The Process

     The wind is part of the process/The rain is part of the process.

Gesamtwerk. Parts making whole from parts.
Language. Alphabet, words, phrases, sentences
create a total work based firmly upon... alphabet.
Throw in grammar, punctuation, syntax. Anything possible.
To be. Verb not noun. Moves beyond syntax. To real.
Poet as tinker. No matter. Poems as language. Do.
Right language, correct path, shining mountain.
Seeker sits. Solitude. Transcends journey. World announced.
End as beginning. Form. Gestalt. The beginning of Awe.

She Wakes In Beauty

     wake up and forgive your wrinkles...

Women. Drink cultural Kool-Aid. Believing it.
Grey is old is ugly is useless, So very wrong.
Not fruit for one picking. Fecund. Many harvests.
Fifty is not over. Nor 60. It simply is. Immortal desire.
Time makes changes in everyone. In X and in Y.
Every human age has its own allure. Wake up.
Each woman, any moment, beautiful in her own way.
     Lovely laughter, soul, thoughts, feelings, touch.
     Forgive the lines around your eyes and such.
     Worthy of desire. Desirable. Desired. Much.

Tincture Of Hollow

Seeing a future that does not exist.
Dead child. Lost mother. Empty cradle.
Loveless heart. Soul minus zero. No companion.
Friends far away. Leaden morning stillness.
Noun without verb. Lonely adjective. Period.
Days upon days upon days of endless same.
Dysfunctional GPS. Maps that lead nowhere.
Rooms of the void. House of many sorrows.
Untold story without ending. Unwritten poems.
Homeless veterans. All soldiers at night. Fear.
Imaginary kisses. Touches of air. Lost caresses.
Knowing that everything that comes next is nothing;
     knowing that you really know that.

My Style Guide

Poems are liquid prose. Prose insists. Poems plead.
Kale tastes best in darkness. Residue of texture.
I is romantic vestige. Deport it. Feel the freedom.
Irony is literate decadence. Stick to sarcasm. Common voice.
Drumbeat of iambs in veins. Just the facts, Ma'am.
Edgy as opposed to hard. Violent refusal to respond.
Adjectives limited. Adverbs useless. Nouns just sit.
Ah, but verbs. Verbs as we are. We are verbs. Creating.
Other parts, only utilitarian. Sequence of composition.
Words in a row marching like soldiers to certain death.
Metaphors compressed as diamonds. Regal and rusted.
The clock's face reveals nothing. Blank chronology.
Humor provides shelter. Lear on the moor. Fool.
Lines in a stanza remain lines. Mere artifice
Love is in and out of every door. Root of desire.
Take whatever you like. Make it new. Make it new.
Feel noose around neck. Have the last word. Anyway.

Cheep Found Poem #1

Nouns and verbs swirls. Word anarchy. Everyone a poet.

So, what if the day just doesn't want to be seized? Harassment?
Pay no attention to my browsing history. I’m a writer, not a serial killer.
Women never want much, only everything you are or will be.
He said he would stuff my taco unlike any before him;
and boy did he! I've always wanted a man who could cook.
Somedays, you just know that the jail time was worth it.
Cows who give milk for free never know what a respectable farmer is.
Dude! Never photoshop a horse's cock over yours. I like horses.
Relearn the dying art of thinking before you fucking speak.
I scream. You scream. We come. Police come. Awkward.
Thought it was a loofah but it turned out to be steel wool.
Sixty is the new 40. Try getting your penis to believe that.
The only fact is that you'll never understand anything at all.
I never flirt with danger but danger won't stop flirting with me.
She dumped me because I just stood there with my moves unbusted.
Watching internet sex is like masturbating without arms.
I bet that pride of yours doesn't enjoy snuggling like I do.
You don't have to be desperately lonely to cheep, but it helps.

Say anything you like. After all, only everyone will see it.

Bullets Dipped In Pig's Blood Not Tasty

Did not work out well for Brits circa 1857.
Sepoys blown from guns. Lesson learned. Empire upheld.
In America, history does not apply. Only winning.
When 3.3 million get up and leave. Syrian Chaos.
Oh that magic feeling: nowhere to go. Or elsewhere.
Have much. Use much. Enjoy much. Care little.
Other than genocide. No obvious solution. Or Malthus.
Cats cry in Gelid winter. Home where you don't find it.
Gigantic cakewalk with no chairs. Only losers.
Oh where, oh where, will these little lambs go.
Anywhere but your back yard. Concern, not Welcome.
Find great open spaces: Australia, Antarctica.
Out of sight out of mind. Heart grows forgetful.
Remember Law of Unintended Consequences:
     I and the Public know what all schoolchildren learn;
     Those to whom Evil is done, do Evil in return.

