r curator at the Hermitage,
wild shaman for the Arapaho
not a cocoa butter salesman
from New Jersey, nagging
soda-jerk in L.A.
'bout the time
of Marilyn Monroe's
quick magic.

The Almighty unpacking orange crates,
sending Florida cold
unravelling karmic debt,
brass studs in your eye
mowing suckers with your scythe;
Birthpath urge, Father Time,
de-gutting chickens at Pleasure Farms
looking to Hindoos for clues
(placing roaches on a lucky few.)

This hurdle over stones
crass fortitude ensemble,
strange melange
spewing nails,
elbows round thin pain
gutter cathedral looming into view
where there
is more viscera than mirth before
ripples of enchantment
cause vibrations at four
and the phrenology
of universal measure
is a moon
ribcage in light
--gazelle of trees
a dinosaur in height.

SEQUIN

A youthful bandit
this forest--
faltering eyelids in mud troughs
& puddles like
brisk lies
woven thru deception.

Stealing autumn into
its colours,
leaves in birchbark rustle
a full mauraud stealth
across every breeze.

Thief, thief
elf with a key,
a thousand rasping angels
their throaty javelins
hurled from branch's edge,
brief pageant robbing
summer's pantry.

Offal of the fall,
the lake a sequined glove
tossed from a careless hand;
a rowboat as a buckle
chromatic foam
for a finger's fan.

YELLOW HAIR

With that lime green hairnet
commonly used by butterfly dispatchers--
something your aunt might have commandeered
to put her hair up donkey's years ago,
I unjarred the bottle of air &
with a pair of forceps
tried to wrangle the life juices
from a Polyphemeus[1] in a manner akin to Ulysses
in that cave three millenia ago;
his gentle bleating like the whine
of the net across the gelatin fabric
of air or the flash of a tomahawk gliding
across Custer's golden hair.

[1] Large buff silk-moth with two eyespots on the hind wings named for
the giant Polyphemeus in the Odyssey. Ulysses had the giant blinded
with a sharpened pole.

PILTDOWN MAN

Popping out of the dark
reddish "Merry Christmas" haze
twinking blinking land of Nod (or
rather it's Ned, the hefty trucker);
eyes, steel-belted radials,
in a rig big like Santa Claus;
a Stegosaurus
swinging sabre-toothed tail
& flexing padded paws
to gobble night.