What does it mean to be 
spaghetti-hearted?

Boiling at full, yet
slippery and tangled –

Oh my Siciliana, 
my dark-haired wife,

who conspires at love 
like Mafioso

plotting a heist

The Sunday Muse

More dead stuff now it's those crabs 
with eighteen eyeballs – skyballs on stalks, 
periscope glass-eyed Mary's, body parts 
litter the beach like cracked faces
looking back from the sand

I shake my claw at the sky, defiant old man
still skittering sideways through life and you 
let go my hand, slip into the tide a fish –
school away – sunlight echoing off your laughter,
your voice receding in sonar pings

Because I said it was time to leave this place,
return to the city, reverse migration 
of the gannets – streaming in flights 
back to their roosts in the tiny rock warrens 
of Manhattan

Searching for you from above the water, 
my wingtips brush the tops of the waves
hoping you feel my touch like cool sheets 
drawn back from your shoulders.
I dive, transform,

but you are not fooled 
by my clownfish act, my doll-fish face
a lethal disguise –
how I would pull you from the safety of the sea
and leave us both fighting for breath.

If I fail us, then return me here.
When at dawn the dogs come
to leap in the waves and devour 
the broken promises of crabs, 
do not deny their pleasure –

leave them to roll in my ashes.

The Sunday Muse

Your hips the road trip
rock skip hip-hop 
refrain of the sea 

40 years our wild ride, side
by miles sliding by the passing time
on wide open roads 

Until here the sand-path ends 
in beach plum kingdoms taste 
on your lips slipsliding needs

Speeding curves my mind has
the bends brain wave ocean staves
octaves higher and higher

Like rose hips winding trellises
tethered to the crux of  you, 
communion of the journey's

Madness that heat rises,
your wide-brimmed laughter 
at the speed of light 

When my whammy bar transmission
went in gale-force winds
we watch the crash the curl

listen now to the metal seas
how you
drive me to distraction

The Sunday Muse

You squinch your face as if I pulled your nose
like a knob opening the drawer of cities –

that sliding memory where you junked it all –
toy cabs honking, rubber-band commuters,

loose screws and nuts out on the avenues,
our noodle soup of take-out menus –

metropolis errata you'd whisked and slammed, 
then locked the door behind us.

Now walking along the harbor, the sea 
lies flat and grey, shorebirds motionless, 

even the sand quiet, the dog's scented crossword 
of seaweed and crabs, we hear the rain

moving towards us, the surface of the water 
starting to rattle like a box of cracker jacks

whistling through the air at Yankee stadium –
the bleachers, the barker, the crowds,

the crack of a bat, lightning,  memory,
buildings falling like a game of Jenga

from the back of the closet, apartments 
that slide out from under us, our plans 

tumbling down, the rain over the sea 
tumbling down, your forgiveness of me 

that we must go back now,
comes tumbling down

until again the bric-a-brac streets, again 
jumbled jars of hours and days, 

nickeled and dimed – can you hand me 
those pliers my love? The ones that pull teeth 

when the sirens wake us anon
at 3AM?

The Sunday Muse

Beatbox rain 
riffs on the hull 

Belowdecks, we lie together, listen – afloat 
on sleep-tight caulk and lapstrake dreams –
you, my storm anchor

*A Nantucket Sleighride: 7 syllable “Harpoon”, followed by a 25 syllable “Rope”.

The Sunday Muse