Rocks and stones will take me home

Gray streaked with white chalk,
this pebble not quite rock
has pocks and fissures
to coddle slow whispers.
It tallies secrets –
a brittle wish, I’ll tell it –
with a crumbled math
passed down the aching earth.

Between an occasionally well-placed environmentalist and an enduring rock

I slip on a joy – fully sightless
this dusk-dawn for an hour,
for an hour.

The blindness comes and it becomes
my better half, when I turn,
then I’ll turn.

I sip on the play – fully warmed, less-
steeped in it, for an hour,
for an hour.

The coldness spreads with its deadening
crystalline breaths, when I tilt,
then I’ll tilt.

I lip to a mind – fully fearless
haunts stoppered for an hour,
for an hour.

Wilderness goes with bewildering
waste, hand-in-hand, when I round,
then I’ll round.

I dip down the need – fully wantless,
in my wanting this one hour,
but one hour.

Listlessness sifts down from drifting
clouds, brown with ash. My bulk shifts,
their footprints lift.

When your cup runneth over, the serviette gets stained

He fills up the gilded cup
enough for a palsied hand
to fumble it. This stumble was
expected, though it wasn’t planned.
It brings low gasps, and he grasps
the gravity of their mood, yet...
Color-drained lips slowly drip
purplish blots of pretend. Blood gets
wiped clean. How about sins? He’d grin
but the snicker can’t sneak clear.
For untold deathless days they’ve prayed,
when the present grows too dear.

An Adult Primer worthy of a prim adulation for the primacy of its adulteration

Anguished alabaster alien abstractly accepts abandonment.
Bluely burbling balladeer bedevils bedraggled brigands.
Christened critter cracks chromatically creamy chrysalis.
Deliberately diapered dilettante dangles dastardly delights.
Elusive epistemological epiphanies elide egalitarian eventualities.
Fractiously flagrant fabulist force-feeds fragrant fragments.
Garrulous gourmand greedily gobbles gristly gossips.
Histrionically hampered haberdasher hems herringbone hallucinations.
Indiscriminately injected indigo induces inky indiscretions.
Jasmine jester's jape jumbles jive judiciously.
Kinetic killjoy keenly kicks kaleidoscopic keepsakes.
Luxuriantly locked Lothario lugubriously laments lassitude.
Meticulously monochromatic mosaics mythologize mellifluous metamorphoses.
Nattily naughty nautilus natters navigational notions.
Observational ornithologist obviates ospreys' ornery objections.
Pulchritudinous panderer painfully posits plangent prescriptions.
Quantitatively quivering questers question quantum qualities.
Robot's religiously restless receptors reactively recoil.
Sniveling sloth strenuously stifles slobbery sneezes.
Temporally tampering tenors tender tantalizing tremolos.
Unctuously uppity undertakers upbraid umber upholstery.
Varyingly voluminous vassals voraciously vacuum vermicelli.
Wondrously waisted wastrel welcomes whispers warily.
Xerxes' xenophobic xylophonist xeroxes xanthic xylographs.
Yesterday's yammer yearningly yields yeasty yawns.
Zesty zither zealots zigzag zippy zings.

(As you can see, I like to indulge in my own invented word games. Most letters could yield lots of fun variations, but those pesky end-of-the-alphabet characters don't offer much to play with. If I can sustain the interest, I may try to illustrate these for an actual "primer" book. I'm not sure whether to create it as a real or virtual entity, however.)

World Poetry Day

The sunshine is in slanted rhyme
with our gazes. Leaves, broad and green,
brown and lean, are assonant and
consonant with the gripping grass.

Blended they recall our shy bend
of fingers, held mid-reach. Murmur-
mothering creek echoes the pool
and flow of voices carried off.

A day walks by us on bare feet.
This season, a coupling couplet,

teaches us the chorus we’ll bear,
repeating its re-treating song.

Luna ticks

Super moon
dupes her mood –
loopier, rude.
Stoop here. Spoon
soupier broods.

