Everyone assumes the painting of the cherries is about the fruit and not the bowl. Or never concerning the pit that’s ever-lurking— like a landmine for your throat. My uncle choked on one. The stem, that is. So consumed with fretting about the middle. Of the bowl, I mean. Belonging to my aunt; the scratch that he inflicted, for which he blamed the cat. When Molly came back home— newly declawed— unable to use her paws to snag the mice, his remorse hung in the air just like a c

I’ve learned I’ve pondered the trees in a fallacious way. Yes, I’m aware the poets gorge on oak & ash. A sycamore is less. Their buds outnumber the sand. But all this time their branches have been roots—roots have been their scions— stretching to a sacrilege of light, the undertow of earth. This is why the moles are nearly blind. Treasure at the bottom of abyss. Squinting’s a game for the quick & not the dead. Who decides what’s sky? Behold the flight of worms. Our grands

Nothing’s quite as dull as watching continental drift. Its half-an-inch per solstice. Helios will burst in nova before Seattle’s in Japan. Forget the thirsty walls imbibing Behr at a slothy pace. And dismiss the sprouting grass— the futility of its stretch to brush the sky. Of course, you could coax yourself to yawn with a looking glass, observe your growth of brows. But I'm unable to do the nails—nibbled to their lunula to calm my nerves. And if you ask me, they’re more like

Don’t serenade my tombstone with your sobbing violins, or play a sombre requiem for my God-forsaken soul. Laugh out loud in lieu, not in metaphor but for real— I’m just beyond your touch but not the still of a subtle prayer. See me in the spectrum as the glass breaks down the colours: sweating, pitching haggard baseballs in a lot in Tennessee, quarrelling with the ump, hurling spitters past the plate; and on days I’m feeling calmer, serving ice cream cones to children beneath

Maybe I’m making assumptions, but I’m guessing folks at O’Malley’s Pub won’t exactly be pondering the Trinity. Sure, clovers are a-plenty. Irish brews are green. Every drunken lout has been screeching Molly Malone. If there was ever a White Man’s Day then this is it. Socks up to the knees. The vacant, bloodshot eyes. No one in line at the restroom to simply rest. It really doesn’t matter if the snow won’t deliquesce. If icicles mimic stilettos over every Kelly’s head. Ye

We assumed that he was rude when he never clapped. Even the maestro glared his way. A handshake never proffered. Flowers never jutting from his fingers. Fingers never peeking from his sleeve— a brood of stunted pupae— shy kids much too scared to step on stage. Some surmised thalidomide. That he’d never found the right prosthetic. Or perhaps it was the left. Even from the start he’d push the abacus with his nose. Olly Olly Oxen never freed. Unable to tag another. Scribe that y

The meek shall inherit the Earth or so I’ve heard. Humans aren’t meek—so it definitely ain’t gonna be us. Maybe it’s why the Son of God had said it. We lose our humility—the very second we think we’ve snagged it. I reckon He spoke of horses—bringing us to and fro like a humble rickshaw. Or hauling us in a carriage round the park—no place that is private for relief—a shovel to scoop the mess, couples seeing nothing but their ass. The jockey bags the money not the steed. It

When I was a kid, there were only 10 or 11 moons— orbiting my favourite planet. Now there’s two-hundred & seventy-four. Somehow it’s less romantic. I’d rather circle Saturn than our star. You assume it’s for the rings. Everyone loves the rings. I counter basketball —the Wilson frozen halfway through the rim, allowing me to savour the final bucket that wins the game. But in case you don’t believe me, I’ll say it’s the way the 8-ball slowly sinks in the centre pocket— the a

Fog is a poor man’s cloud. Stumbling in the fall from which we sprung. I speak of the impoverished, not the mist that shrouds their steps. The pond is the poor man’s ocean. Watch him skipping stones along its rim. Triune in their bounce. Rocks are a poor man’s mountain. Bits of a broken soul. Why the laurels for the summit? The climbing up applauded? No one takes the time to view descent, to measure beneath the base. None who plant a pennant at its feet. We seldom spe

You say I have a yellow thumb. Our ferns are over-quenched. Adding we should nurture succulents: they never ask for more than what is needed. I’ve shrivelled from your bellicose tropes: the beach doesn’t need the waves to be a beach. That merely the grains suffice, and you long for Kalahari: sand is not a desolate place. You’ve left me parched & wanting—a single drop enduring in the throat of my canteen, preferring a snake’s maraca to the rattle of a baby’s toy we bought f

