Works

Poltergeist activity
- the sun winding like a staircase
onto the pavement,
rickety afternoon
shooting back thru
shawls of the city.

Tippy-toe. Curtains...

raised against them
hussars, cossacks, zouaves
the renegade janizaries and corsairs
in for an indeterminale stretch
assorted soldiers of furtune,
never-do-wells...

A VICTIM OF INDIGESTION OR PATRICIDE?
MAGIC PAN: CASTLE OF ELSINORE
CHEF: THE MAD PRINCE OF DENMARK
INGREDIENTS: THE TRAGEDY OF THE
HUMAN CONDITION,
SENSELESS FORCES THAT
RAGE AND DESTROY A MAN...

When Hannibal mowed down Romans
with elephants,
his skill, his artistry,
had the effect of a painter's brush.

He, scraping paint off an easel,
would thrust
empires down,...

I dreamed my toenails
were ivory
and elephants came to trade for tusks
... Then went conveniently off to die
("shed this mortal coil") in a
cutter-shed stacked high
like firewood.

II...

In the dark of wedlock
nightly sky,
the wither of hope
and estranged replies,
cause a white face to flicker
with transparent eye,
calumny of purpose
to slowly die.

Stravinsky's Firebird,
Debussy's La Mer
lilting arrangement like a windmill
with a little Hottentot of a bird
scurrying over leaves
like hot coals,
nest a pudding arrangement,
oven-shaped,...

We built bottlecaps off
ship's sides
(soft, cedar bough),
Viking masts
shining thru imagined
Norse seas.

Sporting logs,
(sweet, cedar-wood shavings)
piercing beer hats/silver foil,...

The moon, at most a shudder or two away.
The sky, bivouaked and cloudy, is within twin sloops of a bay.
The lagoon opens, spars with the greater ocean
by island hopping, green azure blue, as...

Mariachis, almost a Spanish temperament within those stars,
- a screen peppered to black,
pebbles as pinholes bright in the night air.

Winged bats, moist velvet foot-pads...

Les bougies sur les tombeaux
(The candles on the graves)
antilles dread locks ...
french chocolate it is not.

Angel Inn,
come off a sign
blown sideways
in the sugar and ices
night.

Old St. Joseph's
Cathedral, bottom
of the hill, here
Andrew Marvell
of "coy mistress"...

1
Terrorism -
left-wing nerd (twin
grapefruits in his hand
gives it away)
winging a stiletto shoe,
spitting on an ashcan
to bring up a bruise or two.

2
Visions are steadier -...

Cape aux Morts.
Cape Diable,
Points of Massacre
Rocks and Island
a plethora of Wreck Bays.

But on Funk Island, nothing matters.
Brahmsian rhetoric could describe the island
Prokofievian,...

Cresta roja wine
- colour of
arterial blood,
vena cava of
the alcoholic soul.

And seeing bottles bob
in mainstreams of men's blood
to pistol whip their reddened eyes,...

A magnificent Red Devil
splayed out in his tracks;
this tumultuous soul, baron of the backwoods
with his provenance unknown ...
this compromise to individuality
abandons him to chorome death...

Fate is a mahout astride a large elephant, impersonal
as dark sun with winds raging across a desert. Fate is
the old bones of dead Indians being resurrected as
ground mist on the edge of a salt marsh.
...

"We have all been here before.
almost cut my hair;"
the refrain from Crosby, Stills. Nash & Young
reading more like a law firm letterhead than
any invocation for real social change....

"Corn's high this year," chirped the old woman, almost with a cackle. "All's the better for them to hide in," the old woman was continuing, her face a brazen mixture of distain and contempt.
...

And I, cooing in my saddle, with lost time.
His weapons and horses the finest.
Beloved of God, engendered fiercely
for the occasion - with
pin stripes and a drinking vessel
of the most expert silver....