I've posted like 30 or so new poems here in this blog. Choose "older" to view the rest of them. You'll see i have like terty entries today. So the order is actually bassackwards but whatever. Just think dyslexic for me, would ya? Hugs and kisses, ceej

Moths are flapping behind the colored glass portrait of a dead Christ,
the thirteenth station—He's on His mother's lap. Mary's tears are as blue
as her robe. Tonight is the first time ever in my life to touch snow.
There is less than an inch on the ground, but for Alabama
this is a miracle. Tomorrow they might even cancel school.
Father Neske chants hallelujah and the children follow in warm echoes.

The dunces in the cry room are deaf to the other children's echoes.
They hear mass through a tinny speaker next to a statue of Christ
on the crucifix hanging on the wall. The rest of the school
is sitting boy-girl-boy-girl in the pews—white collared shirts and blue
ties for the boys. In front of me, an old bearded man in a white Alabama
Crimson Tide sweatshirt clips his nails. The clippings drop like snow.

Hartley Griffith and I face-lock with laughter as the paper snow
outside spins down in flakes. I whisper: Hotel-Alpha-Romeo-Tango-Lima-Echo-
Yankee! So goes the fifth-grade soldier code for Catholic Alabama
boys in love with this blonde northern belle next to me. At age five, I loved Christ
so much I wanted to be a priest. But now, Nintendo and Hartley's Yankee blue
eyes separate me from God. Hartley Griffith is the new girl at our school.

She moved here from St. Cloud, Minnesota—from a public school
where every afternoon kids play sardines and dungeon in the snow.
My mother says to stay inside. I play games where Italian plumbers in blue
overalls chase bouncing stars. A mushroom is an extra life. I fear the echoes
of turtle shells ricocheting off white brick. My inspiration is Jesus Christ
carrying His cross. I must save the Yankee Princess trapped in Alabama.

Mama tells me our family is moving in six months from Alabama
to West Virginia. Papa has a new practice. No more St. Ignatius school.
I will attend an ex-military institution. There are no classes there about Christ.
I will wear a blazer and a tie. Mama says up north there is always snow
in the winter. "West Virginia seceded from the Confederacy," the echoes
of Mrs. Sullivan's fifth-grade Civil War lecture. A boy of gray must turn blue.

Outside there are stars in the trees along the road—red, white and blue.
A robot Santa Claus with rosy cheeks waves three flags: one for Alabama,
one for the Confederacy, and one for the USA. From inside we hear the echoes
of a siren howling down the road. Father Neske tells a joke. The school
cheers with joy. I'm not sure what Father has said but maybe it's about the snow.
Maybe tonight is special. A siren is rushing to the new virgin. Jesus Christ

is born days before schedule. Papa in a blue scrub suit will visit my new school
next year to talk to the kids about that evening down in Alabama, when snow
fell from the moon; the echoes of organ blasts too soon delivered a new baby Christ.

Hurricane Sidring falls breaking the bones of our home.
Papa performs surgery for the spirits of the Virgin Mary.
Lola Neneng nightly prays the rosary alone in her room.
The body of a black boy burns in Mama's wedding dress.

I'm one of a hundred children in a dusty field chasing a ball.
Benedict, an altar boy, gives frankincense to the clown.
I squash mites between little bumps of white concrete.
Bow to pigtailed Peggy in the first grade fashion show.

At the gymnasium an Indian mother speaks black magic.
The red spotted peacock desires my eyeballs for Christmas.
Tita Lagrimas laughs at a cross-eyed anchorman on TV.
My mother has a mole in the white of her right eye.

Tonight, my family hangs ornaments on the plastic tree.
It is my duty to God to save the galaxy in our backyard.
I rip the arms of baby Jesus with every cracked branch.
Bloody broken guitar strings dangle stones over the crib.

Rollercoaster bar too heavy to grip for my tiny fingers.
Ringing church bells bring a bruised glow to Abby's lips.
Choirs of freckled dolls sing It's a small world after all.
An armless dog grins at the giant baby fiddling above.

