Haiku for a Cat
Who We Call the Red Menace,
Because She’s Ginger
(For Mom)

Ginger cats who nap
In the sunlight, look just like
Fresh baked loaves of bread.

Beatrix loves naps
In rectangles of sun, but
Not as much as lunch.

And crouching on sills
Threatening birds, she can’t see
Birds don’t give a shit.

******

Infatuation

I fell and landed hard,
Skinning my knees
On the pavement at the pit of my stomach.
It hurt, so I cried.
Photographs slipped from my eyes
To scatter the floor of my imagination,
While with gracefully exact and economical gestures,
Knowing a hundred paths to a single destination,
Better angels walked a fine, fine  edge.

******

Rhyming is Harder than it Looks

Once there was a man
Whose only virtue was his charm,
Who happened on a brilliant lass,
Alone and lost, and humming.
Lucky that, for he enjoyed
Quicksilver on his arm,
And at a glance he knew
That she would never see him coming.

******

Haiku for a Broken Heart

Oh, thief in the night,
Steal the gleaming moon, sack the
Castle in the air.

Kidnap the sunlight,
Trap my tears behind my eyes,
Abduct the echoes.

Strip me of my dreams,
Tear the grief from my heart or
The heart from my breast.

******

Broken Haiku
(for Shannah)

Summer sky eyes see
Lives lived in the small spaces
Between everything,
And everything else.
Calculating the distance
Between fact, truth, and
That eternity
Between the sound and the ear -
And its endless span.

******

Andy Capp
(For Blane)

Once an irresistible force,
  Loved an immovable object.
    Which was exhausting, a trial by fire.

A cartoon cloud of cartoon dust,
  A cartoon rolling pin,
    A cartoon foot sticking out.

Rock,
  Paper,
    Scissors,

All the god damned,
  Live long,
    Day.

*******

My heart may leap, once again, to conclusions.
(for Sam)

I’m always spinning fantasies, and
We are plates overhead,
Barely balanced, but elegantly aloft.

Healing

I am a house, ramshackle and sprawling,
With labyrinthine passageways and secret rooms.

But when Pain came to stay,
He chose my heart for his rest,
Filling every inch, every crevice,
Until everything else was crowded out,
And my heart was empty but for him.

Time, though, is canny and stubborn.
Slipping in unnoticed,
A mist under the door,
She went about the business of healing all wounds,
So that now, escorted by Time,
Pain is withdrawing from me,
Preparing to depart.

It’s a strange and lonely feeling to experience healing.
To perceive the slowing of the blood, the closing of the wound,
The fading of the bruise,
Knowing that the texture, the shape of me,
That which is fundamental,
Will never be precisely the same,
I am bereft.

As Pain leaves, arm in arm with Time,
And I wait for her to return,
I wonder who she will bring,
Who will live in that room next,
And I think:

When Pain is all that’s left of Care,
It’s a mournful thing to watch him go.

*******

Love

I saw a couple walking,
And fighting.
The girl was like lightning,
The boy was like the cloud that made her.
She called him Nigga a dozen times –
After I started counting.

When he turned off her path
He insisted upon a kiss.
We don’t go apart mad, he said.
I could die, he said.
Through gritted teeth,
She carefully explained that he wouldn’t die.

He raised his voice for the first time.
People die every day – every minute – he said,
And we don’t go apart mad.
She gave in and touched his cheek,
And kissed him, long and slow and sweet,
And I loved them both.

******

Dinner is at Nine
(for Sam)

When my lover makes me dinner,
His are useful hands,
Careless gestures,
Careful thoughts.

My hazel-eyed orator,
My maker of grand gestures,
My sender of small treasures,
Is surprising, silly, and kind.

His gifts are acts,
And, by those, he loves me.
In his eyes, I’m beautiful,
And I’m never out of his sight.

******

Liquid Math
(For Frank)

I read a sentence once,
Calling music Liquid Math,
And thought it odd.