Gone Girl

     Divorce is the sign of knowledge in our time. wcw

Empty chair. Sun frowning through blinds on lifeless rooms.
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
Singing now to only one. A history of the void. Hollow words.
Know the past. You were there. In everything done. Touch.
Boxed up kid's toys. Forgotten gifts. Solitary thoughts.
Echoes of children's voices. Fading to grown up.
No one knows what lurks down the road. Dead end.
Memories of the missing. One way conversations. Unsung songs.
Days without direction. Nights of nothing. Empty bed blues.
Ransacked nostalgia. Random recollections. Loneliness.
     You and I we're like water to the sea,
     What can one without the other be.

Sleepy Scripture

Finally a day devoid of sharp edges.
The world in focus. For a moment. Enjoy.
Insomnia burns like Saint Augustine's fire.
Nights much longer than swooning pig orgasms.
Days that shimmer, stab, shake and suck.
Aching eyes and aching I. Queasiness.
Every eternal question demanding answer.
Random blasts from unwelcome pasts.
Useless drugs. Alcohol too much pain.
Eventually, to sleep, to dream. Oblivion
attained. But then, it all begins again.

Fifteen Minutes Of Twitter-pated by @Mike Essig51

Every poem a foundling. Ancestry uncertain. Cuckoo. Kidnapped.
Each line liberated from a huge, noisy foul. Taken not stolen.
Don't put all your words in one. Task it to be new.
Almost bought organic bananas yesterday like some kind of millionaire.
Some of the best times of my life have no photographic evidence.
I often wonder where my thoughts come from. Perhaps Uranus.
Date a girl with small hands.. Everything will look bigger next to them.
Get to the point. My medication is starting to wear off.....
Karaoke, because being an obnoxious drunk isn't embarrassing enough.
If I am the man of your dreams, my condolences. Stupid is.
It's all fun and fiction until you show up missing. Internet romance.
My thighs are looking awfully lonely without you between them.
You've spent an entire day creating the ultimate sheep pun,
but have you ever considered the ramifications? Disordered thoughts.
Die a quick and painless death: the new American Dream. Lonely kills.
All I need is just a little cherishing. Comeuppance. Cherish is the word.
Listen, karma is the bitch. I am simply her occasional instrument.
Meaning becomes data becomes information becomes content becomes meaningless.
Writer creates order. Otherwise only words in a row. Whole more than parts.
Big bird tweets often. Means nothing. Vacancy. Disappear into void.
Shout out the words you don't understand. Leave them to the poet's hand.

Kalamazoo

In America, nichts neues. Death stalks street corners
like a lurking cassowary. Blood the National Color.
Random acts of madness practiced from ambush.
General lack of civility. Shout each other down.
The Other is out there being otherwise. Fear.
Arm yourselves! Disarm yourselves! Dead anyway.
Impenetrable, crystalline, indestructible ignorance.
Nothing to be done but hold on by sitting tight
until the next blasts of rage rend the night.

Love Pome

     tis pity she's no more

A redolence of musk pervades the evening's air.
Take situation in hand. Sweat and perfume. Lubricious.
Teasing digits. Pressures applied. Tense of touch.
Brush of thumb she begins to writhe. Early moaning.
Damp, wet, moist, oozing, dripping, slippy. Fruition.
Coming to. A dance of desire. So many ups and downs.
Withdraw slowly. Enter with alacrity. More is not less.
Hollows of legs on shoulders. Depth charges. Grasp of gasps.
Muscles massage. Internal grip. External eruption.
Bear down. Press your case. Silent screams. Everything ends.
Simply collapse into delight. Smooth texture. Fine night.

Ain't That Amerika

Rather seek a mad climate:
happy, peaceful, elegant.
By brilliant abstractions lit.
A revolution must occur
in the people's minds
years before
the Revolution occurs.
Plant a seed. Pray for rain.
Life languishes
where profit pervades,
ignorance doth flourish.
The arts a septic sewer.
The marketplace a God.
Carcasses for sacrifice.
Remove base appetite
and this generation dies.
Send them on their way.
Flush the bankers.
Lose all interest. Live
to write another day.

Kissed By Fire

     brighter than a thousand suns...

