Works

John Dillinger and Baby-Faced Nelson
in a dream together
- one shooting holes thru
theories of his untimely death,
the other frying in an old-time
(e) Electric Chair
with balloons waving, bonbons...

Parable as metaphor -
profile in hard glint of light,
buckskin garb
merging from shadow &
buckboards -
sandwiching of memory
being elbowed
thru a Deadwood City
saloon door.
...

Adua had never regarded his life as a pantomime. He wanted so much to please. As a dandelion, he thought of himself as little brother to the sun catching her yellow butter in his eyes.
...

How desert islands
in a cartoonist's imagination
invariably are flat,
palm-studded
peopled by a solitary, abject
yet humorous man.

In real time, no delight;
such islets...

He held his hands like plastic -
his vestments the finer
calling of his trade,
vocation as modern strummer
of Nature's laws
Engineer in brief -
wine glass in hand...

A face in the mist, with rain around,
clings to bare leaves frowning.
A face through the mist, convulsed,
plays stationary, perching from twigs.
A face, not knowing it, trust it is good.

Image throttled in the subconscious,
romantic throwback -
the mind on a voyage round land's end
to eclipse pyramidal fires
set as beacons along rock strewn shores -
her skeletal inhabitants on ice flows...

Iced coffee,
wedge of toast -
the sun poking thru
cranberry glass
delights exquisite Duchess of Berry,
her decanters & an hourglass.

Halo-hello in your fingertips
I said,...

White ibis/blue crane,
the arch of wings
in full sail over leafy barques
a wise stork scanning water
like the Disney character,
conductor on his train
with eye-glasses
& stop watch.
...

Felt no pain against the water,
the tea-cup sky was a turquoise colour in its wrath
illuminating ambergris city in spot checks below.

The sperm whale population was in decline....

In winter, you were
a flash of light,
tundra against
Arctic floor

Warm breath
stirred yr
summer's breast
and I saw
windblown hair
the colour of kelp
transfix...

Patrician to my plebian,
aristocratic leaning versus
unbridled backwoods feeling -
distinct Old World breeding
countering rudest colonial lean-to;
his carcass lay, roadworthy,...

It's Epsom but could pass for Epping,
New Forest or Dumbarton Wood.

There's ivy of the thickest
English sort not commonly
found in America; sprigs
growing across open ground
mantling it....

The anger past
as a cat arches her back
a thickly rich robust anger
blackest coffee in a thick
earthen mug
this thug & mugger with sufficient
silk thread.

Yet the assassin is back...

Crickets are a strange place,
cricks of dew hemmed
with hoar-frost
mushrooming by a door.

The glens are fashions of a loom
eerie pads
are nightly rooms.

The padlocks...

Perhaps it is needed to balance the planet: to provide
employment for penguins, or that ice in the form of
crystals calls forth tiny sleighs.

That the orange hibiscus be associated only with deepest tropics...

Laconic tears or Botticelli's Venus
holding the years
like tresses
in a wistful pose.

Tenebrous youth accosted
by callow Time
bleeds the heart
with spring aloes....

In the ardour
of an Asgard fire
see adders from her
vinous fire per
adua ad astra.

Listen to the wind -
the ageless, intoning wind,
a sea-hag encrusted on
a mattress of waves.
...

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...

In youth, Death was
a puny boy possessing but
wormy hands & fleshless fingers
as in Witch Hazel
or Scrooge's Future Ghost
- that insipid Evil One
Hansel so easily outwitted...