December Pomes

1.

Sweet riddle
Girl in slacks
Venting naked toes
to the sunshine
Were you closer-like
I'da joined your cause, come to your side
Kissed your plumpripe lips

Tenderhearted angel
When sweet words were enough
You'd wade light, shallow,
Impertinent
Into my footprints
On cold a dawn
--who's to say you wasn't perfect?

But it doesn't matter;
The highway it separates
and
Speaks plenty now

For us both.


2.

Fallopian dungeon
O such a state
The inherently wretched
Find mercy in fate
I have found this dingy
spot, --pointing--here,
Swallowed my tongue
Consumed my fear
And when there is nothing about which to care
I will fast through the winter, subsisting on air,
Consuming my stomach, so bitter in taste
The looping whorls of acid
And humor
And waste

And so we compound
Delicate, recused
Stations of the cross
Of battery bruise
Delivered daily
Give father and son
The words of redemption
That never did come

The years have all slipped
As fingers through weeds
Sands of the jealous
in word and in deed
Set pillows 'pon bricks
The humblest, sure
The mattress is satire;
The patient is cured.


3.

The morning song
Drops the drop
Shadows flop
And hide away til summer

The garden whistles
Alone, serious
It draws back the hammer
On the stillness

Arguments rain down suddenly on
This particular morning
The weeds feed
And feast on our scraps

But you
You're smart
You never
Done a day's work in your life, see

(You like it that way)

So when the sparrows speak, softsing
Like a thermometer dropping
Scattering mercury,
Mother of pearl

Only then do I, at last, see
In the mess of trees
Your dreamy
Creamy eyes

How I fall.


4.

Riverbank red fingers
Rub cold buttons
Squeezing life, so.

Doll
Your memory's much shorter than most;
And for that, see, I'm glad
Cos in your squinty eyes is still
Contaminent
Undigested poison

Now, as I say,
The river ruins us both
Sets us asail, this scalding bathwater,
But now that union
--poison of poisons--
Makes its way to the spawing grounds
And
Somehow drowns the fish.


5.

Shadows pop
Delirious and void
Against a stale hot Sunday
morning sidewalk
The angry sun
is at it again.
Who will wait
When the months bleed rainwater
For the mail?
I have to perservere this summer,
Make ends meet.


6.

Angels tread
Where I fear to go
Where the whole affair
Has no meaning, so.

If you could shuffle it off
In the name of bravery
It wouldn't be bravery at all
No, you'd be gone
Matterless
And matter less
Than sunshine in a bottle

Still
When we reach back
Affairs split past
There's no accusation
None a'tall this present morning
No grift
No honeysuckle sweetness to greet
You
You hang.
And that is all.


7.

Guillotine humor
Simmers softly
As we raise the singing blade

We were happy then
The usual, you asked for,
And I more than delivered

Spare me your curses,
The grinding blinding black/white TV
Your excuses are your own

When the smudge fades
And the sleep is rubbed
Out your eyes

I will repeat, samesoft
Let's escape
While we still have legs

This barstool
Is not so far
From the ground.


8.

Ain't no truth
There ain't
Only rock-ribbed accounting for
What you missed
Sometimes on the way, sure,
There's ripples
Radiating out
Causing fever, commotion
Locking out change.

Holistic healers
To say nothing of journalistic dealers
Who can absorb the moonlight
Through bare skin

O peptic ulcer!
An elemental bungling
That tortures precision
Out of the least of us, right up to the nipple

It is up to You
To drop and squeeze
Make noise like a balloon
The majesty of history is upon us

The coronation calls now
And the winner, surely,
Is me.