Helicopters scud the night. Syllables penetrate deeply.
Mulch has no value. Fingers curled softly in sleep.
Style marks the spot. Weapons hidden beneath kilts.
Pinpoint errors. Know where you are. Charlie Parker got lost.
You're a little teapot. The cat ponders these things.
Glamour a kind of architecture. National Enquirer a house.
Her only idea disastrous. He entered from behind. Stealth.
Take it any way you want it. Bodily distillations of poison.
Something longer perhaps? Squash blossoms lovely. Preferences.
Ferns are not intentional. He wants a mulligan. Sentences question.
Ahead engorged. The color purple. Glance. Not quite wet.
Humpty-Dumpty the primary archetype. Master Coder. Triple Helix.
   If this gum be stale: do not chew it;
   If you are a window: draw the blinds.
   Or writhe in live orgasm of meaningful.
      Come along to Carthage and Burn.

Only Muzzled Dogs Get Tenure

      An Ode to Edumacation


School buses gather like trains to Auschwitz.
Find seat, sit down, shut up. Hear the told.
Chairs nailed to floors. Don't rattle your chains.
Leaves near ground wither first. Get'em young.
Teachers design brains of meat by-products.
Rain half truths on potted plants. Earn an Apple.
Prepare for jobs never gotten, for lives not to be.
Homework extends domain of willful ignorance.
Repetition equals indoctrination unto dead souls.
Students leave class with hollowly sculpted heads.
Pure, organic, 100% US Fancy Grade A stupidity.
Walk only in the footsteps of footsteps walked in.
Every single muzzled dog gets tenure. Heal!
And so their mouths are stopped with ignorance.
With ignorance hath no man a goodly house.
     Sheep, cattle and lemmings interbred,
     In perfect harmony over ledges led.

Internet Stories And Lists 4 U

    Read and weep...

16 Ways to a Bigger Sock.
Why you should kill your boss now.
7 Ways to Thieve Your Lover.
11 ways to Grow Your Own Bud Lite.
The One Hard Thing Harried Women Want.
43 Reasons to Die Young.
Vladimir Putin For President!
13 Yoga Positions Against Entropy.
Learn to Pick Orgasms From Trees.
33 Reasons to Love Your Shingles.
Proof Obama Murdered Scalia.
14 Methods For Preventing Dottle.
Why Internet Lists Make You Stupid.
666 Ways To Fail At Suicide.
The Number One Reason Literacy Is Dead.

Sing A Song Of Past Tense

Conditioned preference for narrative condemns millions to sleep.
Nothing but words in a row. Grammar modifies Prosody.
Punctuation marks divide. Syntax engenders meaning.
You only think you can control your pen. Exercise.

Tell you a story:

Remove staples before eating pizza. Stop Continental Drift.
Insist on your birthright of way. Specific smell of chalk.
Wobbling on 10 speed toward solar array. One sun; one broom.
Killed father and went down to the crossroads. Oh, mamma.
Gnosis bunker uncovered in old Runes. Treat stares with caution.
Don't point that Tuba this way! Wounded buffalo roam Iowa.
Green parrots chatter in back yards. Herd of helicopters.
Nips up! A Japanese morning. Pointing the way. Go figure.
Strains to a dropping deuce. Red wheelbarrow, full of sadness.
Fake work and all pray makes a dead Jack off. Harder.
All old cowboys must dismount eventually. This space for sale.

You tell a story back.

Make it good. So many choices. Not sleepy at all. Go on.
Remember. Readers as ghost writers. Ghost writers in the lie.
How many tales can you eke out of this? Spell me please.
Take responsibility for the narrative you create. Good luck!

After The Affair

Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.

Concrete instances of emptiness.
Blinds not drawn. Flowers do not arrive.
Bed made tight; no stilettos. Never sticky.
Doves alone coo. Pet names only for pets.
No need to shave. Last night's wine. One glass.
Coffee becomes erotic. Condo not condoms.
Hands and knees only to fix sink. No position.
No lipstick stains the staff. Lingerie a catalog.
Flag always at half mast. Sleep soft, not deep.
A cock is a chicken; a pussy is a cat.
Fingers seeking fondle find nothing.
Blowing your nose becomes PDA.
Ghostly hands caress vanished thighs.
All embraces are distant. Hugging your sister.
Mysteries of faded flesh; sound after sigh
Not a trace of perfume or personality.
The orgasmically charged what isn't.
What is missing prevails. What was is missing.

