Los Angeles, Griffith Park

August 4, 1984

The airtight vision of poets and lovers

covers the world:

three die of love in Los Angeles

and the merry-go-round swirls in air

and arias of machines swirl in ears

claps of hooves and muscle

bubble-gum blooms from a nostril

steeds and mares painted once a year

with the same colors

the same lipstick and marker—

and the same mother

slaps another quarter in the slot

motion without children

and laughter

and the mother wrinkles in the background

dreaming of pigeons and laundry

heat saturates parked cars

Pico of white t-shirts and knives

the stabbing of a summer afternoon

and blood dried to a door

comes to life in flakes and flashes

a red snow of steeples

of cemeteries and families

music surrounds the women

dancing in gas stations

hothouse hairdos bristle

and matchbooks full of children

climb into the air like screams.

Published in Illya's Honey, Winter 2003.

An Assumption

You like the dark things,

all covered with barnacles

like a mussle-shell.

Drawn to death,

you are in-folded

like a casket.

Streets damp with blood,

whores painted to walls

like murals.

The moon is a distraction,

not neon stars, not

theater strangers—

Two men

hug you with smoke:

assume your value

by the

way

you

reflect

light.

Published in Goblets, Summer 1983

A Quiet Yellow Prelude

Music extracts a certain flavor

from the lemon:

a quiet yellow prelude that

runs beside candle light,

or down the bookcase—

a revelation

revealing nothing of sources

or sources of sound.

It harmoniously

pontificates the pastoral and

precludes a jumpiness—

a kinetic crushing

of note upon note,

strain upon strain.

Evolution

snaps rubber-band-like

over the score and

sits down

breathlessly

beating piano chords

to a riff of yellow diatoms.

Published in the Spring 2006 edition of Spire.

Drawing

The face is still paper.

A line.

A shadow.

The top of a lip

wanting a kiss,

a bridge of nose,

a hint of eye.

The face is manufactured

from stumps,

charcoal,

erasures,

lines

searching for a finish.

It is as though we made love on paper

and molted our shadows.

Published in Bitterroot, Summer 1988

No Need to Wait Longer

longer

my uncle was in his concrete tomb

buried hours before

he waited too long

not that he would

not capable now of the most simple wish

not the choice of jacket or work shirt

not which pictures of his grandchildren to lie with

not which carnation or rose to smell for eternity.

My ear was mine.

I shopped diligently:

price, skill, selection—

for the right hands to

pierce my ear

while I still had time to enjoy it.

Published in Pearl, Spring/Summer 2004

Drawing

The face is still paper.

A line.

A shadow.

The top of a lip

wanting a kiss,

a bridge of nose,

a hint of eye.

The face is manufactured

from stumps,

charcoal,

erasures,

lines

searching for a finish.

It is as though we made love on paper

and molted our shadows.

Published in Bitterroot, Summer 1988

Fortune Cookie

The peanuts in the Kung Pao Chicken crawl like beetles.

Even the pan-fried noodles burrow through the sauce like legless lizards.

Bean sprouts graft onto water chestnuts,

form a new species of plant.

Goldfish from the Buddha's feet swim in and out of the restaurant,

greeting the regulars with orange lips.

Customers ignore the grinning catfish among seared vegetables. He is too precocious.

The Peking Duck complains about the temperature and the mood lighting.

It is too dark to be eaten properly.

Evenings when the food is fresh

prove the best time for fortunes to come true.

Published in Comstock Review, Fall/Winter 2005

Halloween

Let phalanges hug the door knocker

with their dried sinew

let the door rust and squeak

do not clear the cob webs from the roses

or the howl of wolves from the sky

speak only in whisper so not to wake the dead

under head stones

on the lawn where bones glow.

Devour eyes from pumpkin heads

burning on the porch

allow rats to frolic

better the cat should play with them

hiss and snarl

a side show

beside the old dead women

oozing something onto the cauldron—

she wears a cockroach broach

on her left lapel

just above the place her heart used to be.

Let snails consume black roses

seize glimpses of ghost here

there

flickers of light

at the edge of seeing

dig deeply into the slime

the segments of worms

cracked and bleeding bone

wrap your fingers around slick fringed apparitions

steal laughter from mad men

peel wings from carrion beetles

place the head of a snake in your mouth

feel its tongue with your tongue

taste the chocolate as it melts.

Comstock Review, Fall/Winter 2003

of everything

like glass

slick after a rain

then spotted with the reminder of rain

if only

the space between stars

is

filled with something

they tell me

light might have weight

after all

assumptions

torn quietly

while you work

so you

do

not

notice

until the children come home

with questions that cannot be answered any longer

in

this context

on my hand all of it

just as though God

tattooed it there

in

one

dimension

a

simple

line

examined closely enough

to reveal

the transparency of everything.