Not yet published…

Above when chimney swifts
     Chirp, the day is done;
Beneath the dim horizon,
     Slips the smold’ring sun.

The week will come and be what may,
     But favorite night to me
          Is when I sit to talk and spend
          My life with you, my wife and friend,
     And we as one are happy, healthy, clear, complete, and free.
               To work tomorrow go;
               You sleep so you don’t know:
I wave before I make my way into the coming day.

At times our words might fail convey
     The passion that can swell.
          I close the width between our lips
          Where language falters, skips, and trips,
     Instead we solely can rely on letters fingers spell.
               Our volume grows by reams;
               I read it in my dreams,
And wave before I make my way into the coming day.

Routine’s a threat to lead astray
     Two hearts this long in love.
          So we address, and dress in best,
          I’ll take us out to dine, you rest.
     I’ll get the door and bill before you hear a word thereof.
               With love for you, no doubt,
               I’ll never leave without
A wave before I make my way into the coming day.

When I was young
     Had my share of fun
          Found a bar well, drank it down
               Lived below

Under earth I traveled
     Through roots and stones
          Displaced dirt and waste
               With my own

I know how hard it gets
I know the dark of the deep down depth

Years passed under the grass
     Could not see the sun
          Eyes erased, iris dried
               Gone for good

Came across a graveyard
     Bones were all there
          Finally, some friends for me
               Those who also know

How hard it gets
Who know the dark of the deep down depth

The moon has risen up
     The snow has fallen down
          The cold has set itself inside
     Each member of the town

While on my porch in quiet
     I breathe the misty chill
          Remark to self the silence
     Of each surrounding hill

Where someplace now a Downy
     Is sleeping in a tree
          Waiting out the cold snap
     Alongside wife he be

In bed of woodchip blanket
     In home of limb of dead
          He spends the night deep dreaming
     With fluffy belly fed

And once near morn he stirs
     To sound below on ground
          His little lady hears it too
     His warming wing spreads ‘round

Her slender shoulders, tense
     Her dark red open eye
          Her velvet head is burrowed deep
     Into his side, she sighs

As little chests return to
     The night’s deep rhythmic beat
          Before the sun stirs up the hills
     Before the moon’s retreat

While tidying up I uncovered a tote
     Buried beneath a closet heap
A pouch of prints showing how I’d dote
     On that girl whose heart I continue to keep
          Of adventures had in distant days
          A multitudinous display

There were campers in Iceland and Coney Island
     Her bob cut, my jeans and black shirt
In the former days when I was too thin
     We’d shoot pool and stay out and make out and flirt!
          Enjoying all there was to find
          I came across two of one kind

In both that eager Emerald Eye
     Held trance with chin turned low
In both on breeze a tress let fly
     To barely brush her even brow
          Wait – Do curls compared appear
          To differ by a millimeter?

No sense in keeping dupes to cherish
     But if unique and one be tossed
With it a piece of me will perish
     With it an instant will be lost
          It’s an awful thought to entertain
          So back in tote I placed prints again

When I come home, I am never alone,
     Never in want of wish.
          The scene turns to sea as I dock in the lee,
     And look down upon my own catfish.

Over wood floor I wade through living room waves,
     He zips through my legs like a mist.
          I stoop in the sand, extend out my hand,
     He zips away quick, my grey catfish.

Atop carpet choral, we drift and we whirl,
     I follow along with his swish.
          His tail cuts the blue, propels him right through,
     My just-over-three foot long catfish.

On top of cliff counters, sun sets through deck doors,
     The rays upon creature doth kiss.
          He sleeps against edge of couch-ocean ridge,
     My big-eared and whiskered-face catfish.

A villanelle

Make time for times that memory will store;
     Pursue evermore events to accrue:
          When there are no more, a moment’s worth more.

No bother the day adored or abhorred;
     Resigning to amour at evening you
          Make time for times that memory will store.

For when the end is drumming at your door,
     And one trice new is jewel of true value:
          When there are no more, a moment’s worth more.

Returned not the time of moments ignored;
     The past is a ruling you can’t argue:
          Make time for times that memory will store.

Think back to the missed and regret will pour.
     But now you know all that you should have knew:
          When there are no more, a moment’s worth more.

