Where the groundhog has chewed the chain link
I slip through a brittle-boned hedge, and I am there
where geese sail a puddle-deep fog.
We taste the sea in its brine-washed ripples
splash through its salty clouds. Ohio rides on
oceanic currents, the Atlantic gets swept up
on gull wings, surf drifts West for miles,
then flops down and paddles deeper.
The sky has startled fisheyes in it; between the
soggy woods, aquatic scales slide and gleam.
Long-winded showers shatter where mermaids
chase, plunging on through dazed turnpikes,
or pausing to comb their wavy hair at windswept
rest-stops along Interstate I.75.
If beauty is but skin deep,
I prevailed upon her to construe,
'Does it lie in the eye of the beholder
or, of the two which one is true?'
For we can't judge the book
by the cover, with but one look,
as what's inside truly counts
far much more than that.
And tho' to me she bemoaned,
'I am big-boned'
I've yet to see a skeleton which looks fat.
Raw,
a nubby grey knuckle-boned day,
when the wind blows through my skin
pulling at the cord
which holds my insides in,
oh infernal internal wall
keeping without without
and within within,
off key Wednesday
crashing chords that I have swallowed
not a passing thought for the blue tunes of tomorrow,
or the music I have made thus far in life
and the ones that I have begged or borrowed
as always I’ll wait for it to pass
fill the gallow glass
to fetch me a drink while I think
but no-one is near
my fault, not because I fear them
I hear them in the hall
scratching
but I don’t let them in
it would give them a chance to win
I need them on my page
to take away the blank
fill it with ink
because being empty stinks
I don’t want the void
empty yarn from a ragged yawning hole
so I’ll sleep,
hope to feel when I wake
no idea how much more time it is going to take
will it break me or make me
perhaps I will try the fake me
the one with the smile
the one I revile
but there it is
sat on my face
smug and satisfied,
all while I’m melting away
a Dali soft watch
on this raw knuckled day
18th April 1775 on the strong big-boned mare
'Brown Beauty' may have been her name
borrowed from John Larkin a very good horse
of Narragansett Pacer fame
a copper-bottomed silversmith
Son of Liberty Patriot and Boston-born
riding with Prescott and Dawes toward Lexington
then Concord minutemen in advance to warn
of the British Army's actions
was intercepted in Lincoln but doing his bit
the man had lanterns as the plan
and arranged to have a signal lit
in the Charlestown Old North Church
with one if by land two if by sea
but in those long-gone days
as it was unknown technology
right then and there
it was quite unlikely to see
three if by air
some say vestryman Pulling and sexton Newman
(not a deacon)
as the midnight rider never made it all the way
were the real heroes of the day in fact quite a beacon
All empty streets are paved with sleet,
it's not cold enough for a snowfall;
the cheek-boned guy is seeking a place to sleep,
he has found shelter in a warm corner down the hall!
We expect some heavy snow, don't be caught cold;
power outrage is a possibility, buy candles
and stack up on food and check on friends;
mental health improves: if communication is good!
I spot the hot dog vendor with frozen face and eyes,
his steaming breath is a volcano fuming; he challenges
the brutal weather by rubbing his gloveless fingers;
he curses it aloud: who thinks is mad when he yells?
Wild kids run by the hot dog stand and poke fun at him
saying, " Santa is another fat grinch, he offers nothing! "
" My two children are hungry! " He chases after them;
I hand him a twenty dollars bill: he can't stop smiling!
A string of starlings strung out on a wire,
over a road bridge
above a freeway.
It's cold, it is sleeting,
its November.
The line hums,
I can't hear the hum,
but the birds can,
they fluff up stiff feathers
they cling to that warm sound,
they listen,
their tightly gripped claws
listen as thin boned legs
ever so slightly
vibrate
to that nonexistent heat source.
The sky continues to howl around them.
Oddly,
strangely,
they may survive -
hard to know for sure.
An hour later, driving back
the starlings are still on the line.
Don't know if any dropped dead
I didn't count them before.
In my head an old vinyl record
plays Glen Campell.
In The Town Of Alabaster Alabama Limited in population like 103
I was issued an unreasonable fine driving on 31 south rush hour
see a random abnormality, a bus with a flashing sign 4 lanes over
i hit the brakes to stop missed it by 6 feet but stayed stopped anyway
just when an opening came to take off
blue lights pulled off behind me to make a sitting traffic stop
failure to yield you got caught, sir I stopped thats why im sitting here
so I took the ticket and carried it home me and dad both could not
understand how this could be anything but a money-making ploy
no kid got off the bus at big lots, and it was 13 miles to the nearest home.
so we decided that doing the right thing had only got me boned.
So even if you live by the ideal of never being ill prepared
even if you keep good pads and drilled and slotted rotors for enhanced
grab. even if you try to do the right thing do not test the limits
of the school bus swinging stop with yellow lighting
I walked beneath the ribcage of a giant whale;
Encapsulated in the briney entrails of an empty long-dead being.
