Funny Looking Angels
I read the formal letter to my soul
Copy dust clinging to my fingers
Yellow copy tight in my hand
A brazen importunity of two kings
Extravagance of eulogy
Preached to the peaks of two ears
Proud are the victors of shamed seed
Faculties of expressions conquered
The solitary choices kidnapped at dusk
Disapproving judgements pile
Like green hills each towering
Over the next in divine opulence
Sobbing away the sky, half choked
By a paroxysm of swallowed tears
Lead the way to our salvation
A Hand to Protect Him From Nothing
He was born at the scene of a crime
Left like the others – no scream or fight
Do your dreams get weary – like mine?
Even shadows are only young for a moment
Maybe we’ll rediscover love
With the distant wounded
The lost and crippled
And those who can’t revive their dream
Remarks Were Prettier Than Crystal Bells
that makes society so dreadful
no longer
I replace them
with rippling rhododendron
flooding skies
Howled sentiment
glorious and gorgeous
an ornamental breath
Your remarks
were prettier than crystal bells
A Death in East Village (For Bobby Driscoll)
shadowing the stream of humanity
A body lays in a tenement
but there is no death-plot in this scene
Stripped of your pixie dust
Pockets of masticated fame
Deference and concession to reality
are both deceptive and cruel
I picture a wrapped body
stiff and floating
the river of Acheron
where death had kidnapped him
Expectations of Flight
fear won’t slow me down
Into a world of greed and need
fear, regret and doubt
I hated calling on you
as frequent as it rained
Nothing left to reason with
and nothing more to say
I’ve felt myself slipping
from here for some while
Soft Abuse
sweet ringlets
won’t let me in
repeated yawn
over porch
undaunted by failure
green forfeit
golden push
gaunt and ghastly
pressed appliance
dangling drugs
dissipated illusion
save truth
The Scion Ratchet (Part One: The Return to Form)
A mirror; admonitory ferments
Given to diluvian deserts
Sons and daughters
Once red and green
Jump from trees like angels
Embrace our soul
Warm womb around us
A eulogy that lasts for weeks
A culmination of breeze
halted to encumber
the crux of the universe
Temperament now dismissed
Winds distend and burst
Pliant and submissive to the birth
The cradle of the basin
overflows the bassinet;
full of tears
The pageantry of life
fills our mouths
and drowns our being once more
Nothing is left to document
Words not yet delivered
and I among them, the man with no meaning
Our sun guides each movement
Heckling our fading admiration
To rise with indifference each day
But what are victims of prophesy
if not the phantoms
of what we call life
In a ballet of opulence,
our sons and daughters
are red and green once more