Asters

 Here is a gift--it isn't much

like an analgesic for a lost limb.

Still, the shape of your ears

and the asters in your voice

make me long to become a gardener

or a choralist.

Sadness like bad whiskey takes me when someone speaks

without your regional hard "R"

that made me want to sign on as cook

on a doomed vessel full of haunted sailors.

I love you. I did then and I do still. 

I am a quivering aspen , slender

with black scars, a recorder playing only one tune.

I play it for you, for the shape of your ears, and the sound of your voice.

Paper Pennants

 When I was a young child

my brothers had a hockey game

with metal men

and a marble.

Each team had

a paper pennant

like a challenge laid boldly

before the other teams and the larger world.

I liked the Toronto Maple Leafs

in their sweaters as blue as God's eyes.

The goalie's smile never faltered

though he was hit with the marble a thousand times.

In a dream

I see that goalie coming up the tunnel

in his blue sweater and big brown pads

fearless, changeless, continuously happy.

He takes to the ice

to tend his green mesh net

while we stare up from beneath the surface

like ads or circles or lines or dots.

When I was a young child

there were Red Wings and Rangers

Blackhawks and Bruins

a marble, a goalie, and tilted ice that seemed perfectly fair at the time.

_____

Now

 Now,

I kiss ice

I kiss the wind

I kiss the wounded whose souls have rattled loose.

I have found

that brew is made of boneless angels

gathered from mountainsides where monkeys roam.

There was a time

when minutes spoke, gods lazed,

and I loved you, in pure honesty, like a novitiate.

Now,

I listen for leaves caught in river ice,

and run my fingers across the skin of a sacrifice.

My skin flushes firebrick red

from this cup which holds my fever.

I kiss ice.

I kiss the wind.

I kiss the wounded whose souls call from distant hills.

The Cat

 The cat is way from the office.

the cat is away in a manger.

the cat can't talk right now.

the cat hopes that you have a pleasant flight

   but if not, oh well.

The cat cannot sing nor play any instrument.

the cat crapped in the neighbor's flower bed again.

the cat made your bed and is now lying in it.

The cat has won the election and is now speaking to its supporters.

the cat wants in, no out, no in, no out.

The cat can explain everything.

the cat never meant to hurt you.

the cat has been caught in another bald-faced lie.

The cat hates this shitty food.

the cat has claimed the window sill.

the cat has made more cats and they need homes.

The cat will appear at the Royale on Thursday along with 

   the Dakota Danzig Trio.

the cat is lighting out for the territories.

the cat asks that you direct all inquiries to the attorneys.

the cat scratched hell out of the drapes

   while you were indisposed or out with that idiot again.

The cat is hip to your petty deceptions.

the cat refuses to serve in this, or any other war.

the cat is in love again, no wait, well possibly.

the cat has signed no papers, sworn no oath, made no pledge.

The cat thinks the bird will be fine without a head.

the cat has bendy bones and second sight.

the cat has forgotten your name again.

The cat is into avant-garde.

the cat sweeps all awards.

the cat cannot be seen with you anymore, its impossible.

the cat says wake up wake up wake up.

the cat is about to barf on the Persian,

knock your Peabody off the shelf,

and run hell-for-breakfast down the hallway like a lunatic.

Such are the ways of the cat.

Behold them and do not interfere. 

Dollies

 Mama dress you all in lace

smack you hard across the face

loves to seem so fair and fine

serves your dollies turpentine

Daddy left by fast express

to take up with a baroness

who cries because her roses died

watered with formaldehyde

Chalking signs on sidewalk blocks

a bloody hen, a happy fox

when it rains the neighbors say

the chalk sticks rise and walk away

Now you're grown with one desire

to set your mama's house on fire

and dance across the blackened beams

to serve your dollies cakes and creams.

Salty

 We meet one last time

reluctantly, like castaways

not quite resigned to a diet of bugs

and scrawny seabirds.

I take an astrolabe out of my bag

and you dangle a sextant from your hand

as if it were the neck of a dodo.

We ignore our plates and order no drinks

though the room pitches and yaws in the gale.

I lift my peg leg right up onto the table.

It's made from a piece of my mast

that fell before your showy cannonade.

The yellow parrot I have engaged

is out to take you for all you're worth.

he argues elegantly in curse words and patois

while doing an inventory of every rolling doubloon.

"You Shanghaied me!" we accuse in unison,

pointing fingers like surgeons probing a wound.

Nice try, but I brought an extra eye patch just in case.

So here we are, sitting at Mike's Deserted Island Cafe,

gaunt, weak, half delirious, brandishing the tableware

and setting fire to our own grass huts, because

we are both angry, and gutshot, and flailing in the water,

shoving each other off the last floating barrel

still redolent of the wine we once shared with a smile.

An Older Gentler World

 It's an older gentler world

inside this song,

given birth by a Herco Flex 75 pick

with sleepy monkeys in the trees

waiting for enlightenment.

I'm high from a bass line,

going downstream on religious waters

where nuns and parrots appear and disappear

above and beneath the somnambulant surface,

casual whispering gods whose guitars

are touched

with sweet divinity.