This morning, mama drinks her coffee softly crying.
My sisters wrap me up in freshly warmed bed sheets.
The moon spins and sparkles inside hot blueberry pie.
My family flies past Jupiter in our rusty old minivan.

pieces of dead wasps
painstakingly baroque
of witness accounts carved in flaws
parallel to the rose, homeward

patiently over opened graves
and fantasies of a certain love within fantasies
A child is kissing another child
as we forget fear in silence
how the collision is silent

sweat to the skin of another, salt
of oceans filtered through teeth, then
from the lips, tears?
each petal that loves
and why not love the child

I peak out from behind an empty seat.
The moon shines up on the giant screen.
Elliot flies by bike against the moonlight.
Like baked ham on a stick, E.T.'s head
juts out of the basket guiding the boy
and his bike to the spaceship heading home.

I beg mama for us to go home.
Too small to sit, I fold up with my seat.
I start to cry even though I'm a boy.
Tito Boy covers my mouth and points to the screen.
"Shh, hijo…look! He's sick." E.T.'s head
caves in. The screen flickers as the light

from the projector dies. The yellow lights
above fade in. Now I'm sure we'll head home.
But the movie starts up again. I see shadows of heads
on E.T.'s pale body. Sliding under the seat
I pretend the sticky floor is the screen.
A green Gummy Bear is E.T. and I, the boy,

Elliot. "Be Good," says E.T. A boy
like me cannot dream with the lights
off—the yellow above fades out as the screen
lights up again. The bear tells me, "E.T. phone home."
Barely lit, the popcorn spread under the seat
are stars. I bite off the Gummy Bear's head.

The taste of green and a hair from a lady's head,
thin and long, certainly not mine—not a boy's!
Reaching my hand in the dark below my seat
I stub my finger on cold metal. Ouch! A light
warmth drips down my fingers. Let's go home!
There's no point in crying, their eyes locked on the screen.

I clutch my finger near my chest. I smell sunscreen,
coconut still on my nose. We're at Naggs Head
for vacation this weekend. The sun rose from its home
in the ocean—I saw it this morning. Tito Boy
said "Don't look too long at the sunlight!"
I stare at him now up there on his seat.

His arm around my empty seat, wide eyes on the screen.
A warm blue light shines around his head.
With his smile I can tell Tito Boy is at home.

like the blur of Rudy Tyler
the token black kid
in the teen flick Space Camp
who loved science
and had big dreams
of a fast food franchise
in space, fragile
because the stain of
a finger on the screen
was a ghost I chose
not to rub away else
the gape of innocence
might have choked
on the earth, a blue marble
of mammoth emotion, because
just outside the spaceship window
the moon will smile
searing eyes with strange signs
like the hurricane in Jupiter's side
or silhouettes of Jesus on a cow
or the mole in mother's eye—
the ancestral tears of symmetry
petrified in DNA
vapor from the tongue
the bittersweet oceans
returning to stars

Above the ferry set adrift the river Thames flies
the golden orb of Magdaline, a shrouded face.
Black tears diffuse like ink through the rose
that is Her veil. The valley between Her eyes
and the bridge of Her nose is a deep shadow
of oil, of outer space—the secrets of eternity encased

by the sun's rays. Suddenly, it's night: a rare case
of the eclipse. I've run to the top deck to see the flight
of the moon, leaving my parents below. The shadows
of strangers with pale faces tower over me. Somehow the face
of tears knows it's me and I Her too, just know. Her eyes
sift through the black hearts of stranger's hair, each a rose

of flesh mirroring my own image and the image of the rose
guiding me above. Like fairy tales when the heart is a true case
for love, I believe now I see the light of God in Her eyes,
a love so pure, I levitate without thinking. I could fly
to You, Sweet Mary, yet I lift just enough to see Her face,
my toes slightly touching the wooden floor. The shadow