Dust You Off

Just got back from Vietnam baby, and that's a long, long way from New Orleans... B.B. King

Choppers off in the friendly skies.
This whirling defies gravity. A dying fall.
Talons of tracers reach toward heaven.
Just being alive violates your parole.
Beneath, a carpet of destruction.
Live ammo. A round of rounds. Incoming.
Smell of burnt flesh chokes. Crispy critters.
Napalm as the new normal. Flares beget light,
illume a scene of mushrooms and shades.
No hurry. The dead are patient. Wounded less so.
Bag'em and tag'em. Don't mean nothing.
Never did. Sky up and wing away.
Always more. Return again another day.

Reverso C CXX On Paradiso

What have I made? What have I done?
Let those I love forgive what I have made.
Let the gods forgive what I have done.
Let the wind that speaks Paradise,
let it speak of what I have tried to do.
To be a man and not a destroyer.
To find the path to Paradise.
Beauty, not madness or unfinished
tangled works. The pillow not the case.
In my homeland only shades stalk.
Fear is the forefather of cruelty.
To escape fear and find the way.
There are many ways but only One Way.
We live a thousand years in a wink.
Many wrong turns but perhaps a few right.
Let those I love forgive what I have made.
Let the gods forgive what I have done.

Loneliness List

Mistaken notes toward a history of silence.
Parking lot of abandoned shopping carts.
Empty whiskey bottles. Footless footwear.
Snow that won't stick. Sky of no birds.
Voiceless echo. Discarded condoms.
Page without words. Unwritten poems.
Sentence without subject. Misplaced melody.
Many hopes but no expectations. Unmade beds.
Plotless novels. Men's room lacking urinals.
Laundromat at 3 AM. Skirt without woman.
Flesh of your empty palm. Earless moaning.
Dead for no reason. Stack of unpaid bills.
Naked clothesline in the rain. Unread books.
How much of nothing can you take? Beam me up.

String Theory Of Language

Do not scorn the scribe for your own distemper.
Sentences leap to connect fate's dots.
Read your pride out loud even to earless snakes.
Thoughts materialize as word masses, matters.
All eye sequence is determined, syntax.
A proof punches Wittgenstein's ear. Not the case.
Do not confuse the Literature of Solitude
with the Solitude of Literature, one not the other.
The mind of dis-ease most healthiest ist.
Jettison thou then thy maad crye for order
and any language may be learned.
Let never this simple tung punish your ear.
Surrender. Fall into Grace and alles clear.

Talking Bout An Evolution

From whence springs his or her story?
Just what drives the wave to surge and break.
Evolution, not revolution, determines destiny:
Lungfish gasping in a mudflat. Initial syllables.
Every beginning begins at the beginning.
Only victories allowed to repeat themselves.
This is the way the way the word begins.
Endless repetition until only Now remains.
Homer, Dante, Shakespeare: one human voice:
One song sung sighing across the sky.

In Which Jackson Pollock Attempts Infinity

Try to paint imagining. What does that look like?
Maybe use a thinner brush or none at all.
Wear Birkenstocks with white socks.
Helpful? If not, look for details of masochism.
Listen for the fractal music. Hear its nots.
Those are swirls that were your eyes. Blink!
Try playing dinosaurs at a local porn store.
Chug a quivering quart of whiskey as primer.
Focus on penetrating the dance of dildos.
No? Then imagine your imagination imagining.
Or, just give up and buy a copy of Cheese For Dummies.
Kick back and enjoy a gnawing evening off.

Son At Earring

Enter only through the revolting door.
River running down sleep steeps to the sea.
A dearth of beer cans wish for so much more.
Content and coherence all plain to be.
Why were we made large to become so small?
Desperate succulents clinging to rocks.
Play what you will, by good, and pluck it all!
That bunch in the noose really rooked your socks.
Worlds woven with words wear quickly away.
Be grateful for just a line of knowing.
This weather appears to be hear to say.
Everything's gathered in tears a-flowing.
     Play with those sounds completely at your ease:
     No words were harmed in the making of these.

Selbstmörder

Eat, sleep, breathe, excrete,
a body living does not a life make.
Oh! Black dog do not my heart devour.
Only the lonely know only the lonely.
Know thing not without touch lives.
Do you smell that smell? Do not inhale.
Kick hard to keep the burly beast at bay.
Or cross the bar onto wine-dark depths,
Song of sirens. Whispers of doom.
How soothing simply to sink. Down.
Sometimes, the brain may prefer the drain.
Make the judgementally ill be still.
In my mania is my maintenance.
The abyss remains to revisit always.
Difficult balance: live or cease pain.
To resist. To defy.  All that does remain.
Good morning, blues, how do you do?
To keep it or to give it away.
Bump. Bump. Down the funny steps.
Bear up. Hold on. Call that another day,
but sand through the glass' neck still drips.

