February’s frost
kissed the water pipes
and they burst –
just like back when
it was you and I
and really hot,
so for Valentines
I got you a plumber.
I know how sexy
it is when I look at you
and say
“home repairs….”
For dVerse Quadrille
Category: dVerse
Quadrille – Steep
Steep is the color
of my true love’s eyes,
cave cliffs
where swallows dive
Like falling love
at breakneck speed,
gravity redlines,
blinding, see
Courage,
shy wings bend
first close to her body,
then straighten, extending
Strength in curve and rise –
Grace. Precipice. Desire.
For dVerse Quadrille
Nose Job
Don’t answer the
door
it’s that
rhinoceros,
the one you shooed from your
dream last
night.
But now it’s
day and here you
are, thickly skinned, sloe-
eyed, wrinkled grey beauty, your
nose a triumphant
horn that makes a
point
of existence and a fighting
chance, though a heavy
lift, and sometimes
extinction
doesn’t sound that
bad.
For Jilly’s enjambment jam
Quadrille 71
The wind homeless, shaky,
panhandling for drink,
then January blows into the street
like Dillinger from a bank –
it’s murder, fire exchanged in cold blood,
everyone diving for cover.
The not-so-great depression –
sunshine bitter, on the dole,
brother can you spare a dime?
For dVerse Quadrille
Après Moi le Déluge
Buy-One-Get-One-Free
chicken on sale, the tender breasts
repeated so tenderly I suffer
meat shock repeat after me my wife says
but I still forget and return short-handed, clew footed,
clueless, gizzardly beaked and peaked
with life and liberty and the pursuit of feed corn
sandwiched between life in the fast lane and mayonnaise
it crosses the road again and again
like some kind of pullet Sisyphus,
a chicken of the sea you can tune a guitar but you can’t tunafish,
chicken-handed left-winded side-wounded, wound rewound webfooted,
It bears repeating but no repeating bears since isn’t even one bear unbearable?
The cockscomb truth waggles in the telling
like wind in a two x two chambered heart —
my capon tastes like a castrato
singing in St. Peters
For dVerse MTB
Ground Zero
I visited Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan today
to see if poetry had taken root, like fireweed,
among the cracks in the rubble and the dead.
Instead I heard the voice of a friend
Who reminded me that
the study of death
and dying teaches
nothing.
And so I stood, empty handed,
again, without the grace
to give
or receive.
For dVerse Poetics
Quadrille 69
So it’s God shooting marbles again
with one blue and green
cat’s eye
sighting in the ring,
that glassy stare
playing us
for keeps.
Gotta knuckle down,
a steely spoiler
coming in like a comet,
and hope God doesn’t play dice
with the Universe.
For dVerse Quadrille