I’ve never drunk a number,
Nor cared to guess the speed of trains,
I am at once oblique and obtuse, and
Always I dismiss the Why of Y.

But I know that I reside in songs,
That I sleep on jagged beds of staves,
That I speak in cadenza,
That I endlessly embellish.

Then I understood,
Music is the math,
And I am the liquid.

*****

Nose to the Glass

It’s apparent to me
That some people are not alone.
I wonder who they are, and how they live.
I wonder where they are,
And dream of their houses.

I assume that there’s a box
With a lock and a key.
They were given it, or took it,
And now they have it,
While I do not.

Do they know each other?
Are they exclusive, an elect?
Or is it, rather, that if they knew about me,
If they could find me,
They would add me to their number?

*******

Odd Dreams
(for Sam)

When you dreamt you wore a gladiator suit,
Did it make you a brute?
You said it was uncomfortable,
You complained the breastplate hurt.
I said, I can dig it,
You should change your shirt.

I dreamt I wore a leash of gossamer thread,
And shoes of lead.
I said I couldn’t work the clasp,
I complained that it resisted.
You gently touched my throat,
And explained that it was twisted.

*******

Penn Station

Brutality is casual here.
To impassively regard the lost,
The abandoned people who wander here,
To indulge cruelty,
Feels natural.

But I’m granted a small mercy today.
Songs you poured into my ear
Drown in the din and go quiet.
I don’t have to fight them off,
And I don’t have to beg:
Oh, please, not that one.

Here, under the unblinking gaze of the station,
Crushed by those running to catch their lives,
I am shattered.
But broken into manageable pieces,
I can breathe.

*******

Rhyming is Harder than it Looks II
(for Anne)

We two drink our days undiluted,
Having found that they’re best taken neat;
And when the visions began to grow dim in the west,
We bought wings on credit and flew to the east.

It’s a fact that there’s no greener grass to be found,
Than the patch that is passed on the wing;
We’ve torn down our lives for a wind-whispered lure,
Inflexible chaos: Is there such a thing?

*******

Head Cold

When I fall,
My head believes I will land on my feet,
Because I always do,
But my heart knows that someday I will not,
That someday I won’t stick the landing.
As I descend, I feel a distant curiosity.

Is this that fall?

When I’m hoarse,
My head believes my voice will heal
Because it always has,
But my heart knows that someday it will not,
That someday I’ll never sing again.
I’ll shatter my voice as I do everything I handle.

I think I’ll miss my voice more than the rest.

*******

Tardis

A thousand thoughts brush past each other,
Exhausted tourists wandering,
Scowling and irritated,
Searching the endless rooms in my head
For a place to sit.
There are windows in every room, and light,
But no North Star,
And nobody at the helm.

90 WPM

It’s not my fault,
That too many words live in my head,
And trapped in a population too dense,
Some will scheme to escape.

Those words which my mouth can’t speak,
Sneak down to my wrists,
And in a mad dash past my palms,
Make a run for it.

Slipping between my fingers,
These fugitives are rioters and arsonists,
And of all my words,
The most dear.

*******

The Astrologist
(For Vanessa)

She traced a line with an elegant finger.
Then another, and again,
Each followed with delicate care,
And regarding her fanciful diagram,
She told me that I am water.

She said: You take the shape of the thing that holds you.
You’re the color of what is inside you,
You’re broken by an intrusion,
And reassembled by its passage,
You’re geared to leave beads on windows and feathers on sand.

She said: Yours is the Twelfth House.
The one most dimly lit,
It’s just down the street, dear, you can’t miss it,
That one, with the scrap of a garden,
The house numbered twelve, tucked beneath the horizon.

I’ve been here before.
I know this house,
Where in the space between dark and dawn,
All of the hidden and formless things are found:
Secrets, dreams, deceptions, great truths and small lies, and me.

Maybe I’ll run.
Maybe I’ll toss frilly things into a tattered bag,
Take off at midnight,
Fly with Neptune to that place where magic resides,
And escape into the warmth of the illusory.

