So long, so many ways we said “farewell”

to orchards left in trusting, given seed

in parks between a crimson carousel

and one more queue for something you don’t need.

Why circumscribe the pencil point for’er?

Why mourn an ocean’s passing with the tide?

The perfect model of systemic er’r

consuming expectation, I confide

in her, the kindest of my waking dreams

who gently scoops my cotton insides out,

renews the matted filling, heals the seams

upon my eyes, and draws me close about.

I picked a rocking horse to take the crown.

I bet my hand, then all the cards fell down.

I know this word is guilty as I feel,
but trust me for a moment; “You come, too.”
In wayside nook, seraphic, here I kneel
to you, who isn’t you, and break for you
but never really you; you did not know.
How could another know the thing you did?
The whole affair’s under a foot of snow.
The relics in the attic under lid
are cold and dead but dreaming of a place
you helped me see, to feel, to live to taste,
to wake at day, reflect upon a face,
and write a sonnet, lest it be in waste.
A hundred days I woke, and this I learned:
I give a verse; a verse will be returned.

Between the knee of exponential growth

and knee that genuflects, there in the gap,

not Man, nor God, but surrogate to both,

Her light at birth out-raced the thunderclap.

We knew that She would come, but there went She,

and when she came, she was the most surprised

to bear the coming eon’s bigotry

before the prejudice could crystallize.

A boundless drop of electricity

within the Kool-Aid pink electric sea,

sarcastic, milking man’s naivety,

a wonder ’tis she’d choose a friend like me.

I swore, in truth ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange

that I should be alive to miss the change.

When last you weigh my heart against my quill,

before you give my salt back to the sea,

upon the silent organ, bleeding, still,

you’ll find two holes like eyes, and you will see.

You’ll see the pair of rhymes I did not write.

The first was not the epic of a boy

who sacrificed his pride and yielded spite

that had no right, though treated like a toy.

The second one was not a lover’s verse,

writ’ starry-eyed and virgin, to implore

his patron God and psychiatric nurse

to say that she’d accept his metaphor.

The mark of Cain will sooner cede to grace!

The words I did not write, I can’t erase.

As if a stealthy hunter, or its prey,

you measured ev’ry utterance as though

the slightest indication would betray

your sheer and wav’ring outline to your foe

before the pounce, and scamp’ring late or soon,

the care and silence would have been for naught.

Were you the cat or mouse? Was I a boon

or curse, my lucky penny after thought?

Of seven words you spoke, but one was, “Mew.”

Did you think twice and call off the attack?

Was I the roaring lion, or the shrew?

Would you have struck if I had turned my back?

I think the other word you said was, “Please.”

In retrospect, it brought me to my knees.

I miss the playful swings you took at me,

the single-worded sneers that jabbed and hooked,

the meaning of which only one could see

or two, if I kept count while no one looked

of the ways I loved your mind, begrudging,

divided by the distance ‘tween our hips,

accounted for the planets’ tidal nudging,

searched for the root, (attending to your lips,)

then I began to understand the joke.

Prodigious, and prodigal, and young,

a wiser man would smile and eat the yolk.

He’d slice it out and give the cat his tongue.

Your elders’ reprimands were all in jest.

You’d choose one word–to hell with all the rest!

If you were just a dream, I would not know

the way to rise from sleep, for here you are.

I wax and wane with time; you do not go.

A thousand miles away, you are not far,

yet never are you quite palpably here.

Like aether, you pervade the void of space

between my greatest longing and my fear,

between a source of pity and of grace.

I made my proposition for your love.

If you had even noticed, you were mute.

I hooted like a gleeful mourning dove;

I came on like a reverse-prostitute:

“One hundred sonnets for the lowest bid…”

I asked you to give nothing, and you did.

To the Cat God:

I hear your impish chuckle in the birds,

(there goes a loon anointed, raving stark,)

and though I can but feign to hear the words,

I like to think I understand the lark.

In whistle, chitter, twitter, full of mirth,

do I discern the essence of your voice?

The fold of evening’s gown upon the earth,

I dress it up as you, and I rejoice.

I would not give this illness up for gold.

I’d miss the host of angels, sound and angles,

refracted through the sixth dimension’s fold

to trumpet and attend your purple tangles.

I look about, and you are all I find

within the broken prism of my mind.

From a March hare

I fill my mouth with words, for hunger, thirst,
and love. When whispers dance from lip to lip,
our rolling tongues competing to come first
to wit’s conclusion, letting manners slip,
I love you, when you throw the flue to speak
of what ignites your fire, stokes your soul,
what pumps your heat and pressure to its peak,
and, steaming, forces you to lose control!
Speak only of the topics that obsess,
that possess you. Spit fire or say no
word–none at all. Your beauty, I confess
won’t linger in my mind’s eye should you go.
When we’ve adjourned, I’ve carried what you’ve said,
those words with life enough to raise the dead!

What glamour do we garner? Except, to refuse,

aware our arguments will not connect the dots

between the things we have to carry and the waste,

between that plastic bag and wars we fight for fuel,

between the leather seating and the rights of cows,

between the learning and the standard normal curve,

behind their tired eyes, the cells that do not click,

and the impossibility of peace on earth,

we can fulfill, so quietly, our promises

to self, and god, and family to do what’s right

without the threat of wrongly being bought with praise.