A million years from now, none of this will matter. I mean this poem & all the others. Not you, my paramour—though unless you make the chronicles of Terra, painted like Da Vinci, sculpted like Rodin, sung like Etta James— you’ll be nothing but dust to dust. So why am I sketching the pupils of your eyes? Swelling like a tumour when you’re scared, while you tumble down in unrequited love? Why add pigments to your hair, creases round your mouth as though you’ve laughed your l

Even as a child, you never feared the night. It’s only the birl of the Earth. The rats that clawed the walls? You left them Camembert, Shiraz to wash it down. Cognac for the spiders. Oysters for each Geist or pretzeled snake. You stood upon your head in tilt-a-whirls, watched The Exorcist at midnight, conjured Latin lyrics for Tubular Bells. I’m not afraid of the dark. It’s afraid of me. You likened every goth to Daisy Mae, got a tattoo on your tongue in order to know how

I’ve heard the fire department will no longer salvage felines stuck in trees. If they can climb up, they can climb down. It’s more gruelling to descend. Ask the cat that’s scaled the summit of a pole, mistaking it for a maple because of the birds. You’ll weary from his meows. Do the job yourself without a ladder— the one that feigns it’s a stairway to the heavens— looking downward from the T of rugged wood, encircled at its base by mocking neighbours, hearing come down from

It jounces on your breastbone while you dig. Fettered to your neck & all its sweat. We only consider the headstand of the line within the wheel. Never note the space that’s pieced in four. Our hand had said it first: bearing the spreading V. Five or Pax Romana. Every Caesar has his Christ he puts to death. And each utopia— sentinels on its border. Circles have no birth. Nowhere you can point to as their finish. Just like all our wars. The shot in Sarajevo? Forever toppl

An acorn in the ocean doesn’t sprout. I only say it once you’ve flung it from the shore—like a bottle with a missive yet conceived—thinking a tree could never rise up from the sand. Which is the preferable death? Being stomped on by a child’s fleeing heel? Left in a forlorn castle awaiting waves? Everything’s tsunami when you’re small. You’ll say potential opted to float its years away. The sanctity of seed. Something that the seagulls leave alone. I wonder if it’s you of

It distorts my observations: The trumpet’s blow is out and never in. Antonym to our ears. Its funnel like a mouth unwilling to listen. Canals are a one-way route. I wonder why the drums don’t have a migraine. Even with Art Blakey on the kit. Even when the cymbals send out sonar like the bats. I’m always talking baseball. Before it went electric. Charlie Mingus homered in the single time he swung. He made more money then than in a decade’s worth of stand-up. I’m talking the

The day before you die there’s nothing to lose. Not even that which channels seed. Everything’s un- shielded in the end. There’s a reason eyes & ears will come in twos— even the breasts you never had but always wanted. When they what about the nose, talk on the duality of its tunnels. Inhaling & exhaling but in tandem. The day before you die you’ll cut your laundry card in half. Leave your hamper to the mice. You’ll saunter on the speedway in the cool of your deathday suit. Y

It takes 25 tomatoes to make a single bottle of ketchup —the Internet Coffee gets the credit in the morning. There’s none to write of the cup that’s keeping caffeine in its place—enduring a thousand- plus degrees in every kiln. Its oh well if you break it. A pitiful recompense. Ditto for the glory of Bordeaux. A barrel’s just a keg for wine & powder. As if the wood had nothing better to do. Like be a cathedral for the cuckoo. Or a perch for every owl resting talons. Nesting

Deity is forever above us. Yahweh & Allah, Jehovah’s triune face, the path of Zeus and Brahma, souped amid the ocean’s doppelgänger. The sun and moon the first to grace our incense. I tell you gravity must be God— with its power to imprison, pulling down our missiles, every feathered wing that comes in pairs. Then the satellites stuck in orbit—fated to flame & plunge. And Earth is but a trifling. Long ago we trembled if an asteroid had been yanked from outer space—smashing

My prof has graded my love poem with an F. Adding a little minus just to cauterize the wound. You need to write of red without its metaphor for blood. It was a simple rope of ribbon, stuccoed to the ceiling when she left. A belt I knotted destined for my denims. Note the sag & bag of jeans. That stupid Keto diet did me in. Not the too-despaired-to-eat. The rib cage that arises with the fluxing of the flesh has nothing to do with love. I think my prof’s led a sheltered life.