metonymy4u

Incarcerated by narcissism I breathed my last,
and decayed with the half-life of blood which is said
to be fifty days more or less. Less if you have sickle
cell syndrome which causes for some periodic
intractable pain episodes and pneumonia fierce enough
to strangle a bird in flight. I said no art and let’s be gone,
vault the scree of another aimless mind, run so fast
not even the cowing trains I used to love on a Spanish night
could fill bones that delicate and facile.

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                        apostasy, the finish line

cast off you fish and go home.
i’m a renunciate nun out on leave

and crazy as a door in spring over
sweet rain on the mission dell,

tracks where love ran away
with stories no one tells.

the end was yours, lord. game all done.
you teased, you taunted, your angels

served you well—

half paid by rage.
sorted,

by the storm.

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                                                            partition

            the first speakers of italo-romance dialects
            to arrive on another land mass probably
            impressed the locals with their
            extravagant gestures and intonations.

                        their armies quickly vanquished, it’s
                        a wonder any remnants of their culture
                        survived at all.

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disgust is a four letter word

when you meant three,
a false start friend,

a broken branch,
an aborted embryo a dead

leaf of a misplaced tree.
disgust is when you try with all your might,

and someone spits,
and turns away,

and manages with one single breath
to be all you

won’t ever be.

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                        planet farming

the sun gets hotter day by silent day, and i know
we’re the last sentient outpost on a million year span.
only just arrived on this here planet, green as the grass,
appointed once to pilgrim a bit the heart’s finite course,
indeed a nightmare to some. the thing to remember
about stories like ours, is that some hit it and some just
go home empty. some think they’re whistling with air. myself,
i don’t know what makes a plant grow tall, i don’t know
what makes corn wander the wind. i’m a million
miles from home, and i lost my friend. you take your own
way out. and maybe, just maybe i’ll front you some coin ere
we see our merry little end.

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                        Trouble at the hand doctor

I got there and then felt fear.
Though my heart was in my throat, I sat near
and saw the way out: a door, a sign, a path for me free.
I said I thought you were a heart guy.
He said how strange, how queer, I
thought you were a deer
from Uruguay.
Well that hit me like a string of wheat
in a broth of Rome fed beef, or a show of dreams
in which Nat King Cole sang smooth
as a clam sauce stew.
Moon, he sang, moon o moon
o joy full moon! And it rang over my house
and shone like apple rum glaze,
a ride on a current of rich old cheese.
My fear left me then.
It was gone like sun light on a thin stream line:
my life a sip of gin.
Or ice that melts
in a glass full of sin.

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You know you’re not some hopeless romantic; you would never
allow yourself to live like that. The romantics spilled
way too much blood testing the relativity of language.

The point is we are neither the creation of the world nor its guardians.

As a photographer you preferred to make your own deals with clouds
while the spectral illumination of June carved out all the trees
on your street by five in the afternoon.

Someone said it was a slight return on investments.

Extra change left on the counter because you got a call
from a girl with something interesting in her eyes.
Something that spoke you finally after too many years.

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                        el agua oscura venía como miedo

dark water flowed like fear over the inverness,
taking but moments to afflict my peace.

is it true? my dear,
it has as much truth as you care
to invest therein. well that’s not good enough!

you don’t say?

i heard those things and didn’t care.
i hadn’t come that far to be intimidated and, too,
i suspect i had to not care to be un-broken
by what i already knew came later.

are relationships like the hull of a ship, curving
up on both sides away from water,
lest they founder.

are they wet tissue in the wind?
i’m a sucker for a disposition, a look
and a sharp mind, but

perhaps i need to love around the corner more.
with my third eye.
like birds looking sideways at

everything.

perhaps I need to learn what? how
to boil a kettle

without an open flame?

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