Mad summer’s face shall quickly fall,
when autumn shows its cheek.
For now, I wear a sylvan shawl
and wait for leaves to speak.
Tag Archives: poem
Flying Around My Back
A down and out vagrant, silently singing the
blues through scarlet eyes, weeps upon this
lustrous silk lap while we wait for her highness, who
sits on hands dripping with egg yolk.
Painted cheeks and impeccable hair—nothing short of
an illusion. We perform for them, for you, and for
us, but not for me.
Never for me.
Louisa
Sitting in the sunshine, softer than silk,
copper braids resting against her back,
she knows nothing (yet) of knuckles that
bruise scraps of skin in midnight rooms.
Curtains fly up in rosy rooms.
The day goes down with a lavender bruise.
Champagne lace sticks to that fragile back
as she offers up sweet stainless silk.
:::when I stop:::
Thirty-four before seven, but
twenty-six after six.
In a bewitching mist, bodies
are exchanged, old for young,
clean for soiled–male for female.
Half past six, but
thirty before seven.
Shoulder blades come undone.
Ankles turn into fat drippings.
Water, flushed with flesh,
absorbs bucolic knots, along
with the sweat that girdles them.
untitled
Your life belongs to you alone;
beware of pointing blame.
To wretchedness that you have sown,
you must affix your name.
night walk
Now and again, the clocks that we’ve
buried offer us calloused palms.
Dressed in weary bandages of dry, rotting
earth, weeping hands reach out from biting
mire with time on their skin.
They do this so that we may know the
frailty of our faces.
Wedding March
Over glowing glass,
broken feet beckon shyly,
fearful of impassioned paths.
Wisteria hair
stumbles against broad shoulders,
steeped in the heat of her flame.
Household Songs: The Brief and Unremarkable Life of Joseph Clarence Strauss/XII
Hands–puckered, pale, and patched–
slowly grow stiff
in the geometric sea that once kept
them warm.
All branches are struck by
time’s uncontrollable thunder.
Incomplete trees line landscapes, clinging fiercely to
shifting earth.
Cinquain/LXXXVI
scandals,
from mouth to ear,
waft slyly by candles,
whilst tipsy minions strain to hear
cheap smears
Broken Bars
Empty as David’s seat, a befouled mouth shrieks
at high Sturgeon Moon, gasping for air–what
little can be had–within an offensive red sea,
which swirls malevolently throughout multitudes
of calloused feet, taunting us with decades of
dying heads.
Wrenched from ancient jaws with unremitting
brutality, sovereignty–smoother than pink root
and whiter than snow–gallops away from smoldering
earth around thick, sinuous necks.
Faithful soldiers, once unyielding in their loyalty, vanish
into a sylvan embrace, forever silent in their surrender.
sundry folly 