GLOVED
(Gloved. Hid in shadow. A blow ready to land–)
love
creeps on tiptoe
blackjack in either hand.
IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION
She loved Jesus, the Church, and nuns.
Her favorite toy was her rosary.
He thought only of swords and guns,
of battles and of soldiery.
When she was little and he was young,
she had her Bible and he his drums.
The eagle grew up, as did the dove.
And when they grew up they fell in love,
He wore his beard just like a badge,
and her hair was like a halo.
But after they gave their pledge
he enlisted to be a sailor.
Off he went to win the war.
She hadn’t understood what he meant
when he said he got so bored
when she gave up her marriage for Lent.
When she was little and he was young
she got a Bible and he got a drum.
The eagle grew up, as did the dove,
and when they grew up they fell in love.
And their union was a wonderment
of matched opportunities and goals:
Because he was exploded at the front,
and she prays daily for his soul.
MOSES NEVER WON A NEBULA
Genesis was from the
earliest sci-fi writer,
with tales that told the genre:
A scientist who made
a universe and strove
to keep his androids safe
from any taste of morality
and free from immortality,
and the price the robots paid.
The creation of murder
and the mark it made,
and when the world was drowned.
And divine promises of forever,
transmutations into salt,
and how the nations came about,
and how languages began.
How a prisoner’s prophet dreams
unfolded the famines that led
to Pharaoh’s favor and reward
and the enslavement that resulted.
He wrote of giants and, later,
of supermen and leviathans,
and how to survive a whale
or a wilderness;
of bushes that talked and burned
and sawing the sea in half
and halting the course of suns.
Some Moses canon is in dispute,
but not his imagination.
IT WAS EVE WHO CHANGED TOMORROWS: A PORTRAIT
Your blonde avalanche threatens to end the temples;
ears vibrate with chants, hymns, and psalms of later rites.
Your eyebrows are branches from the destiny trees.
Your tongue smiles, predicts mankind’s ongoing journey
from garden to crypt, from safety to testedness
at Eden’s eclipse. Your eye looks to a future
lattice of your ribs guarding mankind’s heart,
though they’d been equipped to status your appendage.
Your garter snake lips pulse upon your marble face.
Though angels still dance and geologists still sigh,
your gold avalanche still may bury your temples.
THROWN OVER
Usurped by September,
last summer’s emperor
will pass into legend
with his castles of sand.
Days started to funnel
towards autumn’s narrow
dark-dominated hours
when the sun would unpower,
the maples would unleaf,
and the winds would turn knives.
You, Queen, deposed August,
saying earth was athirst.
You expect your new king
to provide your sweet reign.
September’s rule, so mild,
must soon give way to wild
tyrants whose boons are thorns,
brambles, bitter acorns.
I, the summer’s specter,
reminisce my scepter,
my signet, and my orb
while I try to absorb
this flood of banishment.
Once, before you rent
our robes of gold purple,
I ignored life’s circle.
It still seems long before
my son’s revolt restores.