Place For It

Arrived in picked-at snags and wicked spatters –

rags and tatters born of haste and waste

and all the other traits that make for taste –

and not a little ad hoc grace and wit.

This surely is the place for it.

.

Sometimes the Task

Sometimes the task
is not to lose the mask
but find a mask to wear -
so as not to have to bare
what you must bear.









.

Three Faces

With a solicitude whose grace became apparent

by their evident belief that in a glance

I would be able to advance

a brief but sensitive appraisal of the fine array

of nuanced features they had brought me to display,

three faces just arose to offer their vicissitudes today.

They couldn’t stay: there were too many other eyes

to heed, to feed – to gauge, assuage – the rage

of some of whose intemperate uncertainties

they might be able to allay.

.

The Creaturehood

Two creatures left

the Creaturehood today.

They’d had enough

of never having any say

in what got done with them.

No one was having

any fun with them!

So now they’re gone.

(Damned Creaturehood,

of course, goes on.)

.

Blue Lady

Ah, the uses to which her inscribing hand is put!

They scour her from head to foot.

The schemes Blue Lady manifests all day and night,

the dreams she looses from her inner sight

and writes and draws without a pause:

what flames do they ignite?

What sweet devotions do they host?

What are the endlessly created notions of a ghost?

.

Let’s Praise the Eyes

Let’s praise the eyes –

how they assess and test the size of everything –

note every riffling feather on that wing –

see how the muscles in his throat permit that man to sing.

Let’s praise them more.

Let’s praise their range of strange capacities

to tease, to fool, to school you, make you breathe

a different atmosphere than you had breathed before.

Let’s praise how wide and wise they’d let us be

if we would let our eyes beget

and re-beget the world into the thing it is:

a fresh surprise. Let’s praise – let’s raise – our eyes.

.

Hadda Be There

He thinks it’s funny,

she doesn’t.

Ya hadda be there

and she wasn’t.

.

Florid Orange

 

We didn't want her to at first,

but then no longer fought her.

Florid Orange wants to swim!

You'll find her in the water.

.

I Can’t Help It

I can’t help it if I’m

absolutely beautiful.

I didn’t ask for all

the attributes I’ve got.

Homage paid to me

is never merely dutiful.

People strain for words

to praise me, not

believing what they see.

I am coming humbly

to accept that what
they see is me.

.

Your Quadruped and You

Through boredom, 

death or yearning 

for another start –

though it relieve 

or break 

your heart –

one day your 

quadruped and you

will have to part.

.

Figure in the Fantasy

The figure

in the fantasy

grows hazy –

rudely, negligently lazy –

will not keep the shape

that made you gape –

lets the ardor leak –

leaves the penis

weak –

and otherwise

abandons you

to randomness –

probably to be

bereft

at what is left.

What is left?

What has left?

Something’s left.

.

Rebecca and Her Sister Ann

Except for heads and faces and a hidden small assortment of their

private parts, Rebecca and her sister Ann are made of hair.

They’d like to tell you why but they don’t dare.

.

In the Wake of Senseless Slaughter

In the wake of senseless slaughter

Soul feels like it’s wading waist-deep

into toxic water, breathing viral air,

yet striving, striding bare through it, 

to dare through sudden death's despair

and strife to clear another place for life.

.

Prototype

Today we are a prototype –

an unexampled species –

beyond the reach of ease,

efficiency or efficacious use –

a loose brigade of presence

and of shape: designed

for gaping at. We rather

like the blatant fact of us:

this fuss, this thing we are.

Like bright light captured

in a jar, shaken up to make
a jam. We am we am we am.

.

A Central Part of You

Darting mostly out

of view

is what

a central part of you

wants most

to do.









.

O Blessèd Opposite!

Surely (at least when we got up this morning we were sure)

a rare duality we could rely on – as dependable as light and dark,

or lose and find – providing all the polished metal of an armature

of meaning into which we now relievedly might park our bootless

anxious systems of response – the breath and strife of “mind” –

was life and death. O blessèd opposite! One was not the other;

ergo each suggested what the other had to be. But suddenly,

from nowhere we could see, we heard – as raucous as the caw

of dawn-awakened birds: “life and death are only words.”

.

On Saturdays

On Saturdays Luanne sequestered herself

in a gilded étagère – she packed

herself into this standing art nouveau affair

as if she were a rare array of bibelots

and chinaware. We don’t know why

she liked it there.

.

Equanimity

Equanimity insisted on itself today.

It didn’t care how many

disparate anomalies got in its way.











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