Windshield wipers doing time, we pass 
Danbury FCI – the slammer where billionaires 
doodle orange Jello on Martha Stewart™ 
tin plates. 

You said roll Connecticut‘s forest 
into a blanket, wrap you in all that green –
tuck the earth, the globe around you, let you
dream rhyme slang among nymphs

Held in their trees – parole 
from the long drive's tedium. I am Clyde, 
obedient to your Bonnie, but I don't know
how to keep all the world's twigs 

from sticking and waking you, all that
ragweed and pollen from creation’s sneeze,
all the animals – aardvark 
to zyzzyva – from crowding you,

your car seat smaller than a cell.
What was Noah thinking? I look
in the glove box but have no cubits or pistol,
just napkins from Dunkin Donuts.

I reach out the window, 
lay hands on the horizon, 
crack heaven's vault – 
proceed to loot vistas, 

boost realms, cut landscapes 
from their frames of reference,
I would commit all felonies of 
sea and sky for you, any crime

of mountain or stone
doing hard time. Awake now
you are judge and jury, 
sleepy, are we there yet?

Windshield blades clear off rain,
like rags wiping clean the slate.

*Zyzzyva – a genus of tropical weevil.

For Shay’s Word Garden

What is a heart? Circling, crow said:
a Ferris-wheel. Loved ones clambering in
at the bottom, belting tight, handrail down, up,
up, and overhead to vistas of love and all. Whee!

Yet nobody ever gets off, only on. 
I must build ever more gondolas, bigger and bigger, 
standing room only now, gingerly add more spokes, 
longer and higher, everything faster and better.

Fade that Mr. George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.,
the wheel's inventor – his body on fire with typhoid fever, 
turning and turning endlessly in his bed –
died penniless, his ashes unclaimed. So there's that. 

Because I’m a rinky-dink carny, a huckster 
with my 25 cent rides in a field outside of town. It's just 
me to collect the tickets, clean the johns, sell 
the popcorn and cotton candy, make lemonade
 
out of life’s lemons. In the midway dirt, crow
pecks at busted foil balloons. Let’s change this up. What if 
instead  the heart is a yo-yo: all whiplash and whirl 
falling in love. Or steady spin around the axis of marriage – 

Walking the Dog and Rock the Baby. Yes, those 
will do. You, crow, plucked at the string in my chest’s hidey-hole 
and winged away to your nest. Furious, wild, it’s Around 
the World, I am undone.

My heart is flying saucers, pizza dough tossed high, 
unicycles with fire eaters, zodiacs, everything 
that turns under the galaxy’s carnival lights. Whee. Wheel.
Crow watches from the bend in her oak tree.

For Shay’s Word Garden

Wait, what’s this? The morning is all a-twitter 
with Elon Musk deepfakes: AI’s posting Harpies –
the head of Elon fixed to the body of birds,
a titmouse shrieking atop magpies and shrikes.
 
Have our overlords reincarnated as Greek Myths?
My History Channel inbox now shaken, not stirred 
with Elon as Atilla, Robespierre, Elon as Tecumseh Sherman 
and Atlanta's burning pixels pour from a Dixie cup
 
into my phone, slime like faux-butter, greasing
the automated re-write of the rules, of lucidity –
my mind is too puny for the onslaught, the Musk-a-rrhea
of it all, Elon here, Elon there, Elon everywhere –
 
Chef Boyardee Musk-a-Roni, Muskovy duck, 
Muskie for President, Elon fondling Muskmelons 
that split under his touch, The Captain and Tennille sing 
“Muskrat Love” on repeat. 
 
Three Musketeers, both book and bar. Yes, even those –
nothing is sacred, nothing untouched, no escapees from
the Popeil Musk-o-Matic – it slices it dices 
it makes hundreds of julienne minds in seconds.
 
My nostrils full with the scent of Musk. 
I look at the screen and see my own head – 
not on a bird but on a stake, a Muskmallow soft and white,
ready for turning above the flame.

