My mind a buzz saw,
wood chips in decapitated thought
soil chilblained hands

II
Cleansing wood,
the keen smell of sawdust
--good, raw earth drenching
the nostril, clean odour
of nature like my brain,
a broomstick sweeping
the coffee pot speaking ...
bubbles massed in steam
inchoate in their pensive rivulets.

A THIEF'S NOTEBOOK

Baggage. Banal brigands,
turn-coats, stiletto to dirk
appraise warm flesh
upraised over a pie-shaped sky,
bread crust moon.

On oyster rock,
with grinning, red hibiscus,
jute and henequin
smother the lavender caress of stars.

WARHORSE

Taken as metaphor ...
Ophelia's funeral oration,
derogatory snout
of the Morning Glory
breathing pollened fire
overladen steps of the church.

II
Limestone rock
caulking in grey
limpid cracks ...
doublet and hose
then gold doubloons
down sunlit honey
where a smear of red lichen
onto brown-yellow moss
colonizes rock.

III
Poor Ophelia, dicing
for a sedentary-free Hamlet,
duty-free of fissures + frost.

IV
Elusiveness,
water rushing over stone
torrent of words
(Ophelia receiving these),
red hand of the berry
swollen shut,
prisoner in the dock
bird of quarry, pit
& gunny sack.

V
Night plummets to quarry,
sky to earth in brazen glory.
Magic of the palm
spans an upturned hand ...
"To each his own
nothing's known."

TEETER-TOTTER

He was Popeye the Sailor Man
--at least in Picture book and poem
the mind falling from a drooping ledge,
thrust of twilight though working
up to the bargaining edge of words ...

Then, synchronicity and cuteness
aside, the all too old
pretending became the
gaping edge of Popeye's
spinach can, a soul lost
not to Sweet Pea or Olive
Oil, but barnacle and
rip-tides of a brain
slipping its moorings free.

CHEMIN DE FER

Had I been
a gambling man,
eschewing the "shoe"
of chemin de fer ...
perpetually perched upon that throne
... effete kingdom of the dice.

II
I am that gambling man ...
taking free access to many
a natural habitat, lure
of the open road,
contents under a bottle cap,
the riverine delicacies
of female flesh. Svelte, like
the croupier's green vision of cloth,
tingley-trigger smooth yet addictive
to the touch.

III
Or the pleasures of Ovaltine
(not nece