feckless
butterfly
 
flight that stuttered
orange
 
is the new
black
 
a dead monarch
on the sand its
 
wings pressed flat
by the unabridged tide
 
the dictionary of water
from anemone
 
to zebra fish
I said to you pointing
 
that's him
that's the bastard
 
the one who's tiny hands
fluttered
 
and the flutter
became the headwinds
 
the tornados
au poivre the chaos
 
the hurricanes
that tore apart our shore
 
and I have butterflies
in my
 
stomach in the twitch of
my eyes, the itch
 
in my arms
to fly the downlegs
 
the doglegs
to visit the graves
 
of the flight
from Egypt
 
or Mexico or
even Ohio 

to watch 
the rain

of silk
 

The Sunday Muse

this morning the ocean
soft as calf snout
 
slow-eyed waves
of a seaweed manger
 
you began to sing
newborn to the water
 
each note translucent
curled and umbilical
 
yet I fear your voice
will wake
 
and beckon
another such hurricane
 
as those just now
as if all joy were oxygen
 
and bloodline
to catastrophe
 
I let go your hand
and walk up the shore
 
because my heart seeks
the lost ground
 
must learn again the shape
of salted firmament
 

The Sunday Muse

I've been reading about the French Revolution
and the Terror
how the sound of tumbrel after tumbrel rattled through the streets of Paris
all night
like semi's out on I-70 from Indianapolis St. Louis Denver
diesel smoke
of our oil-black Amazon burning cross country
from truck stop
to truck stop where waitresses
keep vigil
praying the rosary on their
order pads
 
and how the whisk of blades was as casual as you my love
chopping peppers
for our ragout last night then chicken & onions with that same
satisfying thwack
at the end of each stroke and me cheering
you on
the more the merrier I christen this dish
Marie
 
because none of us are ever any more or less than this
 
because you can howl black robes into black flames
like a bellows to the supreme heart
of the news this morning
 
you can write all their names on wings
of a death's head moth
and tape them to the internet
 
because don't kid yourself
one moment your baguette smells like bread
the next it smells warm and sweet
like an iron pike
 
one moment you laugh at yourself in the mirror
and the next
you grimace at your wig of raven feathers
 
this isn't a prayer or excommunication
dear child of God
 
only a reminder to look up
and see what angel wears your face
at Passover
 

The Sunday Muse

I press feathers
and bits of bone
into the earth
like seeds
like teeth
 
thinking gestures
of futility
might bloom
into foxwomb  
or begonia eyes
 
but only wormwood
will grow a magic flute
from my ribs
thin as a reed
and hollow
 
the chunk of spade
in earth
from my Mr. McGregor
shovel
harrows a shadow
 
its vole
darts across the path
in front of me
returns the favor
of surviving another day
 

The Sunday Muse

a lion’s mane of steam rises
from my coffee tawny
with cream another
day of restless
scratching or
will he
leap?
 

The Sunday Muse

even the sunflowers too tired
to raise their heads
like exasperated mothers prone on the couch
with washcloths over their foreheads
 
you toss the wilted ones down
from the upstairs deck
rain of dragon teeth and yellow
bees wings
 
and I shortstop for Team Entropy
double-play them into the thicket
which season by season creeps us closer
like Birnam Wood towards Macbeth
 
such we play hot-potato
stalks held by rubber bands
for the end of the world gathered
in a slight bouquet

The Sunday Muse

even as my eyes are scuffed
with scratch and sniff corneas
from staring so at the atlas
of longing and latitude
that used lottery ticket we share
 
you complained I was not optimistic
but here I am unscrewing Oreos
to reveal the map of El Dorado
a doomed conquistador of fluff
yet without disappointment
 
the world is not your oyster
maybe its a Fabergé Egg McMuffin
bejeweled off the dollar menu
ketchup ruby glory on a gilded side
of hash browns
 
let's take yet another shot, sight in
our telescope's muzzle bore and barrel
fire a cannonade of stars
and planetary grapeshot
let the cracks fall where they may

The Sunday Muse

the sky a chain-smoking
haze of coughing grey
 
there are no parallels
there are only parallels
 
to the rutting earth
where the whales, dutifully
 
dragged themselves again
out of the sea
 
not to return to the land
but to plow it under

The Sunday Muse

moonrise ablates the early stars
bleaching pinblue beauty into
a sky of goddamn mashed potatoes 
you said let's shoot the moon
and for once I agree its gotta go
that jackal scavenging sunlight
that feral cream cheese so dangerously
fattening but still
my aim steady I'm shooting the sh*t
and it drops like Hogzilla
like a quarter in a coke machine like
the last white dodo attempting flight
and now it's gone, its rasterized
tyranny stripped from poems
a thousand books fall like Byzantium
and the sack of Constantinople
incinerates the number line
of the Dewey Decimal System
from 521 to 527 wiping out Celestial Navigation
burn baby burn what did you expect be
careful what you say to poets
we might take you
at your
word

The Sunday Muse

another day sniffing the armpits of angels
humidity rank with birdsweat
their spent avian fuel
 
the air close with burnt feathers
heat shields that gave out
on re-entry
 
now God hacking up
hairballs of spark plugs
and broken wings
 
all the Gabriel-class hawks
gone to ground even
the sparrows hallow-eyed

The Sunday Muse