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.