epaulets and melodies.

Touchdown I
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Orange Cat IV
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a.
thirteen misspelled birds
typed under the color
black and green,
the parrot is named
grenade- produce
reintroduced as
heirloom- new

b.
seals cracked the
long maligned petroleum
mold, red Bristol Cream
holds each modern wheel
loaned, rehearsed by the
numbers the unsigned
check lays like constant
renewal and rebuke- hating
all insanity but rubbing
against it like an orange cat
& celebrating it, with a
touchdown dance.

thebuffaloavenue

the bartender 23
a blond girl - encroaches
on me; solid behind
a beer- her happiness
wreaks against
me, perfume, eye shadow
and glare, she does
know this thing
having boy after boy
leave her heart
corralled by a lie-
it is that despair,
a letter sent and returned,
a drum submerged
it is a despair that will
not be ringed by
words, it is a deep
sadness, a cobble
stone under asphalt,
blue green and alone
long under horse hooves and
shit pushed slowly deeper
by each tractor trailer tire.

tools to know the way home.

metal stakes the cement, the floor
cracks along the
long line of history
the metal pushes up and floats all of mankind
like a feather
answers ribbon asphalt, and glue
wanes to perfection the
grease
reflecting the first single star
of solitude- evening.

$10.80

corn burns golden under
a sun foreign
the razor mimics
the soul and lets
go of the peeled
imagination,
i am here at this
cross road
burned by the
wonder of grass
blinded by
flowers and
wasted by the
space
in which
they grow.

the option of innocence

if i were to say blue
and spell it to you
with three extra letters
i would be cheating
it would be an admission,
there -
is your admission,
there is the gate, the take the
five syllables,
first
and third line
making sense of fall
and winter,
of the frozen toe
the child left to feed sea gulls,
the lonely
mother
leafing her magazine
i know and do not know the city
is raised daily
and the fires start
and stop with the
dawn and no one will ever
stop that
there is no utopia, not
while there are human hands, not
while there is fire

the myth of what really happens; family

i.

what else is
there to hate-
the fried egg,
& the pan
slips out of hand, a
grandfather
rises terrible
and human, an eye lost to
cancer, "i shouldn't
have let them take it"

ia.

they
where gods as they are
and his denial
mattered little
to that remote man
that skillfully
removed each
element of
death from his physical head
but his god shrunk like a penis
in early April keeling
a dark water lake trying to
swim to the other side
but unwilling the body
also wilts

ii.

the bloom growing steady
and under shadows of 5 o'clock
love lives a drop
on the tongue
a sweet measure of the
mortality rate on
Friday afternoon
the new mother hoping to scribble
a hopeful warning
about love
about letting the unbearable
in each daughter passing the dark
note famously quiet to
the next in line

iii.

this north country is
measured
tough under dry wall screws
and counter sunk nails
the wind curls the docks
like soft eye lashes
batting love looks at you

iiia.

despite minnow traps
and plastic decoys
resting in a duffel
until fall

iv.

the gun and the hound
all night animal
closing around
one thousand
lakes and islands here
the eyes steady
the boat
the wind takes quietly
and empty of
a rower to cattails,
muskellunge, pike
and the sound of an
egret lifting in flight

merry tool, sorry shoe

so regretted: the sea gull dead
and now it
wont come at all
the sun wakes
to stones, to horse apples
to the
anachronistic speech
of the last hopeful- one
the rain
comes and we
are happy
and stuck
in its down pour, ringing
the afternoon with
its steel
cage, leaving the too old
to fix puzzles and
gossip grave friends
up and down the flower lane
and the torch
they hold blows out
upside- down the drain pipe
wash
one hundred seeds,
the street
sheds its foam and libertine
garbage, the whole earth
shutters
under claw
and the cat wakes
to stare down
another man, that dared to
walk his way at all.