Fodders and Suns

Pick a pack of peppered Pound; let St. Joyce a lullaby sing.
The one a long time loony been; the  other in the night write cackled.
Whatever you can't hear is music. Between notes find Mozart and Coltrane.
Words like the locust-shells, moved by no inner being. Old men and camels.
Would you call yourself pronoun or proverb? A congress of dead nerves.
In America, the monied ever waiting to pounce: pedophiles circling schoolyard.
Perhaps life is terrible when you are truly stupid.
Set self to write A Compleat History of Water. Just testing.
Neither is your nose bent nor do vicious waves flog beaches.
Walk upon your tipi toes - order can become a chronic, wasting illness.
Poems are not a life, even when blissed. Only a prosody of tennis.
Avoid sad death marches of warbler watching. Learn to love kale.
Take up theoretical spelunking or practice extreme atrophy.
Long stretches of boredom and dread forge solidarity with despair.
Invent a formal vocabulary of incoherence; earn time off for time served.
Tread with caution; each word a potentially lethal landmine.
In the night at the fading of the stars, Mr Finn will be found again.
You have now entered a poetry made of buttons. Time to start pushing.

Breaking Of Day

So many poems begin at morning because everything does.
Every day a must to make again. Every poem also.
Collage, montage, pastiche, not hodgepodge or mishmash.
Rather a synthesis. The pieces speak in many tounges.
Sight is a silent witness: only writing declares. Hard listen must.
Why do so many sit with open mouths? Astound to astonishment.
Slouching saxophones sound sour. Blue sink atop a mushroom
Engage in the violence of sitting still. Demented duck at door.
Your failure to speak is a provocation. Wake the shaking brain.
The cigarettes of language lighted by lightening.
Unzip the poem with fervor but stroke it gently.
Each and every broken straw a calamity. Mania makes more.
Nietzche tormented by hemorrhoids. Doctrine of Eternal
Pain in the Ass. Philosophy is a sight that will not resolve.
Any meaning you don't get is the reason it eludes you.
A wall made of bricks is more than just bricks.
London Bridge stands strong in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
These fragments have I shored against morning's ruin.
Dive into the unknown day determined to. Just that,
Knowing the grains of sand drip away and away.

Shrink-wrapped Hoodie-heads

The day's inertia grips an old, cold body.
Too dangerous to doze while ice melts.
Early morning commotion at the brain station.
An unnamed bird tweets but lacks followers.
Gesticulation of unknown parts. Shake the
waking brain: dissolve the haze of logic.
A Day Of Decision: to shave or not to shave.
Curse all the rules you learned in schools.
The difficulty of simultaneously breaking out
and in. White boys with hoodie-heads clearly
ignorant of color wheels. Each word waffle
in the mind meaning means. This craft makes
crazy but air and fire clarify these lines.
Poets voluntary outlaws in American eyes.
Who needs shrink wrapped verses? You are
implicated in whatever you choose to read.
Do not interrupt and demand exegesis;
we do not deal in scripture or litany;
you may only get the interpretation of wolves.
Only this blinky moment of alphabet unites us.
Armageddon is your beard to scratch. Have at it.

Language Suite #4

Let us sink and seek the miraculous,
steal from the clothesline of nostalgia.
The crushing weight of a pith helmet.
The quandary that every exit out opens in.
What is not remembered still exists;
the song never plucked rings still.
Cease stifling epismetological masturbation.
In the end, very few will comprehend.
Hard feet on a barewood floor. Then flush.
Iced sausages and cold blood for breakfast.
French toast boasts an aftertaste of paper.
Sign on cafe: Enter ye and be devoured.
It is always eat up or be eaten up.
What is the reference of it in that sentence?
Converse with horses in a dingy sushi bar.
Horoscopes promise passionate promiscuity.
Sometimes cigars can act like pricks.
Two hours of smoke an extended orgasm.
Purchase a pack of Godzillas. Enjoy.
You are responsible for whatever you read.
Do not assault Noman's ears for explanations.
Twist the goddess's knickers from nostalgic rope.
Wear them well where you will wear them.
Feel the miraculous swell and understand.

