
if I hadn't

looked
up at the bulb.

INCUMBENT

After repeated
late season
bouts of raging

rains and
antagonistic sun-
shining—

vacant
lot-kingdoms
of toppled old stone

are veined—
with such thick
moss, sweet

grass, and
opportunistic clover—
as to

reanimate
the king
of butterflies.

HELLSTRIP

How fierce-
ly! the blood-mawed
streak of tiger

lillies—stands guard
at the tree-
shaded verge's perimeter;

each, a lithe formidable
snarl of angles merging—
and perfect-

ly sharpened—
to frighten
witless goslings

from wandering
thickly
out into traffic.

OMPHALOS

Gazing down long
at an empty home-
made mauve mug,
its enameled clay speckled

like so many nameless
galaxies smudged across
the Hubble Deep Field,
its shadow-

black mouth, like
god's, not talking but still
piercing my
guts with pure significance—

all those lofted
thoughts of yours,
where have they
brought you?

fierce-postured, on a low stoop
of warped rotting
wood in the morning, contemplating another
cup of coffee.

NOCTURNE

Her
love, the lone faraway

dusk bird's
meager keening—reasonable

to parse,
not to figure.

MOTIVATION

A fresh airy silence,
stirring the stale gunmetal
vault of my memory

and stirring
in the gentle breeze—
old black holes

and new
spring leaves—
I feel a burning need

to move
with the mystery
of each of these

swirling—ringing
the edge
of the pool of my knowledge

just like
the fire burning deep
in the woods which surround it requires

each precious little infinity
of empty
space between its blazing arms.

SHOW AND TELL

Encouraged
by more than a little

smattering
of applauding rain,

the pink-
tickled rose petal—increases

the spill
of its gingerly spiral,

thrusting the gradually
stiffening design

half an
insect wing's-

length farther upward,
as if

to prove
the Milky Way.

SLEEP MASK

Black as pure thought,
and just
as uninteresting,
that silent interval—once it's passed

so irreversible—
between the deep and
generous inhale

and its shallow
exhalation, proves it's
far too dangerous

to use these
time-bomb imaginations we've got.

But neither
do we dare speak—even to the pitch dark,
of that most secret wish
to be rid of them,

afraid to take things any further,
and seeking instead for the
mushed and damp middle-ground

of sleep's calm shore, as if
groping in the dark
for the redundant explanation:

if that release into the silence
is really so total,

then why is the darkness
still always haunted

by those faint apprehensions
of the light?

AT ALL

Polished silvery
mirror of mid-
June

afternoon—the cool translucent

rain
drops
falling

so ginger-
ly down     
on the—irreducible

fact that I am

down
here under-
neath them.

IDEAL

June night—the kind

of make-believe black and white

I'll be buried in.

A BRIDGE

Untrustworthy—

a complete statement

of the facts.

PERSISTENCE ECONOMY

Wild-haired, the
greasy American

red-bellied woodpecker

pounds his
rapacious thick

face silly for bark beetles,

might think
he's really

fucking up that oak tree—

but only
barely.

END OF THE UNIVERSE IN REVERSE

Spontaneously, families
un-estrange,

don't speak,
can't fight. Like it

or not, everyone grows
closer, looks

cutely blue-
tinted—and everywhere

the idea grows simpler;
letters get wetter

and the math
a lot drier—all around,

the blue-
colored

birds land, dropping
huge mice,

which belly-
flop back into the hot water.

Nothing's
right. Nothing's

the matter;
time's liquefied

so nothing
is really sudden, but

nonetheless, in less
than an instant,

the little bit of
everything

that's left—just
goes white.

ANAEROBIC EXERCISE

If I'm

the torturer, who is the tortured?—Now write

the last line.

OPPRESSIVE

A few steps back
from the stale Milwaukee stop—

the severe
-ly dressed old woman,

in subtle defiance of the
crook in her back,

fords that sheer
abyss that exists between

12:59 and 1 pm—gazing up at
those succoring pictures

in the huge bold posters
(which waggle a little

from the air conditioner)
hung high on the

inside of the
Burger King's windows.

DOUBLE FUGUE

Crisp and busy

city morning—many quick long legs

commute right past



the gold-flecked starling

fastidious pecking—sidewalk cracks

for fresh black ants.