Poems
As often as not, it floats in, dehydrated,
half-conscious, a Crusoe-made raft
on Karmic seas of wandering green waves,
Prozac-nurtured tides in search of some
life supporting port.
Once a rocket, a hot-orange concussion,
a shot from an empty chamber
that fires anyway if teased and stroked,
to targets that are caught off guard,
that are never destinations.
Occasionally, carbon graffiti dances,
crisp curls blight white lines
left to phantom right,
crafts conspicuous gray bruise,
ghouls gliding home to margins.
Eventually, it comes to the words,
forms, shapes, carriers full on the fingers,
songs from protracted purple veins,
the music of the spheres,
tea leaves read in palmprints of wonder.
Apostate
Foreheads lope into corners,
square to meet the room.
Idle language loses meaning,
glued taut with foam from the mouth.
A cluster of friends move away.
Attempts to outflank thought,
succumb to streams of scurrilous now,
solicit new seductive states,
foreseeing fall, like Eve in the garden,
not jubilant but calm, sedate.
Slightest lobule movements,
minute shifts of cosmic weight
tip the tiny abstract scales,
send souls soaring from icy crags,
falling to demented fates.
Carnal heat and contemplation,
defining decadent descents,
causes smiles from righteous critics,
abandons all but anti-logic,
burns in serpentine retreat.