Language Suite #3

Grey cat scratches at beige carpet. Bit of a trance state.
Politically correct poetry. That phrase is not referential.
Ponderously pissed pachyderms. Porously pleated Platypi.
Form without content. A flattening of the core grammar.
Bring the water to the well. Fill your lyrebird with syntax.
How must words be ordered when thoughts must be free to fly.
Conjunction junction has lost its function.
Paint emotion pictures. The word less. Store more lore.
Pigeons forget their cities. Diversify your beverages.
If you are seeking a story you are seeking in vain.
Inhere the story. Only readers possess that power.
No need Noman need narrate no necessities.
Poor old Noman just another melting snowman.
Escapades egregious: only look to find them where you are.
America is open 24/7. Titillating tacos for the taking.
Say a word never said. Write a word never written. Impossible.
Originality a pragmatically unoriginal constraining concept.
Pluck the low hanging fruit. Make that kazoo toot! toot!
Dream of your car lost in a dangerous neighborhood.
You might can do that but it confers no ownership.
The periplum plies pleasantly chilly tropics:
shivering  tigers, anacondas in snowsuits, flamingos in fur.
Again that damn cat scratches but the walls of a box.
Noman wakes wide into a world of whirled dis-ease.
What occurred in the interim not never original.
Better a bird in hand. Alls well that ends well.

Language Suite #2

An old man stretched upon a coach head on a pillow
longing for sleep like a desert for rain.
Intense emotion in his motionless motion.
The jungle trance dance of in-between.
Inchoate leap and whirl of images;
the fading twilight of meaning drains away.
Where does your you're go when you aren't?
When does a bassoon mimic a violin?
There is no poem here; if you seek eye peace begone.
Words fall like leaves between alphabet and syntax.
What looms inside this weave? Language a special doom.
Sheep eat pumpkins but only chickens eat pig shit.
Yapping dogs teach litachoor to deaf idiots.
Ostriches in party hats laugh because they know.
Poetry made in a days; motorcycles jump to conclusions;
the butler in the library with a wrench.
Eye lids flutter is a scene's scene seen.
Let the microphones make it all official.
The old man snores and sighs. He slumbers in
Hell, his furnished room too cramped for a bed.
The quality of mercy is not strained,
but the quality of consciousness is scarred
by chairs asleep on cats and homicidal Dodos
that thrive on the darkness where he unaware dreams.

Language Suite #1

The fecund brain flares apace.
Neurons do not believe in order,
they simply fire at will.
Chaos in meaning: chaos is meaning.
Meaning meaning order means
an imposed fiction of control,
to herd the sheep without bo peep.
Narrative gasps and flops and dies
already a fish to be fossilized.
Pick a word, a phrase, a sentence,
rearrange at will, call that order,
call that your very own.
Pick a Pound, a Periplum, a Period.
Noman has already visited.
Everything already written
only a mine of minds to be mined
and made NEW over and over.
This has all happened before;
it will all happen again.
Tchaikovsky stole from Beethoven,
Beethoven stole from Mozart,
Mozart stole from God.
Noman owns there words.
All a matter of no fortune
and perhaps a name to come.
Even an infinity of tears
cannot dampen the brain's cheeks.
Fling the paint and let it drip.
Coherence gone and good riddance.
Partake of what is and move on.

Aeromancy

February a baleful month
dabbed with deep darkness,
the calendar's mortuary
nature's own Gulag.
Its window opens upon
possible impossibilities
none of which yield joy.
Crows plummet murderously
from the heavens
vainly trying to flee
into spring but merely splat.
Roads are crushed
beneath a carpet of hoar.
Frosted blimps soar naked.
Boots refuse to stay tied.
Your parent's nightmares
freeze your sweaty sleep.
Snow falls like dead swans.
Eclairs crystallize into
lumps too solid to enjoy.
A month of undeserved
solitary confinement
that trembles the soul.
A deep achromic terror
keening coldness
in a huge white wail
penetrating the ears
until march stops
the madness and hope
blossoms as crocuses,
apricity achieved,
small phosphorescent
dots of desire.

A Redeeming Pastime

The best game in town
must be playing chess with God.

The omniscient old dude
really fucked up by installing
that pesky free will.

Now he knows every possible
move you can make, but not
the one you will make.

Scholar's mate or Fool's mate;
pieces of cake, both sweet
redemption in the mortal mouth.

My 15 minutes have arrived!