We’ll get drunk on storms, Neptune and me.
We’ll wander among his earthquakes,
And sleep it off,
In the simplicity of his cool, quiet depths,
Where confusion is believed a virtue.

*******

Neither Here nor There

There was a time,
When I was young but felt old,
My days were too long, my nights too short,
And the sun rested on my skin instead of in my eyes,
As I would have preferred.

After I was old, the nights lengthened,
And I missed their swift passage,
I felt the fear that cats fear,
Startled by sudden noise,
And irritated by the increasing brevity of afternoons.

I missed and wished and bitched,
Through the shortened days,
Pining for conversation,
With nameless people,
I slept uneasily and too long.

*******

Like Clockwork

They say that the rhythm is in the silences, but
I never know whether silence is a gap or a void,
I never know whether I’m alone in a crowd,
Or I am the crowd.
They say that life is short,
But I say that life is long,
I say the minutes choke the hours,
And force the days to give way,
To make time for all the willful accidents.

*******

Die Rauschkater: The Hangover
(for Jörg)

Ich habe gestern quasi mit Gott gesprochen.
Er versteht mich.
Nachdem ich ihm ein Bild von Dir gezeigt
Habe sagte er mir, er könne verstehen
Warum ich nicht die Finger von Dir lassen kann.
Er sagt du siehst sozusagen himmlisch.

Das war's für heute.
Mehr sage ich nicht,
Sonst bist Du sauer.
Aber sei nicht so streng mit mir,
Ich habe bereits Kopfschmerzen.

Strafe genug.

Annus Mirabilis

Yesterday,

Ordinary birds and ordinary cats passed the time,
As ordinary dawn brought ordinary day,
Under the gaze of a terrified queen,
Gazing through barred windows,
Some gathered, fear in their glances -
Don’t look, don’t watch.

Today,

Under the scowl of a petulant giant,
Scowling over folded arms,
Ordinary drunks and the ordinarily sober passed the time,
As ordinary dusk brought ordinary night,
Some gathered, fear in their glances -
Don’t touch, don’t breathe.

Tomorrow,

Ordinary birds and ordinary drunks will pass the time.
Under the gaze of terrified queens and petulant giants,
As dawn brings day, dusk brings night,
Some will gather, fear in their glances -
Don’t think, don’t hope.

March, 2020

********

Sick and Tired

Venus, weary of sanctimony, our prudery,
Has ceded us to Sophrosyne, and to our joylessness.
She is exhausted,
Even with those who never knew her,
Even with the sensual, who laugh.

Fides, weary of hypocrisy, our duplicity,
Has ceded us to Plutus, and to our greed.
She is exhausted,
Even with those who never knew her,
Even with the devoted, who honor.

Salus, weary of negligence, our carelessness,
Has ceded us to Thanatos, and to our death.
She is exhausted,
Even with those who never knew her,
Even with the healers, who labor.

February, 2021

It Will Always be March

Shelter in place, they said,
But they never explained.
In place of what?

October, 2020

********

Tod und Verklärung: The Morning After the Plague

I dreamed I woke up and the world was strange,
So I went to the window,
But the skies were green and the grasses were blue,
As they should be.

The light was hesitant and the air hummed oddly,
So I opened the door,
But birds were barking and dogs were chirping,
As they should be.

As I poured the coffee the room tilted sideways,
So I stepped outside,
But the sun was white and the clouds were golden,
As they should be.

As I waited, the day slid past me,
Like oil on glass,
Leaving something of itself,
Something silky and formless on my skin,
Until finally, I saw it.

I saw crowds gather,
And that I might join them,
And hands, bare, that I might be touched,
And mouths, uncovered,
That I might be kissed.

Seeing the air and hearing the light,
On my blue grass and under my green sky,
As the dogs chirped,
And the birds barked,
I raised my mug.

I saluted the warm golden clouds
As they passed over the cooling white sun,
And considered the ether,
Giving way to substance,
To a tomorrow that, finally, exists again.

September, 2022