Its grimace echoed in these halls of boned wall,
Of which calcite chambers temper;
Sturdy glass upon the shores.
Licked by lightning, hiding hints,
Raking sand with combs of sea,
Until I reached the portcullis,
I was too afraid to breathe.
From the bone, hung weeded curtains,
Sour, from the sea.
Dangled down, to repeat a sense,
Of giant mammal's teeth.
The viscera of foliage hung demure.
Violent, still, while biding time.
Swaying wet with salt, debris;
Beneath sat a heavy jaw.
Unclenched by neither cheek nor jowl,
Yet open for a crunch,
The mouth from which I stepped,
Devoured,
A sense of self I hadn't kept.
What once was oaken, knotted pine,
Engrained in skin of shrub and wood.
Was now the fleshy, un-divine,
Boy who ought and could.
Just my tune
the orchestra palls in insignificance
I stood by your dreams
forgetting the past
the pitter patter of rain recalls
Meanwhile we looked the same
from a place with no name
Silver boned islands appeared
With black furrows marks
provisions you
This I promise you
Her big-boned spirit
was a fine-spun sprouting
of prairie brome,
threaded through with engine oil.
Her home was a rickety refuge
for wayward cats.
Upon her tangled porch
poems grew in small pots
muddled with the stale air
of Maui Wowie.
She wrote on the back of her mouth
with cigarette smoke.
Her poems were the rain-filled footprints,
of Jack Kerouac.
She had pronouns after her name.
Her fame became legendary
but only between the gaps in her thoughts.
Her love for possums and racoons
was almost romantic.
Some still write about her ghost
as if she still lived.
Sooty black and thin boned,
velvet almost, but stringy.
Hard to define
the shape of a hissing cat
that was so soon alive and kicking,
but now lies dead
on my neighbor's lawn.
I would watch it on summer evenings
crouching low
under the hedgerow hunting small birds.
Fortunately for the birds
it most always missed,
then he would hiss loudly,
and walk away,
skinny tail up
as if he didn't give a damn.
Now it's dead,
and by God, I swear I can hear
it hissing still,
and not giving a damn.
A thin-lipped nun blows her whistle.
An acre of concrete ground
stops playing, acting-out
our brief make-believe lives.
Reality is a cold wind
chewing at pale knees, gray shorts
and blue skirts.
Catholic children forget their names,
their made-up names as well.
as they march into the bricked block
where classrooms are already
shouting instructions.
Old now, we forget how it felt,
as we filed into the bare-boned halls
of a bickered religiosity.
How we had to study by rote,
like our times-tables,
how angry God would forever be
with us kids.
A collaboration with Ink Empress, a piece we wrote for “Woman’s Day” for all the strong women warriors out there. Your strength is felt.
“Untamable Clemency”
Her heart is a
chained haven,
for zestless intruders
and fiendish foes,
so tread delicately,
she is not a
mindless marionette
in your glistening
gallery of greed—
glazed in rhinestone
rhapsodies,
she is more
than cold-boned ideologies,
placed by timeless seasons,
she soars above
restrained reveries,
as an untamable heat
of clemency.
Ink Empress
Fading Star Silence
Waves and seas and blankets of sweat.
Tales of a tryst of two intertwined.
Awakened to a thrusting throb
betwixt clenched lips of legs.
Sleeping and waking. Woke and sleep-deprived.
Exhausted from this new connection,
But yearning for even more.
As we explore each other's bodies...
Day in, day out.
Once a Day.
Doctor away.
An apple for play.
Slay then lay.
Sunken in.
Comfort of sin.
Complete bliss.
A kiss.
A twist.
Again. And again.
In and out.
From behind and in front.
Side to side.
On the inside.
Straight on top.
Laying atop.
Holden in arms.
Legs wrapped around.
Beside, Abide, between thighs.
Hands on head.
Scratching. Massaging. Kneading to be needed.
Pulling in deeper. Building in intensity. Passion explodes.
Achieving climax together.
Exhausted from the evacuation of ejaculation.
Juices flowing. Fluid exchange.
Collapsing. Igniting slumbers and dreams divine...
Falling asleep on top of one another.
Breathing combines.
Two become one in spirit and flesh...
Boned in body and bonded with flowing blood.
Moonless, the night pastes itself
onto an imaginary sky.
Cats crouch.
Under-bush nibblers in their bolt holes
whisker speak,
as trembling senses crawl
into a skin-tight stillness.
A cloud scatters
shredding threads of perception.
A lamp-lit moon glow
peers through a momentary window,
sees the swishing tail,
the twitching interim paused
in apprehension.
A tablue is caught
in the creeping stealth
of blood calling to blood.
Tracks will be hoar frosted over,
all will be well met
by the narrow boned dawn
where cawing crows may gather
for their pickings.
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