Passing time alone
for another beverage
and your communion,

it is time to admit my er’r
to the tabernacle box.

Getting out ruddy
with a blue piece of the wall,
I’ll cry in German.

You slip into this crevice.
I pulled you into my fall.

We are between the slats.
I straddle the razor line;
you are on both sides of me.

One sentence of two
is twice unwritten by Fate,
whether it’s served:

Fire on ice, shaken, wanting
just us, alone, quiet, dark.

I have made my mind.
“Up to you. Forget me, not.”
I take my chances.

There is more than one option;
there are, to many, choices.

One may die innocent,
square as the day is round,
or live with guilt thereof.

Pens over pencils,
red claw marks, indelible,
we leave, or do not.

We do not bud, or flower.
The leaves shook loose in thunder.

Just, what would you do?
Sing scales, to show the way up.
They stole the Stairway.

Nothing to believe in, now,
just bowling for coat hangers.

Of all vain words to say,
and all pregnant pauses:
“The ‘Cat God’ strikes again!”

Not knowing how, or whence, or where, or why
my past became my present, you to me,
a paper wrapper, molded to my rye,
I’d offer you a taste, but not for free.
The reading of the charge exacts its price
without conviction. There in lies, the crime
was not that Henny Penny fooled us twice
but couldn’t pull the hat trick off in time.
I miss you, here, in verse between refrains.
Perhaps I’ll out the in to strung guitar,
for right or wrong, for rapture passing pain:
so long, as I cannot tell who you are.
I do not know if you’re the You in me,
but She exclaims the option to be free!

A stubborn impulse, reflex in the spine,
admits no conscious conscience or a choice
between your flow’ring dogwood and my pine.
…From crocus, saffron; reticence, a voice.
Great Mouth of Truth, your tongue beyond my ken,
I offer you my hand, should fiction bite:
“I hurt you once; I’d hurt you once again…!”
From sight, take fright, and scurry out of flight.
Two people get my jokes, on planet Earth,
and neither will explain the punch to me.
It tastes of cherries, death, and Jesus’ birth,
but can’t decide the man he wants to be.
Is he a nut? Is he a Russian spy?
Is this a swindle, or a true good buy?

If our breathing in
hurts the rare air in the room,
open a window.

Perhaps, through a slit, a crack
in what can’t, we can breathe free.

You owe God nothing.
“They” cannot need us at all.
The universe ends.

It will not, in an epoch.
How short need an epoch be?

At two years old, I failed
to reach the potty in time.
My only Mom “forgave” me.

It would taste

like artificial cherry syrup,

it would look

like FD&C Blue #1,

(“the flavor of technology,”)

if my words were sweet cane to your eyes,

if they cooed like

the perfect mother

in your burning, innocent ears,

nursery rhymes

with no higher ambition

than for you to be happy,

with the mouthfeel

of a candy shell

rather than the alkalinity

of a bitter vegetable

“mom” made you eat.

At glance, askance, too brightly might you shine

for eyes affixed to seer’s shadows cast;

when sun, to moon, to earth, perchance, align;

that cry for moments dead before they’ve passed.

Amaterasu, Freya, or Khebat?

Divine, I would, by cards, or runes, or tea

a seat in Heaven, (standing in Duat,)

for you, a might you might not want to be.

My breath is inappropriate; my lips

are pursed around the gnashing of my teeth.

Perhaps, a poet shouldn’t dance for tips.

Perhaps, your God’s above and mine’s beneath.

The virtue of my angles is “to cut”

where reticence and augury abut.

To my mother,

too rarely about,

always because of

This is one of the last two sonnets he wrote me, by the way.

“To the Cat God:

There comes a point, when art is false excuse.
I don’t think this is trite, but who am I?
There’s medicine, and then there’s drug abuse.
You quit me, but I couldn’t hear ‘Goodbye.’
I’m not that frightened rabbit, hollow-eyed,
who asked if he could hold your hand, and you
are not that little waif who bravely cried,
in ‘trouble,’ prick my thumbs and start anew.
Ten years, and a degree less wee deranged,
I don’t believe our beating hearts have changed.
Our ‘souls’ were never in or out estranged.
My love was neither chance nor prearranged.
Your shadow gave no reason or excuse.
Each in our turn, we ducked and slipped the noose.

Love,
Your ‘ex-’ ”

He’s keeping the other one a secret. I could see it, if I wanted, but I respect his boundaries.