of my own body is buried in the wood stains with the shadows
of the strangers staring up at the eclipse. A rising
clutter of panic surrounds me. The stranger's faces
begin to wilt with the moon as spots of oil encase
their eyes so wide and round. Hovering above, a fly
zips over the night sky descending on the eye

of Magdaline. Ocean blue and without a blink, Her eyes
like a statue are fixed on mine. Her tears dark as shadows
begin to drip, splashing down on our faces in rain. The fly
shifts onto Her pupil in a robotic pulse from the white to the blue. Rising
in the distance atop a giant spurt of river, a black suitcase
spins on its corner like a dreydl up into the sky. The face

of Magdaline has shriveled into an eye, the lone face
of the fly. From between the fly's two shimmering eyes,
a twisting blast of wind strikes down over the spinning suitcase
like lightning, a tornado of a spout—the shadow
of gravity begins to suck the river up into the fly's
eyes, eyes burning and expanding like two balloons of fire. It's the rise

of Satan's rose, I just know—surrounded by stranger's faces,
the faces of flies. The angels have invisible wings and rainbow eyes.
Mama! Papa! I run thru the shadows, never looking up just in case. 

Seven trillion pink toenail clippings scatter about a pool.
One drop of chlorine sucks the spirits of thirty dirty feet.
Wherein, the body of one Nicolas King cocoons inside leaves
and acorn shells—a whirlwind imbedded, like a fossil, in concrete.
Nicolas and I are dressed in pinstripes among the pimpled tadpoles
tooting horns, fondling stringed carcasses. Here lies the illustrious Nicole,
a symbol of our mothers, voluptuous in bloodstains blue, soft as rain.

And the black angels that sweep down from a heaven of autumn leaves
swarm toward this cherub's misgivings like tadpoles on God's feet.
The perfect one, O Nicole! Even her follies soothe like rain
on a dry sore, freckles on concrete. A clumsy slip into the pool
at the birthday party leaves us boys blushing like autumn leaves.

Nicolas and I, friends since age seven, practice soccer in the rain.
The trees sprinkle stars in the morning as crickets in the pool
hop from leaf to stick to skin: toes cling to the cheek of Nicole
star bathing next to her boyfriend, Nike, a hook that tickles her feet.
The soccer ball, a rolled up koala, soars with the tadpoles
racing above through a sky littered with sticks, cotton, and leaves.
The white eye of Jesus sparkles behind a stampede of concrete

wings, the owl-gargoyle falling sideways against a concrete
sky. "Chafer Boy," the Coach's blessing to Nicolas, feels the rain
on his cheek, a tender pounding where the soccer ball leaves
the bruise of a maple leaf every afternoon. Chafer Boy in a grassy pool
of his own tears doesn't chase the ball like the other tadpoles
eager to dice the koala in a netted glory. He dreams of Nicole
tip-toeing over sand. The wet toenails, those pink dots that line the feet

of a shy sweetness. Her eyes shine translucent like the spawning of tadpoles
within an iced-capped pool. If one could kiss the eye-lashed koala, Nicole!
The thought leaves him lusting for the perfume of her nude feet.
And when melancholy comes down in rain and hail upon the concrete,
an arrow thru the heart can silence all enough to hear the rush of tadpoles.

And even the devil will sail a friendship out to sea where the crush of Nicole
spirals up in hot rain. My friend, King Nicolas, camouflaged in leaves,
delights in the tadpoles that swim along the green lace of the pool.
I can see his pale feet against the grass, feet hidden only over concrete.
Why does he hide at all? I only know in the blinding beauty of Nicole.

In such a brilliant ray, I crawl thru the hourglass for prints of our feet,
old photographs of Nicolas and me. We are the conquistadors of concrete
drowning in vines and reptiles and spiders of all colors. Nicole
awaits caged within a cloud of flying grizzlies, those gods who exude white rain.
At the brink of a moon's wake, Nicolas and I scoop cities of tadpoles
with a red plastic cup. We hang on by a mint floss to the island of leaves
always above our heads, tied to the sun a crown afloat the surface of the pool.