JENNIFER IN TWO VOICES


I know why the sky sings the blues -- for you, Jenny, for you -- atmosphere breaks down and cries. Once the wind must have had your voice: Wind makes my soul rejoice to hear your echo once more. Your precious beauty to preserve, earth freezes to its nerves in ecstasies of ermine. And the waves for you outreach -- the sea begs up the beach, hands-&-knees its way in pride. And trees have honored you in gold, red carpets where you rode, jade ceilings and emerald floors -- nature's learned your lesson well how to be beautiful: your appearance is your sermon.


I know why the sky sings the blues -- for you, Jenny, for you -- atmosphere breaks down and cries. (Across the landscape many-firred, atmosphere breaks down and cries,)  Once the wind must have had your voice: Wind makes my soul rejoice to hear your echo once more. (urges us make love manifold. To hear your echo once more) Your precious beauty to preserve, earth freezes to its nerves in ecstasies of ermine. (among the creeks and conifers in ecstacies of ermine.) - And the waves for you outreach -- the sea begs up the beach, hands-&-knees its way in pride. (in fields of foxes henna-furred -- I hands-n-knees my way inside) And trees have honored you in gold, red carpets where you rode, jade ceilings and emerald floors -- (where moist warmth is plentiful. On jade ceilings & emerald floors,) nature's learned your lesson well how to be beautiful: your appearance is your sermon. (raven-eyed/lynx-face Jennifer: Your appearance is your sermon.)

Across the landscape many-firred, atmosphere breaks down and cries, urges us make love manifold. To hear your echo once more among the creeks and conifers in ecstasies of ermine, in fields of foxes henna-furred -- I hands-n-knees my way inside where moist warmth is plentiful. On jade ceilings & emerald floors, raven-eyed/lynx-face Jennifer: Your appearance is your sermon.



TIMES AS GOLDEN CALVES


Plaster casts and black sutures

cohabit with surgeons’ masks. Doctors lift up their scalpel like an execution axe in service of ice sculpture. They daydream of parachutes to hurtle them through their clouds.



And the butcher is carcass,

as the treaty is the war, or the poacher is his traps. The scarecrow loves the crow, and the shooter shares the blast. Ventriloquist is dummy when a be stops becoming.



Views of peasant and castle

once framed the common outlook, as though the sheep needed wolves, as though serfs needed dukes, to justify how their gulf would link prey to predator by way of divine order.



All the pasts have their futures

and all futures have their pasts.

But the present is itself.



MUSHROOMING



If you were forest

I could purport

this noble purpose

for these frequent

meticulous surveys

that I perform

throughout your moist

and fetid shadows.



RUBICON


Each dawn comes embarrassed.

Time rearranges us, from chaos to chaos.



Our memories are ghosts of what

were once our pasts

before structures collapsed.



Infinities of if permit change to exist.

Wisdom becomes mischief.

Stoics become criers in meditation choirs for umbilical pyres.



Even the Rubicon once got lost in the swamps

and then was retro-conned.

Destiny is not fact.



Fates are carefully stacked by gambling architects

to construct poker fraud. Certainty’s a façade,

installed by clever gods. Time rearranges us.



From chaos to chaos, each dawn comes embarrassed.





QUATRAINS, EXPLICATION


You kissed me in your garden, and then you tortured me.

I learned in your orchard belief forestalled pardon.

With the heat of parenthood you loved me at once

then suddenly took affront when I ate what was good.

Your day hovered, stern and still after the roosters crowed.

I staggered to the crossroad that led up to the hill.

My sweetest tree lost its leaves, my rose just yielded thorns.

My clothes were raffled and torn by guards who were thieves,

while a thief gave me succor. By comrades unfriended,

my murder unattended but for mother and whore.



It’s the gravel in the rattle

the critics listen for,

the riddle at the middle of poetry.

That’s the ambiguity

that they adore.



You planted my temptation, knowing I would fail,

then carpentered the nails for my situation.

You were judge and betrayer, prosecutor and crowd,

you, the weaver of my shroud, the author of my prayers.

I was Jesus and Adam, pillars of your temple,

my deaths your staged examples. But I am yet a man.