Tomorrow is a King Size Drag

My Soul in the Wicked World

Carlyle called it two hundred years ago–
the hammers down, the xylophones locked and loaded.
Now, from this incandescent studio
of karaoke, I’m the man exploded
on a screen of iridescent stars
and gummy satellites the cracking apple-
green of sucking candy. Bumper cars
beat incorrect below me where they grapple.
And if a whiplash from the Wilding Mouse
cuts pressure points along my gangsta lean,
I’ll compensate by shouting out. I’ll house
the action park and bust a new machine
with throw-down from the last contralto standing.
A rhyme for peace and love and understanding.

Hershey Park, Hershey, PA, August 14, 2009
____
Photo by: eHow—How to do just about everything.

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Day Three

For Marie

On Sunday morning I showed up
to find you calm and sitting up,
your brown eyes tired but alert
and bright. They told me that it hurt
to move—a wisp of Percocet
in open light. The TV set
was dark and silent. Still you seemed
to stare into an image beamed
across the room. A shadow play.
A mirror into Saturday.
An anesthesia flower show,
it ended when I said, “Hello.”

Roosevelt Hospital, New York City—

The Beak of the Chimaera…

…has gone to ground with many well-wrought forms. See, for example, “My Imaginary Friend,” a sestina by Tad Richards, “The Goddess Works Her Loom” by Enriqueta Carrington, and “Mechanics of the Sun,” a sapphics piece by yours truly. The three of us provide audio.

Also much ado about Ann Drysdale, the featured poet.

Stop in. Anytime.

5 Inches…

Buried Lead

There simply isn’t anything to say.
This news provides its own analysis
beyond all vitriol and overplay.
It settles down to cold catalysis
when numbers from the autopsy come in.
Blood/alcohol at 0.19-plus.
No mention of the crucial firing pin
that proves she could be anyone of us.
And if the New York Post and Daily News
both ask, “How Could She?” in a front page head,
coincidentally ignoring clues
that flash like gasoline about the dead
young mother and her dying child and nieces,
they’ll miss the point of picking through the pieces.

Calvary

On a cross, resigned to the half world’s glory,
See him rise, the surrogate son and father.
Carryover prophecy and exquisite
Public relations

Carve the stone below him in clapping darkness.
Still he’ll rise and twist in a cloud-borne transept,
Delegate authority with the whisper—
“Now it is finished.”

Wind-raked hill, the firmament torn and bleeding
In a shell that whistles, a polished vacuum
Holding back the howling of transformation:
Spiritus Sanctus!