Lessons from foreign gods (Part 1?)

The elephant in the room is Ganesh.
Atop his cramped altar he reminds me,
full belly pushing sing-song speech,
There is no room. Don't look. You'll see
broken tusk in hand. Emptiness can teach.

(perhaps I'll do a series of these...)

Disappointment is always duly rewarded (with more disappointment)

"Abandon all tropes," the sign read,
mischievously painted.
Absentee souls, re-acquainted,
enter there faulty – hopes shed
with blistering gait, lips puckered.

When life gives you lemons, take the hat

The sit down is a stew.
It’s a slow stew on the stool.
What’s with this song?

This song. It’s been
been played too much,
too much to the point
to the point it’s not just lost
it’s not just lost, it’s oblivious to
oblivious to whatever appeal
to whatever appeal it had. Once.

Once. It appalls him.
Appalls. Is that too strong a word?
Permit me to say no.
Permission granted. No.
May he? He may. He might win
back its appeal with few subtle changes.
Might he? Let’s see. Let’s.

“Let bits flee, let bits flee
where there’ll be no answers.”
It’s funny – funny strange –
how he made the cliché more,
more absurdly clichéd.
And it’s funny... funny.
How? Funny how
after all this time
nothing’s changed but the faces
– theirs not his.
His was always the clown’s... odd.

Oddly, time didn’t stop, but it did make a loop.
Time looped in slot-machine cherry,
orange and lemon.
It whirred by
and it doesn’t stop, not even
when their faces blur.
They aren’t even faces now.

Now? What are they?
They’re blurs,
blurs nothing more
nothing more than blurs,
and what’s funny
what’s funny strange is so
so is he. A blur.

A blur and nothing more
nothing more than a blur until
until he picks up the hat.

He picks up the hat
the hat he didn’t wear here
he didn’t wear it here but he’ll take it
he’ll take it with him
he’ll take the hat with him when he goes
when he goes now.
Now. He’s gone.

Lie down and let her guide you

Why bother mother
earth? You slip silent sister
moon's cool shadow one
hour. The next, fall praying to
father sun's flash of temper.

Drinking in the first blush of spring

He'd grin through green
gulps, if his gulp could
gallop with a grin
strapped to its back.
No time to try.
Let trickles trace green
creases on flushed cheeks.
Grins jump later.

Thumbs are best used for twiddling

He couldn't own, but
he could control, at least
his brutish strength could, or
could it? Fear played dirty
tricks on them both, both
propping up and thumbing
down. He thumbed. For years
he thumbed, but the propping
came to feel too much
like propping – empty. When
the thumb slipped, and slip
it did, it couldn't do
anything but slip. But
did it, or did the thumbed
throw it off? He had
become not so much
flabby as tired – tired
but hopeful – hopeful
the thumb on him could
also slip. Couldn't it slip,
what with the wear of years,
and his own undercut?

At the bottom of a stained porcelain cup are leaves strained for the future

It's what the tea leaves –
with tasteful chatting, polite
discretion – left out

(I like the ideas of a poem shorter than its title)

When I sensed, the world was a lie (a pretty one)

There is no creek,
but there is a burble,
and both burbling
and the mud- and rock-cracked
creek (though not here)
could be clearer
if not for the small, hunched raccoon
that while absent appears
cheeky as it troubles
the creek’s bottom (not)
to conjure crawdads (also not).
Its imagined blur of paws,
(were it here) would
feel much better
than any imaginary eyes could see
(ours and its included),
what with the mucky clouds
it kicks up as it shifts
slime-licked pebbles,
to make the seeing harder.
Those eyes (ours not its)
would grow tired not seeing.
They might pause unfocused
and feel the puff of a gray flapping –
an unseen bird’s flaps, perhaps
a dove, that lacking presence
can only be heard, and felt.
Then it disappears
(the flaps, the raccoon, our eyes, the creek)
into the burbling of soup-thick air
as if none of it was
ever here (it wasn’t).