For Shay’s Word Garden

The time traveler’s wife
asked me to bring back a carton of smokes
From 1972, since it was way cheaper
and still cool, and she could light up inside
instead of bumbling in the rain

Also pick up some orange juice and eggs, 
and don't forget to close the wormhole behind me
like yesterday, when I let loose the gerbils and
guinea pigs, escaping though runway tubes
between dimensions

And please patty-cake or do-se-do 
with the refrigerator, or whatever it is I do,
so that today’s failing avocados come back perfectly
ripe, grab that toast 30 seconds earlier
before it burns

Instead, might I take back what I said, an hour
a day, a month, a year ago?
Time unleashes the past like a furious river,
words, a flood of tumbling wreckage 
and drowning cars

Or find that spot just above the artery
where I can tie off regret with a tourniquet
of silk cord, stanch the memory 
and blood of loss which stain 
the hourglass so red

For Shay’s Word Garden

A soccer ball floats in the wide, broom reach, far 
from either shore – faded red and white hexed scales 
of a deflated fish, what air remains

leaking rubbery sadness. Motionless, 
as if placed for the kick – but it's long over, 
the match between mermen and stevedores – 

pickup game between fast, elegant fins passing from below,
vs. burly shore workers on lunch break, heavy thighs 
and power kicks from above,

the waves whipping furious, 
wind dodging and driving forward,
only the sky to referee.

My ferry blows its whistle, but there is no clock to stop, 
no crowd shocked by loss, a seagull picks at trash,
engines moan against the current.

A tire-pump PTSD here – the new ball I left in a park
practicing goals with my father before he died 
when I was young,

him annoyed I don’t take care of my things.
Now one of us above, one of us below,
balled-up years drift on the tide.

For Shay’s Word Garden

Did the Romans really pave their roads 
with books? Wrap each brick 
of the Via Appia in papyri odes?
Godspeed to chariots, or such. 

Now, instead, our highways are scorched asphalt – 
hot words dead-snake the country, 
tarred and burnt. Bitumen 
rhymes with bitter.

Or was it Greeks, 
using verse
to hammer closed the lids 
of caskets?

(A poem in my pocket 
for my cousin's funeral, but I had 
the wrong day and missed it. 
I am so sorry.) 

This morning, my toes are grateful 
for cool sand among 
beach plums and 
sawgrass.

At the end of the track, 
gravel and sharp 
stones. 
Are these 

words 
a pebble in my shoe, 
a rock in my heart? 
A nail?   

Or a path, a way.

For Shay’s Word Garden

What could be so urgent,
this pelican outside my window at 3AM
grunting and clacking me awake –

Across the river, news of New York City
dimmed at this hour, building lights 
vague on the apron of water,

But hark – 150 years late –
Lincoln is shot!
Pelicans known for their slow roll,

Messages passed beak to beak
like parents feeding smelt
to their young,

Then off to Australia, riding spars
and rigging of boats, decades 
in the whaling grounds' widening gyre,

Storms – all hands lost – flying ashore
at Pitcairn Island,
listening to Fletcher Christian’s parrots

Squawk mutiny into the headlines.
Now all just white noise
to me, the sound of pelican feathers

taking flight, only blinking red and blue cop cars
transmitting some new violence
in morse code –

What news, what news?
I am as Lear, crazed
with scrambled signal –

I'm sorry if I must pass 
this slip of paper on to you
as you sleep.

For Shay’s Word Garden

You know how it is when you stand in front of 7-Eleven 
in New Jersey, scarfing a jalapeño hot dog for breakfast,
ketchup and relish dripping between your fingers

Don’t you “Eeeew!” me! The Eighth 
Day of Creation was the Lord’s Jalapeño Hot Dog Day
along with Slim Jim and a Mountain Dew Day

I think which comes after Things That Crawl Day, 
which is maybe after Fish, I forget my Bible,
I forget too, how to count pennies with my remaining hand

The one left after my Old Testament punishment – whack! –
for my theft of this beautiful morning, for living by the sword,
for my heresy denying Da Word 

And we don’t really do pennies anymore, do we? Has anyone
told Charon? Is there an App for that? "Go to RiverStyx.com
book your crossing now." SMS charges may apply –

Please respond "Y" if we are all dying, "N" to Opt out.
Instead, I rant like a monk at Matins or Lauds 
in the holy early hours of an ExxonMobil Tiger Mart parking lot –

Cash register bells ringing, incense smell of fuel, 
transubstantiation’s promise in donuts and coffee: 
eat, this is my body, drink, this is my blood

Overdosed on haunted Latin from the Vulgate, St. Jerome 382 A.D.
cruising into the Lincoln Tunnel's cathedral maw before dawn, 
a cop high up in his glass box the celebrant Pope blessing cars,

Healing traffic by laying on of horns –
All together now, under the river, we deprive Charon his due
but pay the toll nonetheless,

Tarmac lifts us back up into the world, we are risen, 
Manhattan split down 42nd street, dripping light,
cross streets hung with thieves.

For Shay’s Word Garden