Three Poems

.
This is Autumn

This goes without saying:
Crack the book,
Climb, giggle, cry.
Elope with me.
Mendelssohn flashback
preamble dimmer wafting windrow,
strings, hours, woods.
Roll up the swather—
This is the end of Genesis:

Where petals riding upon leaves
As Greek Gods in chlorophyll chariots
Descend long paths in a history to nowhere,
Wonders of the world in time,
Abandoned great walls and feats of stone;
Looming towers and languages
disconnected—

Discovered as if lost and yet the desire to reconnect
Seems inherited, like gold between green and brown;
Created as bronze Amish fashion,
Fascinating as heavy blue stitch velour,
and Coco couture;

Ignoring Junket’s throne by which they created
With the bleach of wicked tears that sting the lips of lovers
One to the other, symbiotic, recycled,
The chaff forgotten;
And one a new name, slipped past and under
The falling curtain of the day.

Have they forgotten something,
something that seems to matter?
Did they analyze and devise so strictly,
So hubris and haughty, that the head has
left the body?

Because they ache, have they lost their keys—
is it something they have missed?
Because of want, are they remiss—
too desperate to see the coming freeze?

Why have they not named her?
Why not, this milky calf of Gaia, wallflower,
Blurry hero, black hole piercing,
Early riser, living in amber-glow beacon
of summer’s dying embers?

She sleeps cool to the touch in xanthophylls,
Waiting for a kiss.

But they will have nothing of it—
Nothing of it at all to atone,
Until they need her seed, then let it be so.
They have head lights, power seats, and steroid grocery stores.
They have gas to get and traffic to flow.
…Today, they’ll be in paradise.

Her movements do not move them—
A forest fire, fire without breath means absolutely nothing.
Tragedy is man’s doing.
What would an earthquake do without you?

The world, the harvest ignores—
Orphan grief, faceless whore;
Degas girl standing opposite interior door,
With one and only shiny, dry tear;
Rumored pregnant, sickly green, with wormy holes.

Anthocyan box seat witness to self-destruction,
Self-future-torn, self-poisoning, self-riotous,
Self-centered,
Selfish planet train wreck; ashamed to name you.

The scythe is named among tools, to go even
Unto death. That which makes the swing
Knows the moon; presiding for a moment
On sudden, lonely redoubts where men cease writhing;
Marked by glorious ribbons, patches, and pins—
Calling ghostly families,
and swallowing for home.

Even aboard instant calamity, transfixed view of heaven
From heaven of her; dark traveler in limbo,
Choosing her over home; ending with lit up smiles
in a trail of solid fuel;

Or, in semi-private room, divider set sheers and lots drawn,
Late between shifts, past visiting hours; basked expiration
in comforting luminous flux.

…Can she not be named beyond these harvests?

There are too many trees on TV,
And too many working honey bees to break the spell
Of cataracts and lover’s smells.

A wedding dress by Nike;
Swans and ice cream cones
Standing brain-frozen and sticky-handed
In the grimy air that is embarrassment and Lohengren.
Glow sticks bouncing in the night, twisting and turning;
A dilated majorette leading a blacklit techno band.

The spun spectral language of the planchette,
The permanent protection flax scent of strong Wicca,
The orange chill of Sleepy Hallow dinner parties,
And the chase of the gilded nye.

The purged orchard falls, the vines stare vacant,
And the roots withdraw. It is the battlefield they saw,
Across the wall in cyber malls; where the last child
Who played under street lights is dead to the .wav of SimCity,
Eulogized in an instant message:

and then u and then they
and then he goes
and then they and then he
and then she and then im
and then she and then he
and then i go and then she
goes and they all
and he goes and u go and im all
was sed wat sed i sed
wat sed i herd wat sed
u herd wat sed
he sed she sed they sed
i sed wat they sed :-) lol

We will be talking of this meme, this evolution
We have seen in carotene.
We will blather on in air polluted fashion,
And narrow skies of carrier pigeons.

Did Carthage advance this form?
Gravid season pains, Apgar shaman waits
For the coroner of civilization to procreate.

We are mythology, with low rated telethons,
And nearshore carapaces boarding
Selective societies.

Soon, a garish charge to see the stars
On a sky-cast silver screen,
And the moon will be ten dollars, with photo ID.

She is pale, bland, and sad like us…

And apathy will dismiss it all, as the grasshopper did,
Ignoring his haul, instead playing all summer,
And through the fall; where his dignity slipped,
And he ate up the ants that winter
For dinner.


Comet Carpooling

succulent
desert lust—
coyote and
javelina
in moonlit
river bottom
cruising
pass quail eggs
silent as stones
hear crickets
count temperature
hot and fast
under saguaro
silhouette
sits solitary
truck-bed
beneath cosmic
night lights
staining the world
deep blue
and shimmer
sweat gets sucked
up into
desiccating
skies
dry winds
chap skin—
this is
desert love
and comet
carpooling


Travelers

the elements
so smooth
so thoughtful

lullaby sea
air
and land

without
schedules
or reactions

bigger than
rocketing around
the sun

kept from
space sickness
by transom

grandness is
universal
grandness is
universe

it’s all night we really
travel
when the sky blinks


Green Lake

I hear the crooner catching air
with a loose fin at the surface
of the still lake; a sudden decibel
leap from muffled and murky
bastion of sonar, to the lively
and lit face of the earth’s
aquatic domain.

I hear the way he strikes
his flagrant note atop shallow
water, combining the right
amount of phrasing with heavy
summer air; knowing that he
is prime, youthful and daring.

Perhaps he performs for me
and the outer world, trumpeting
a new existence; exploding
with hidden color, the touch of nirvana.

Or is it for his ilk?

He a sacrifice, the son fish
Finishing school and moving on;
the Pisces shrouded in secrecy
and clouded in thick watery
shades of brown and dense green.

Nevertheless, all that remain
and the only evidence of his recital
are the steady rhythmic ripples lapping
the nearby shore; the signature
graffito, the rapture—

gone.