The public order
of the ocean,
a blur of mist and foam.
The captive sounds
of marching throngs
so felt this far
from home.
A crushing flood
of tides and breakers,
twelve bars into song
assuage the mystic
caravan singing,
everybody
let’s get stoned.
Shrieking, cry the gulls
above the din
of skin and groans.
I toss a shell.
It’s gonna rain.
I feel it
in my bones.
it begins as a wisp
neither taut nor explicit
a scribbled idea
on a plain yellow post-it,
sitting for weeks
til the stickiness faded
then moved ’round the table
it’s purpose degraded
and ultimately lands
in pile, curled – misled
like so many of my thoughts
of desire go unread.
The petals, her soliloquy,
quivering with imbued poise
and rapt, the mind’s quick fancy
to capture her employs.
Among the quichens grows a kree
a site-astoric flustsymbly.
A kree is there, not roneously,
but freet and gorl and groverly.
And how it came to grow just there,
the primmets wonder with atious care,
For quichens do not keep or share
their time or place or own elsewhere.
The primmets garnered brave and asked
the kree just how it came to pass
that it was given reign to mass
and live with quichens, in their class.
The kree looked puzzled, audly moussed
the primmetts had not gaged – deduced
the kree was here for years to roost
and shared it with the quichens fruste.
Sometimes, I weep, yet cannot
see the edge’s line and filigree.
Add to this – dim appeal,
obtuse affection, not fresh not real.
Creek beds flow in pouring rain
tears evolve, invoking pain.
A polish on the floor reflects
the one light on, that one affects.
A square persona, mirrored there
in lust’rous promise, staid and clear.
Such consequence – o tainted eyes
beneath a sad and milky sky.
When the leaves are swept away at night
and the chill cleaves to me,
I am reminded that I am descended
from those who worked the land.
tilled soil – tossed stone
to harvest, afford a life of
growing and yearning, splitting
and churning a song of origins
as a lantern tilted
sheds light on enclosed spaces
of circumstance. Places where poems
are seen, but not written.
Tuneful sounds once heard in the labors
of daylight, lulled by passing clouds
and mute when night comes on. Dirt is rinsed
from beneath fingernails and sleep arrives early
with a crisp quilt. Night whispers
it’s own beginning and the wind tosses aside
that which grips me.
Somewhere, the moonlight
turned to give credence
to her tangled removing.
A breaker rolled in
that enticed
and embraced her.
Demands awakened-
her own hurt and pooling.
Somehow, a surging rush
made the unknown electric.
Bristling with joy,
fingered in choosing,
a lover in darkness,
confessing and soothing.
Taps and Ratamacues 