The Gypsy-Hungarian

The Gypsy-Hungarian sat still, 
untying his shoes.
He's asleep now.  The old horse
lost in the mirror.
The wind's beginning
to widen the window now
that I've put geraniums into its belly.
He hasn't anybody.  A pity.
I want to go, I want to get away
from the little cupboard.
Harlequin says: "Your face
is always a departure."
I'll rummage through his trunk
to find drawings fit for
memory cinders.
I pull the door open.
In my forehead presses 
a logical purple.  I can see
a little flash, a fish, and
sacks of grain where dusty moths
have been asleep for centuries.
They turn toward the moon and
reignite their persistence.

Ypsilanti (Room For the Future)

Your presence a capitulation.

Invited just to avoid the dance floor.

Be charming, chat with the hostess.

A young couple playing house.

A few familiar faces lit up

amongst other strangers.

Dim lights, near winter.

Awkward orbit satellite drifting.

A fish amongst amphibians--

sauced frogs. A fish can't cant,

They can shine, reflect

with glimmering scales.

Where is your school?

Your flock?  I listened

to the wall with my back

He said Abraham Lincoln

and the police in Olympia
share one thing in common.

How did they end up in the house?

Empty rooms, a yard

A sidewalk to pull up to

Cold air to breathe on

the way to the door

Stars on a stretched black

fabric overhead, a furnace

and vapor resting on windows--

Bathrooms for guests to escape to,

locks on all the fortress doors.

There is room for the future in America--

We don't have to park on the curb

And standing in the middle of a

neighborhood street the sky

can touch you on the chest.

Flinders

FLINDERS

Leopard skin initiations into motel aggregates induces

Inbedded devils dangling promises to prestige scenarios

Zippers ripped presumptuously trouble the floundering couple

Asterixes ringing in their eyes as love-dosed smorgasbord insues

           * * *

Sister was a witch

Had she a secret hut?

In the wilderness men met her

When a horse was lost

Its master carried off

by invaders, people

played chess on the rocks

For peanut shells

that fed the elephants

They played the trumpet

for girls in pigtails

who applauded with small palms

And the men imitating chickens

squawked at the dubious clerks

            * * *

Prostitutes dangling handkerchiefs

Arranging the ends of their merit

Where a champion lands

Sea-weed entangled, amnesiatic

Mongol warriors wheedle their

moustaches meditatively

The creatures tied his wrists

to a log and hauled him off

Back to the village to cook

For a shiny coward

The Sugar Page

What page is this?  This is the sugar page.

Stripped bare to the purity of nothingness.

Where winter writes whatever the hell it wants,

Enveloping us in crystalline messages, unbeknownst.

This is the page we attract when we've dropped the reins.

Feast on apples, or fast, forever indebted to agriculture.

A clear head is promising, and a promise I made to myself.

Sugar in the blood, Sweet Jesus and Holy Mary--

may I always smile knowing I am safe in this red heaven.

River of knowing, robust Rubicon that if I cross

I must be firm in upholding.  Standing upright like I am-

no monkey meddling in abstract magic or finger paints or such.

Fragment I

Minutemen gallant and pacing the latern-lit sidewalks

Initially afeard now polishing muskets with certitude

Chervil and violets hide the eyes of rebel hormones

Heroically squandered in lisps of lust run amok

(Even when beligerent schoolgirls obstructed the path)

Poem on Winter and such

Winter,
white world, a twilight star-

distant home he walked out on

and never returned to.
Friends worried,

sent out a search party.

Winter,

where were you? in what hole

did you sleep, face covered in concave feathers,
furrowing ambitions to be deleted.

Winter ravaged by streams of ice-vacuumed cocoons,

haven to ravens and all wild things-

waiting patiently guarding armored atop lamp posts

girdled furiously in linen,

abundant particles of cellar beams creeping in-

Winter, move over, make way-

one more instance of a vast indecipherable landscape

crisscrossed by fox tracks.

Winter was where we hid-

buried, avoidable-

from a tripartite covent of vixen.

blue apartment building

blue apartment building

parking lot covered in snow

buried cars of the young

swinging drinkers

lonely playground at night

across the street

nameless lanes, corridors

the drunk wander home through

indistinguishable facades

of blue, gray, slate, red and white—

spiraling gaiety of children’s voices

climb the anonymous walls of morning

reaching into summer’s open screens,

a sleeper awakening on his pillow

stretched out on the floor

of a room finally attended to

and permenance punctured the dream

a girl’s voice through the wall, singing

making dinner alone, perhaps

once a male voice in counterpoint

“crazy girl” moniker which never made sense

granted it was given by a real one

who left underwear soaking in the sink

before she fled – as when I met her,

she was running away from me

and posted her greeting on the wind

smiling, nevertheless, and in exertion

always late and sprinting to the alarm

of the eldery carefully trudging their snow

(cold denizens of onion country

once maidens in flowery prints)

posing under fireworks holding skewers

within hordes of boys like a swarm of dreams

huddled in a flat womb of grass