October Light

Translucent light,

crimson leaves

transparent against

the clear October sky.

Last shades of summer,

first breath of cold.

A temporal suspension

in an adagio.

Covfefe

The vastness of the vast,

the vast conspiracy.

As vast as the ocean,

vastness deep.

So vast as to be unseen

Covfefe, covfefe, anon.

From my mouth of madness

I have sprung.

Like Hemingway in Spain,

I am tweeting in vain

while the vast dark sea rolls on.

Collusion, collision

there is no cohesion.

I make up the words

and roll them together

like marbles in the wind.

covfefe, covfefe anon.

Vast is Russia

like the vast conspiracy

and the vastness of all I see.

For I live in a land

of smoke and mirrors

and clouds of witless.

covfefe, covfefe, anon.

Lessons

Remember

the color of midnight,

its icy stillness

like frozen glass.

Forget

the void of night

where shadows prowl.

Remember

the misty glim

of dawn's first

rising.

Then forgive

your yesterdays,

for we all

have sinned.

They are lessons

for each day.

Beauty is Gone

Beauty is gone

like a wilted rose.

Truth is lacking

like tattered clothes

and the old equation

is poetic license,

not renewed.

Knowledge is gone,

buried deep in muck

by theory's Babel.

History lies like driftwood

scattered in the sand and

memory barely holds

as the glue dissolves.

Safety Notice

Christmas trees

can bite

like a thorny rose,

full of spite.

Hollies are most lovely

and deadly just the same.

Poinsettias will kill

the cat, they say.

The lights can spark

and blow

and tinsel can fly

up your nose.

For the holidays

are deadly, dear,

as you well know.

Tweet Mania

The twit has tweeted

his twittered tweets,

twisty tweets indeed.

Tweets that tittered toward

crazy realms

where twits must tweet

all day.

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time

still opens every dream

like a fairy tale

of things unseen.

If only we could

freely glide

like a butterfly against

the sun lit sky

with colors bright

and bold,

graceful swirls of

golden rays

resisting the daily

pall.

They say the impossible

takes a little longer.

So the implausible

should be soon.

A Trip to the Moon

Like flickers of light

in an old Méliès film,

memories spin between

goofiness and wonder.

Like years ago when your plane was late

and I and our son waited by the phone

for numerous updates as a simple

hop from New York became a

logistical feat

and our son was busy watching

a mindless home video show and

discovered the joy of hysterical laughter

from a clip of someone stuck in a toilet

until you called from a

departure gate at LaGuardia

and we left late in the night

on a zig-zag course through

post-industrial waste and debris

framed by a low rising moon

that was large and white

with a crystal shine in a clear dark sky

and we drove straight toward it

like deep space explorers

sailing across the currents of

a celestial sea.

One minor moment

that clings like a precious dream.

Inauguration 2017

The glass is half-empty.

The glass is half-full.

So damn the glass.

It's shattered

like bits of confetti

scattered in a alley

where even weeds

barely grow.

We need a new metaphor.

The American dream

has run aground

yet the white whale

never was found.

Just a crazy pile

of fractured fantasies

that beguiled so many

generations like

opiate fiends who tried

to believe a mystic thing.

Sweet promises

made with tears.

Puritans thought that demons

roamed the forests.

Nightmares sneaking from

Primordial darkness

to their dreams.

So they lived with fear

and a need for shadows,

like children hiding

beneath a blanket while

creatures banged around

their beds.

They say all men are equal.

They say all men are free.

So why have we made

so many chains?

Even in the noontime,

we still live within

Plato's Cave.

Principles were the bonds

forged in blood.

Guilt and amnesia became the glue.

Theft and ignorance were threads

to hold the tattered

conflicts in check

with some vague ideal.

But the demons remained,

hiding in the mirror,

lurking by our side,

waiting for that moment

when, like a worn out bulb

the soul goes dim

and fear rushes in.

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy

The grasshopper lies heavy

Upon a leaf slender green,

In forest unseen.

Bigly

He was a bigly man

with a pigly grin

and jiggly hands

with a giggly charm

and a rigly plan

for all.

The pigly man

with his bigly stand

got his wiggly gut

all squiggly stuck

about where his

jiggly hands have been.

Lumbering through Bethlehem

Lumbering through Bethlehem

on a Saturday night

where the chilly shadows

of abandoned mills

toll silent like a busted bell

and anything left

was boarded or gone

or turned to pay day scams

and quick title loans and

anything else that scraps

for nickles in pockets

dirty and worn

(for poverty is a business,

like death and disease).

Memory of Music

To remember music

in bits of time.

Rifts and refrains,

a fog of feelings

like a madeleine cake

dipped in tea

swirling with a mix

of distant sorrow,

of fleeting joy,

set to the sonorous

strain of a single cello

in a shadowy room.

Oh Fortune

Oh fortune, ever changing

like the moon's ceaseless cycles

mindlessly repeating an

eternal loop to life.

For God plays dice

and shamelessly cheats

with a loaded pair

and He generously bets

on every number of

the roulette wheel,

repeating every time.

Like the moon's endless cycles,

so is fortune ever rising

and in decline.

Snowfall

When the white blanket

falls through the night

with photographic stillness

in a world turned black

and white with

frozen breath and

freezing tears.

A crystalline glean,

fragile and eternal.

So strangely empty,

strangely serene.

Christmas

When I was five

I became aware that

December days were played

like a game of moral dice

against an Advent calendar

where each day was marked

with little paper flaps

noting misbehavior

and since Santa was

always keeping lists

like a roly-poly bully

who lurked in winter's

shadowy chill and mist

and I knew that

he could watch me

through the TV set.

Silver Moon

In the shadows

of a silver moon

in a desert land

of caves and cliffs

and saw shaped peaks

sharpened by the

crust hard winds

of a vast salt flat,

bleached pale

like bones,

swept clean and

shrouded in

in a silver haze

above lost silver mines,

beneath a silver moon.

A Parliament of Owls

Jiggery piggery piggery poo.

Jiggery pokery piggery woo.

Applesauce, so sweat and tart

That went all jiggery too.

A parliament of owls flew in,

A meeting of feathery friends.

Hooting with their eyes wide shut,

They caucused till the night was out,

This parliament of owls.

Rhyme and reason are out of season

And those who think otherwise

Are guilty of treason.

Jiggery piggery piggery woo.

A band of coyotes rocked away.

A band of coyotes on parade.

They eat up ma then chewed on pa

And asked lil' Timmy to give 'em more.

Jiggery piggery piggery poo.

Jiggery wiggly piggery do.

A car of clowns have come to town

In a slap fest for the crown.

Jiggery piggery wiggly woo.

Around 3 AM

Around 3 AM in some

midnight of the soul

where distant sirens wail

like banshees at the door

and night burns into

colors like rust

beneath the flickering

vapors of sodium lights

that reduces the moon

to a tin shadow

made small against

the angles of mismatched

roofs until it fades into

the smog of yesterday's

last bad scene.

Sleeping In a West Virginia Field

Mourning doves stir and coo

In early light draped pale

By mist and the dew

Grew thick between our toes.

We had slept that night

In an open field picked blind

After a late night's drive

Through countless hallows

Lit by the fires of ten thousand tires

Burning wildly in a junkyard heap.

A breath of hell like a Bruegel print

As the flames flared tight

To the side of the road.

By noon the huddled hills were

Sweeps of green and hummingbirds

Swooped to a dulcimer lilt

Beneath a leafy canvas,

Beneath a translucent sky.