THE TALISMAN MOON

…spoke through many nights.
I found a friend in front of a church.
We were both eyeing the same guitar left
for trash beneath a tree by the street light.
It was fret-less, unstrung, gutted of song.
“Probably full of bed bugs,” you muttered.
We debated the meaning of the night
and then each went our separate ways,
leaving the guitar behind.

EDIT

I figure the final edit is up
to committee, that as one hand
clasps, another one cuts,
but I am porous enough to fit
into what’s missing,
to turn an awkward segway
into a great entrance or exit,
depending on what’s asked of me.
I’m the fall guy.
I’m the burnished saint.
I’m 25 minutes of
you-wished-you-never-asked.
I’m the tin star and the black hat,
cross-roading at an undisclosed location.
I’m a recipe for disaster, and a discarded
dress for success. My interests include
soft focus close-ups, and a starvation diet
of 20-second sound bites. I’m already
getting word that this is going on a bit long.
I can take a hint…Cue the music…Fade…
Cut away…

THE MAGNITUDE…

…of this beast is vast, but its' nerve
endings can be stretched to the finest pitch!
You, too, can speak fluent Off-Shore Account
after our 90-second tutorial, you, too, can isolate
the thermal stress points of the melting pot
and predict appropriate economic fever zones
from within. Congratulations! You just made
the best of all possible vacations.
Your windows are shuttered, all mouths
are open, and the vociferous wind is blowing in…

CURRENT

Are you so lonely on that far shore
that you can’t even answer yourself?
Are you so sure of the shadows
that you can stand up between them
and say you found a channel through?

Is your throat the one tide
that is breaking?
Are you saying what I think
you’re saying, that I’m past
all that, I’m beyond you?

HELIX

I was once released;
the brace of fresh air was terrifying.
I once held hands with myself.
It was all I could do to let go.
The multi-tasking heart has not yet
been documented, but I foresee it
as an evolutionary inevitability.
What once bound us has come undone,
but that old caress had a razor’s
insistence behind it.
Come with me, as we trace
the shadow that crooked smile sent…

CLOSE UP

My irradiated love interest has left
the sound stage, my dog has flashed
the paw signal for “Panic Room”
for the last time. He’s through digging
for lost isotopes, for the golden handshake
that burns at the touch. He’s got his biscuit,
and he’s done with it. It’s a matter of trust.
Now, he’s running toward the event horizon,
winking in and out of focus like a cheap
TV signal, gasping for reception,
just a little bit ahead of the rest of us…

CHALICE

We come here delirious with thirst.
All we ask is already too much, that
the poison be lifted from our lips
as bitter hymn, that the band
strikes up a little bit toward the end,that the chalice is passed, and beginsits’ healing work, that we fill it as it fills us.
All we ask is already too much, all we drink
more than any could give, but still,
our thirst demands the cup…

EMPIRE OF SLEEP

Its’ shorelines are jagged,
its’ inlands smooth,
just like ours, but there,
the impressions make impressions
of themselves, and the leaders
are endless; the handshakes
and name-checking lasts forever.

There, knives draw milk,
and the pitchers pour sorrow.
There, they light up tent stakes
at dawn, and say goodbye
to the insect-winged shiver
of shelter’s promise.

There, they pitch funeral pyres
into the surf at a newborn’s
broken wailing, and consider
every alphabet sanitized
if it can get past, “Hello.”

There, a smile is like
the whale’s rib, curving
continuously downwards,
until its’ very weight
is the point of breaking

RECAST

Can’t you see the horse-drawn cart
before your eyes? How you traded
in your elders for some flash and pan?
Can’t you see you’re a stone’s throw
away from being recast as the first
stone ever thrown? That you’re
the missing link to the misanthropic isotope?
That the narrator constantly re-shuffles
the deck and starts again? Can’t you see,
my fine, neutered rebel, that you’re already
part of the bait and switch,
of this hollowed-out shell of a game?

SLAVES

The slavish wantons are already claiming
that you’re a lost down payment
on what we hoped for,
that you’re already the sum
that’s less than its’ parts,
already a discard, a mask,
a skin better settled,
a gift that breaks apart.
The slavish wantons, with tongues
tied like rust-gummed railroad tracks
to a past they haven’t noticed is behind them.