Goblets Filled with "Leave Me Be"

Sanguine in our family
is inextricably tied to cocktail hour.
"Loaded" seems to manage things
when honest comes with too much noise.
Uzi's pointed at our issues.
Goblets filled with "leave me be."
The scent of wine upon a cork:
a bunker in a time of war.
We don't have cellars of fancy brands.
The taste test is defined by need. 
Walking in the door at night
with failure on our fallow breath.
Three hours later, lions tamed--
we burst from booths like Superman.

A jigger is our muddy milk--
the ipecac of modern life.
Rescue is a lavatory
shaking in a crashing plane.
Its touch is like those sculptured nails--
dimensions of an even life.
Colorful, with grace in tact,
they do not know a real moon.
The weak massage of shoe-shined
manners comments on a centerpiece.
Plastic clowns of laughter reign,
dromedaries in a desert,
camouflaging ways we care
and feelings that we cannot feel.
A lime becomes a hymnal squeezed,
its acid juice, convenient art.
Escape we worship faithfully
like sleeping pills for restless nights.
They keep our avocados green
when life would turn them very dark.

                        • • •


The Leech, our Lice, the Matched Divorce

Step one was pregnant with despair.
The only child we'd ever have.
To think that I could box your ghosts
with hummingbirds of will alone.
Step two was buckets of denial.
I gave you half my teaching job
so scorpions of unemployed
and jungle rot of sour days
would not infect what hope there was.
I bought you toys and furniture.
A useless ploy like
yelling at the ocean waves
to not disturb a dune of sand.
Step three:  a marriage on the rocks;
nothing flying through the air
but avalanches brewed in black like
finely whirled coffee grounds.

Step four:  the fight (where I
would drink and you would scream).
Destiny was pizza cold
every time we ordered out.
Liquor was my rosary.
I rolled it out to meet your moods.
Dessert, a round of histrionics
denser than a Shakespeare play.
Step five:  divorce.
Thunderheads and pimples pop.
The lancer and the Lancelot
were meeting lice of sober days.
Funny thing--this getting "dry" was your idea.
When it woke me up enough,
alone seemed scented lily pads.
A rising moon behind the light
you swatted down with anger's broom.
I learned a leech would stay a leech,
never offer bags of blood.
The fingerprints of married life--
desperation's roach in bloom.

                    • • •

Roses on a Closing Grave

My fountain pen,
a private quill
like tongues that
hate a broken tooth
but keep on
coming back to it.
In those holes
the ghosts
undress and
leave their issues
on the floor.
The pencil trace
around a finger.
The siren of
an ambulance
that doesn't quite
undo a wreck.
Its presence
has a comfort horn.
The blare of human
thinking hard
in ditches building
caves to dwell. 
Its music
not of certainty.
The taste is
not of absolution. 
Just of meager
sculpted clay.
Still its silkworm
somehow there--
like roses
on a closing grave.

        • • •

Stolen Pearls

Disabled has its tentacles.
Its inner worms.
Its courage silk.
When I stand one
brilliant moment
minus crutches or a cane,
my Pegasus becomes a foot
that saws through boards
of ocean waves.

Erect is so simple to you.
One wish and you're up.
Beyond the chair.
A treble clef across a bar
that plays a song
you do not hear.
My hair is strands
of wheat bran gray
from burning long
in effort's wick.
Peacock fans
of motion's bliss
and seagull dips
of tender steps.

Ask me if I'd rather sit.
I'll tell you "Never.
Never, never, never,
never in a thousand suns."
The stand is always
worth the fall.
The reach of will,
an octopus with stolen
pearls in its hands.

       
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