Events gathered then now play an encore
     When eyelids dark dive. Thankful are you who
     Made time for times that memory will store;
When there are no more, a moment’s worth more.

If I were a ghost what would I do?
Enter your home just to scare you?
     If it were mine
     Before I died
Then you’d be the one to intrude

If I were a ghost what would I say?
Whisper at night your own full name?
     Or would it be
     A howl or scream
Or some other saying or phrase?

If I were a ghost where would I go?
Travel through space from this world?
     Am I confined
     To my own time
Or am I allowed to explore?

If I were a ghost how would I move?
Freely on beams of the full moon?
     Would I be quick
     Or slowly slink
And rattle a chain while I do?

If I were a ghost how would I look?
Human or mist or demonic?
     Hopefully I’d
     Look like a guy
With only a tad of translucence

If I were a ghost what would I see?
Other ghouls floating just like me?
     Would they be peers
     From over the years
Or would I just be the one only?

I sometimes visualize
A silver lining in my hellstorm’s side
Snugly guarded by a thunderous galloping
Gushing gallons underneath streak lightning
Discard hail particles to guzzle cloud cover
Sucking on the silver ‘til my teeth tarnish metal
‘til I’m less man than mineral

It’s true.

Here the remnants stand of a good man
Once fresh flesh now wretched health
Once wholehearted now a honeycomb chest
Whittles a whistle from my weakened breath
I offer up a bold and villainous request
“Spare the specters of my better half!”
The sky laughs
The weather attacks
I slither seeking silver in the sides of cloud cracks

The death crawl was inevitable
When I was eighteen I started the prowl
What grew from the ground would be my self-brought downfall
While I hide out in a bombed out hall
Of pipe lung organs and smoldering cackles
Soon, I’d be a corporate tank driver to terrorize the favors nature gave me to hold

My mouth is a smokehouse with hot teeth coals
A charred wood throat and tongue like a hangman’s rope
My clothes smell of five dollar bills set in flames to the timing of staccato smoke rings

Poison halos paused posed as image and poor style
Suppose the rings were strangling politely over time
Preposterous! I’m one hundred percent all the time! All the time!
That’s the lie, that’s the cherried line
The record in my head skipping on a skull crack

Brain tricks body tricks nervous social outings
Tricks a perverse use of a morose endurance
While the reassurance of right is a pain
With a ball and chain for each lung chamber
A ball and chain for each lung
Stained outbound blood via rotted-out heart veins

When the robe of the night pulls over all
     Of the trillion points: pick one.
          Even a close glow
          Is so remote,
     It might be another world’s sun.

For the sight in the eye is time ago,
     The finite speed says so.
          When it parts from first point
          To course through cosmos:
Light travels long and alone

In a ray made of stripes (giga-pile of time),
     What was when the light left home.
          Through expanse of space,
          Over the blackness great—
     All the while it bides bright and strong.

What belights the profound through the sight is found
     Not by nose nor tongue nor thumb.
          The unknown is told
          Through a single mode:
Light travels long and alone

Not always so, but we see it go
     In right lines proved by shadow
          Just to bend and bow
          (When the motion grows slow)
     Through the water in the cup you hold.

From the moment of invoke, right to closeout,
     All the ticks, for us, tock on,
          But the photon knows
          Not an interval:
Light travels not at all

When the robe of the night pulls off the dome,
     Of the trillion points now one:
          The almighty Sun,
          The world’s engine;
     Light’s powered all for long.

In a sight from afar our Sol turns star,
     It might sit in a constellation.
          In another night,
          In a time unlike,
While it twines spacetime to one:
Light travels long and alone.

A switch of light that sits like its
     Dimensions are times three;
A rod of bright that inch by inch
     Rolls cross the table freely.

Recall my own belongings and
     Remember not I own
A thing of any that looks like this:
     A severed ray from morn.

Suspended effulgence, a flash
     Frozen on a surface;
A gleam like glass, a fulgor cast,
     A structure from formless.

A funny gift it is to give
     A mortal without merit.
Or is it dross to Sol, and I
     Its worth exaggerate?

But if he really thought it be
     A scrap from sky to thrust
Then why does he demand it back
     When day turns into dusk?

The truth is that he loves to make
     The thing of which I note:
The beam that takes a solid shape
     That I attempt to hold.