It’s 3AM, walking the dogs (yep), 
the riverfront hotel plays 
Mambo No. 5 on loop into the void
from its terrace speakers –

“A little bit of Rita’s all I need…” What greater
truth could a scalpel of freezing wind
cut from the body, hold up like a gift
or tumor in the cauterized starlight?

The dogs sniff the rushes for rats,
but why not find Moses this time? A basket
with a baby to lead us to the promised land
of dancing Instagram and TikTok memes, 

A prophet to part the Red Sea of pixels,
or at least walk the streets ranting
until the bars shut at four, poking
in the trash for empties.

The speakers are crooning Sinatra now –
“I Did it My Way,” but I don’t know 
at this hour what way that is or how
the wheel of night might roll me home.

Trust the dogs I guess, follow them
back to our door, bed, you. Congas
and Ol’ Blue Eyes closing like an ocean
over our heads.

For Shay’s Word Garden

Strewn before me, a Civil War of clams – 
thousands dead and dying, blue and grey 
in the November wind, their broken shells 
failed white flags of surrender.

We brought this on ourselves, though
we might not say "here I lie, clam brother
raising arms against brother" because clams
only have feet, the moaning of their limped 

tongues silenced by amputations of seagull 
field doctors. Here, clam – bite this bullet 
and wash your pain with whiskey.
Clam bellies swirl with Jack Daniels, jealous

As denial In the throat. Were we always 
bivalves, but only know it now? We are two,
no longer halves of one? Ligaments torn, 
our grit and pearls a house divided.

How will we love with two hearts, pray 
with lungs that breathe such different air? 
Our shells split wide like spatchcocked angel 
wings, roasted without thanksgiving.

For Shay’s Word Garden

I asked my Chinese neighbor
if he draws chalk circles, burns 
paper clothes, pagodas, money – joss 

for hungry ghosts in winter.
He said “do you crawl on your knees
to Guadalupe and kiss the steps?"

This morning I breathe smoke
from fires in parks and trash cans
across Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx – 

dismal tributes to autumn 
gasping for cigarette butts,
dumpster diving for rain.

My cough, the rattle of dead newspapers,
obituaries and memory of ancestors 
dry as leaves awaiting a match.

There is no circle chalked around me, 
city, the here and now. Nothing 
that can hold us sacred by much.

Parchment heroes and hierograms
torn from the book of miracles
leave a fine ash on my tongue.

Leaving the apartment, I genuflect, 
touch each station of my body’s cross:
“spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch”

As the sun rises over the haze, 
I summon my grandfathers by name:
Hans, Johannes, Axel.

What is their instruction
for penitence? Where must I crawl,
what stones must I kiss this day?

For Shay’s Word Garden

It's Halloween’s sweet tooth hush 
the morning after – werewolves curled 
at our feet, snuffling and stretching 
for belly rubs, shedding hair 
and happy animal sounds.

Our bones return to their homesick limbs
and sleepy, yawning graves. 
We soak our fangs in Polident to fizz away 
the gore. Ghosts in their BVD's await 
warm sheets from the dryer.

Shy monsters are crafting back in their crypts,
witches switched on Bewitched in the den
and practice wrinkling their magic noses.
Zombies tally their overtime pay – 
they will winter in the Azores or Belize,

Somewhere they can catch some z's 
and the sun is as yellow as their eyes.
I walk with scarecrow back to his place
among the cornrows, stand with him 
at his cross, his Golgotha.

He hands me a sliver chain his sweetheart,
the fairy, gave him when they kissed,
then watched her die against the porch light.
Love finally for him, flickering, fleet. 
Trick or treat, without answer.

Better man than I, he mounts the ladder.
Crows toss dice for his robes.

For Shay’s Word Garden

Uh oh SpaghettiOs! God grabs 
a Bounty™ paper towel
to clean up the mess.

Yanks open the kitchen’s
junk drawer, hands me pliers 
rusty with stigmata,

A jar of leftover screws labeled 
“Inquisition,” boxes of mismatched 
church bells and hunchbacks.

How is this all my problem?
Must I crawl under the world’s sink, clear 
clogged pipes of brotherly & sisterly love?

Damn it! Can I get some lightning and thunder 
under here? ”Filius canis!” Vulgar Vulgate Latin
for my blood-blistered thumb.

No way to unsee God’s plumber-butt.
Winking, hands me a monkey-wrench –
“My favorite.”

Rummaging in the tool box –
“What this?” I ask. 
“The stud finder they used 

on Jesus’s wrists.”
OMG!! Drop it like a hot
fallen angel.

Am I heaven’s husband now,
with a celestial Honey-Do list?
And how is that different 

Than any other
Sunday afternoon
with my wife?

For Shay’s Word Garden

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