FANTASTIC MUNDANITIES 

Dawn is the prelude  

to the opera called Sunset,

with movements and motifs between. 

And we audience 

intent upon every set, 

witness the progress of each scene, 

the sky’s chorus, 

clouds of sopranos, 

sun’s tenor, 

Picador piccolos 

incite the arena, 

the crowd, the bull, 

and the matador 

towards the scarletted bull fight 

that will climax the day’s events. 

There will be bravery 

on full display, 

and doomed passions 

of hope and faith and death, 

fate and undying love. 

We believe the dramatic fantasies that we see 

mirror our own realities. 

LOVE’S LOVING PARTS 

I eyed your eye, I smelled your smile, 

and I knew you’d be my New. 

My Former (that former of technique) 

had just passed into the past,

but I recalled what she called “love’s loving parts.” 

Our fingers feel and our feelings expand. 

Our hands in hands handed us the signal, 

fingers on arms rearmed my advance. 

Your skin was like felt as I felt your Every. 

Then we undressed to address our opened desires. 

In the design of the phallus a size fallacy 

is sometimes alleged, but it fits where most fit: 

We prove it as we apply love’s loving parts. 

From these shadows you’ll shadow me some tomorrow 

though absent as the scent of your here-and-there hairs, 

but in this happy present you’re my present  

with love’s loving parts.  

THE LUNAR DIET 

On late nights you’ve seen that Diana chick 

and you’ve heard her weightloss achtick. 

”In one month all your bulk will be gone,” 

But of course it’s all a con. 

Although her so-called Diet of the Moon 

with its traces of selenium and witchesbroom 

will indeed disappear your unwanted shape 

and you’ll vanish all your extra weight, 

but it will all come back again, 

your loss will become your gain 

and all too soon 

you’ll mushroom, you’ll boomerang, you’ll balloon. 

COLLIDOSCOPE

Angry dark air, pinkandoranging outside, banners in on HEADLINES of tragedy-war-genocide.

In Arthur MacArthur’s granite shade (his slow gray empire sword picketed by peacenik pigeons)

old plaid men playchessplaychessplaychessplaychess for their lives. Stability checks liberty bleeding,

Justice dies en passant.

And HEADLINE’s black arts wrestle my gentled soul to earth. But then enter golden wonder sun’s Blue Commandos, infiltrating the park even as new mozzarella tourists wander cluelessly in. 

And teeter-totter boombox juniors skitter zigzag

across old decorums, untutored yet in the

long division between war games and their play (these innocent! Alien alike to criticism and discipline).

And improvised ivory and emerald and ruby

and amethyst and sapphire devices

explode explode along the green, and  

HEADLINE, distracted, loses its hold. O, inconsolable

Morning: captured by its own good looks.

LOCKS & BOXES

Accords between meek aand might are accordions

compressed and stretched, stung and tortured between locks and boxes:

to manufacture the din sequence,

bands stumble past breaks and lost jams.

Women are not alone in reading the omen,

watching World serally unfold as locks and boxes.

And so it goes with the Innocent,

who humbly pray, “Break the logjam.” 

…