pawprints of feral cats
snowprance around 
the dead seal where 
winter licks its wounds –
hungry sex kittens 
doing lap dances,
their warm tongues 
in the bullet hole
that killed him –
strippers all, teeth 
ripping seal meat
into g-stringed ribbons
of fur
  
naughty muse, 
naughty muse,
you've caught me 
in your vice –
we are after all
but peeping Toms
and Thomasinas 
  
two bull-neck males
bark threats
from out in the waves –
warnings, grief, hunger – 
they keep watch 
over their own
like bouncers –
there will be no more 
grave robbing 
for me today

The Sunday Muse

“blue hoof ice –
the kick of frozen air –
stepping outside
breathtaking me
for a ride”
                                      – qbit

  
  
bobbleheaded blue breaker
                            bray into the blue blue blue blue
blue maker, blue taker
                        haymaker, rain slaker, name saker
cawing like a horse-crow
                            yawing like this raven knows to
saddle up your win, for the
                                 floor fight raven-ation and its 
food biters, Foo Fighters
                             flightline sighttime nightrhyme
signal towers, wedding bowers, Croesus flowers
                                          slow rolled into morning
in barney stones, blarney homes
                                     floors were made for falling 
there goes the topple-ganger neighborhood
                                      arch-top flat-top baby baby
fabled barking nonstop harking into blue
                                                                               blue
into blue
                          into starkly raving madly craving 
rinny tin tin tin tin tin tin tin
                                                          saving into blue
into blue
into blue

The Sunday Muse & Quickly

This story, I’m walking deep in the moors where even the deer become lost and die of starvation		This story is an aubade for trilobites their message in a bottle washed ashore for lovers and horseshoe crabs
In this story, turkey vultures huddle in their cage of wind and thicket		In this story, my hair blows at right angles to my mind
In this story, you are at home, still asleep		In this story, you are too long gone from our bed. Trilobites evolve when they are not observed.
Hello muse		On s’amuse boucoup
The trilobite has crept from your poem into mine		You are welcome to it they smell of the sea, love, and dreams
	triple bites the hand that needs you
	let the caged ragged tagged age old dream split the difference, split the tongue let this old bird sing
	do vultures sing? grunts, hisses, bill clacks
	we are tasted savored and favored and rawhide chewed softened to undo you
	your hair illuminated smooth-a-nated dark-o-rama dark as Rama bury buried buries my eyes and nose and ellipsis of scent of sense
	cat got your tongue?
	yes it wags, it shakes, it gets carried away, a limp mouse in grey fur
“A man’s character is his fate”		“Nature likes to hide herself”

The Sunday Muse and Quickly

Snappish winds 
start a locker room towel fight,
welting my skin with pops of ice.

I don't see it coming, a left hook of cold 
blasts the side of my face 
and I'm seeing stars, no

It is snow,
the fisticuff air 
full of mirror shards

blown out of thin, tin air.
Color me gargantuan, 
color me snow blind,

the gloves are coming off 
you winter SOB! 
Wait no, the gloves go back on! Dammit!

[redacted:
a flurry, a blizzard
of blows]

[redacted:
"The first rule
of Fight Club…"]

[redacted: I am a mime
waving away rainbow gnats,
pestilent sparkles]

Back at the house,
the pipes are frozen, and when they thaw
they will burst.

January, by TKO. 

The Sunday Muse

With holes in their necks
where they might have last kissed 
or nuzzled,
not one, but two deer, frozen,
gently surface 
from a dune on the shore.

Their empty eye sockets
gaze upon each other –
bridal veil of sand pulled back 
by the sea –
ritual minister of joy
and last rites.

Were they driven from their families,
a hunted Romeo and Juliet?
Did they come down to this water
like you and I
to drink and die together from the beauty 
of sunrise?

My black jacket flapping
in the wind,
I join ravens
picking at the choice bits.

I hear your voice –
snow owl, prophetic wife, 
your scorn stiff with salt
and rime.

The Sunday Muse

A white-tail deer moons me, 
disappears behind clouds,
and I'm moon walking in the stumble-light
  
Tripping on potholes of moonman craters 
and astronaut seas 
mirrored in puddles
  
It is way past bedtime for stoats and voles,
they watch silent horror films of hawks, 
shadows that flicker on silver screen leaves
  
The taste of time on my tongue, 
my gloves soaked and cold 
from this morning's sleet
  
I trace a line to the Pole star, 
but is my filmy world a negative, I have it all 
backwards? Am I headed South, not North?
  
I walk in light, old and yellow as sticky tape,
peeled from b&w photos 
off the bottom of the sea

The Sunday Muse

Wind
bites through my skin –
white-capped teeth
off winter seas.

Sand whips
and tastes of banishment.
Umbilical prisoner,
I walk bleak Eden.

Rain breaks covenant,
floods, waterboards
my knowledge 
of good and evil. 

The Sunday Muse

This will be about rope.		And so?
Turk’s Head knots
for eyes.		Just because you say “trefoil”
		doesn’t make it true.
Braided X’s.		Like eyes sewn shut. Whipstitch is it?
Coils and splices.		You are spliced to me, yes.
		Coils of smoke. I gave up my Marlboros when you were four.
You are bent in death.		Bend – to join one rope to another. What ties us?
		Our rigging of blood.
	Neither Neither	of us make correct use
of		of
	shroud. shroud.
		Why are these nautical, I was a cowgirl.
Arroyos to the Panhandle
look like the bottom of the sea.
You would have me		You would
	hoist hang
the solstice.		me with the sun.
Blocks and	sheaves to lift Swing me	from the crack of noon.
the dawn.
	Bight, cordage, knot, Bite, pull, thread, lash,
		tangle what is
	living dying	release
me
from you.
		You know you do not mean that.
	Braided Plied	into every strand.

The Sunday Muse

I guess just throw it
on the compost,
this dead swan at the bottom
of the road.
  
So much larger here at my feet –
a dead, feathered cello,
neck bent around to bow
a low moan.
  
It was never white, I can see
it was a living light,
bright silver now brushed with death
to mottled grey. 
  
Prisms of dew 
bead the wings –
tasting flights of fine oil
feeding mites.
  
No prayer 
here.
I roll like a dog
in dead words. 

The Sunday Muse