Sauerkraut
			


			Fate had left an awful ring
			on tabletops of womanhood.
			From barracks of disabled cells--
			she ordered health and winter sleds.
			Urgent fire of waxing pride
			would rule the earth for forty years.
			Dodging lenses.  Shallow pity.
			She would push their snouts away.
			Running up and down the keys
			of driftwood on a busy beach.
			Desideratum’s butterfly was
			pining, pinned, and discontent.
			Fortissimo of sandals clapping.
			Used pianos had their legs.

			
			The praying mantis, slipping bones
			that ate a moment’s breath alive.
			Hit the ground and had a stench
			like diesel fumes behind a bus.
			Amputation’s callous orgies
			came with stacks of doctor bills.
			Rembrandt skies of fluid motion.
			Hers a menu always torn.
			The only crisis never present,
			cotton-mouth of writer’s block.
			The dogma of a stubborn vision.
			Veins like shreds of sauerkraut.
			Bloodhounds of considered eyes
			were arm-bands in a prison camp.
			Vacant trousers--choir robes--
			without the flesh to fill them out.


			
			
			        
			        Achilles’ Heels
			


			Dirt was dry like flapjacks 
			burning on a griddle.
			Whistles blew and traffic stopped.
			I watched the train in chunky gasps
			crawling over leather flesh.
			Its boxes were a ribboned gift--
			hands of ticking mortal clocks.
			Plywood stacked in decks of cards,
			our Tinker Toys of yuppie art.

			
			A homeless man was paper wadded,
			lying there beside the tracks.
			His body in a tent of gray
			like ashes flicked from cigarettes.
			The bottle stuck in gravel pits
			was charcoal on a barbecue.
			Addiction is a, well, affliction,
			hornets on a breast of chicken.
			Never chosen, always there.
			I was heading home to spoiled.
			Maple-syrup moments dripping.
			His was sweat like castor oil.

			
			The bottle was a vacuum cleaner;
			I had yet to plug it in.
			Keyboards glittered in the grateful.
			Tapping keys was sewing sequins
			on a fancy evening dress.
			Ulysses was a man in clay who
			showed me where I might have gone.
			Admission flows ad nauseam:
			I couldn’t even stop to breathe
			the menthol of impending death.


			
			        
			
			                The Blindfold
			


			A Botticelli Angel pinned
			on scaffolds of a missing limb.
			Splitting suffer was an egg--
			craving nests to touch the clouds.
			Chasing centers of an orange
			always starts with tearing rinds.
			Eons of a run-on sentence
			carved the ditches where they lay.
			He wore her pain to bed at night
			in silkworms of a listen tent.
			Sorrow’s pulp was almost white--
			sauerkraut on broken plates.

			
			Anorexic set apart.
			Strung in webs like ratted hair.
			The comb--his hands.
			The brush--his eyes.
			Peaceful rage became a triumph,
			merely tied to loosened shadows,
			growing roses from the gray.
			A patch of tears made fertile soil.
			A wet and missing slipper slid
			above the lips of setting suns
			and parted like a winter frost.

			
			The matted mess of inner-strife
			would take an unexpected swerve.
			They fit like dust pans with a broom
			and all at once the key was there.
			Sex became a summer skateboard.
			Fountains sparkled, forming art.
			The lip-sync of two lovers locked
			and wringing out the weeping rag.
			A blindfold on a unicorn 
			became a blazing satin scarf.

			
			        
			           Suffocating Barbie Bats
			


			Two short years of writing bullets
			aimed at textures of a myth.
			Together in our bed at night.
			The Lotus Posture:  wet compassion.
			Stonehenge scabs you lift and sort
			with ski poles of an eagle’s eye.
			My stump, a blindfold over wings.
			The scepter of indignant reigns.
			Leaves of words are negligees 
			in ghosts around a fallen tree.
  
			
			Parts of life I share with you--
			they reek of mint--I hate the taste.
			Algorithms of a tear 
			that turn to formulas of art.
			Somehow go from starch to satin.
			Itching wool to cotton flannel.
			Yellow cabs of meter, rhyme.
			Ticking time beside the curb.

			
			Plaster-Paris.  Parchment skies.
			Love and listen tender frames.
			We pick at scars until they bleed.
			Geometric reason fails and
			kissing takes the steering wheel.
			Wading in the river shame--
			holding hands in sorrow’s stream.
			Better than a dripping fifth,
			together is a Laundromat.
			Ice-packs honest on the facts
			and other tendons of the night.
			Pillows over missing bones,
			we suffocate the Barbie bats.


			
			        
			           Always Reaching
			


			All the eyes inside our lives
			are frets upon 
			a stone guitar.
			Every twang
			and every flaw
			requires a healthy,
			happy home.
			Sour notes belong
			to music.
			Rings in zenith moons
			arranged with aging at
			the awful helm.
			Medusas stinging
			hapless earthly. 
			Chasing rubies
			with a pearl.
			Exorcising rites of passage.
			From the lamb
			to crosses crossed
			like kayaks
			floating in the rapids.
			Wind and logic scorpions
			that touch us with 
			our antic pride.
			Teach us what
			we know ourselves
			in necessary undertows.
			Call me wrong.
			You go ahead.
			Just don’t call me 
			empty, oar-less.
			Label me a static pose.
			Soufflés of the human race--
			art that falls
			because it rises,
			climbs the ivy 
			in its passion,
			always reaching
			for the rose.