Inveterately Editing

Cartoons: tangled male
and female flesh –
indiscriminately
meshed, undressed –
freshly misconstrued –
reduced to tiny silly outline

in my mind – clumsily
untrue: three and four
dimensions bled to two:
toppled on its side:
so my inveterately
editing reductive brutal

memory makes mince
of all the round, warm,
breathing, enigmatic selves
whom I once knew
but evidently now refuse
to recollect in you.

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Late Afternoons in Early March

Late afternoons in early March are masculine.
Like quiet fathers, they hold onto light –
just long enough to demonstrate their might –

remain as strong and bright and undefeated
as the end of any day could ever be:
suggest the welcome fantasy they hold

the key to everything: they will bring us
safely, smoothly into Spring: all will be all right.
Until, that is, they’re murdered by the night.

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Coming, Going

You want to paint a cartoon childhood:
let a Disney shaft of light
illuminate a small boy’s face –
cutting it obliquely into staged surprise –
lending it a sweet and storied grace –

but look again into those
frightened and embarrassed eyes:
you haven’t penetrated the disguise –
can’t know what’s flitting through another
head, however young: chances are

it’s not untouched by dread; chances are
it dwells among the terrors of unknowing.
Not that something isn’t glowing.
But who knows what’s around, behind,
above, below it – coming, going.

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Pharaonic Parapraxis

Before it slips into the mortal and amoral coil
of blank forgetfulness, one hopes it finally relaxes –
like a Pharaoh loosed from all his wraps
and obligations: perhaps looks back, as Pharaoh

might, before he squirrels away into the bright
abyss, to see if he can catch what will become
of some of his innumerable quantum bits
and slips-of-tongue beyond the coalescence

which afforded them Pharaonic personality.
Today recalls the enigmatic Sphinx, not Shelley’s,
but the cartoon version with the jelly belly that
you dreamed last night – the frightful sight of which

awakened you – as terrified as you had been
of clowns when you were baby-round and didn’t
know why grownups put on lurid makeup. Today
recalls the shake-up of an absolute aloneness.

Consciousness, that funny thing! – so full
of goofy paradox – Pharaonic parapraxis!
Before it slips into the mortal and amoral coil
of blank forgetfulness, one hopes it finally relaxes.

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Cameo Role

Watch her:
every now and then
she’ll let her thin
penumbrally encumbered self

begin to flicker in her dimness
for an instant:
somewhere in the murky bowl
of her extravagances –

rare despairs – expensive guilts –
you’ll see a glint –
a dare –

of soul.

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If You Can

Look him in the eyes
if you can.
Unload

whatever’s in the guise
of the man.
Decode.

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Blue Sky, March 1st

We’ve cracked the egg –
the secret’s out –
a sweet epiphany is fresh –

we “broke a leg” –
we banished doubt –
its deep penumbral sentient mesh

does not now beg
or root about
for ways for us to make it flesh.

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