 
# "Skill"

# and Other Prose

# by Daniel Hargrove

# Published by Daniel Hargrove at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Daniel Hargrove

Cover art copyright 2015 Daniel Hargrove

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This book is published for anyone's enjoyment.  Authors retain the copyright to their work. Users may read, copy and distribute the work in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes, provided the authors and the journal are appropriately credited. The users are not allowed to remix, transform or build upon the published material.

Table of Contents

1)  Skill

2)  Terse Pill

3)  Spoor

4)  Given Like

5)  List Entwine

6)  Spell Cushion

7)  More Mostest

8)  Pail of Night

9)  Style of Time

10)  Priest

11)  Spurn Jester

12)  Lunch

13)  Supple to Luck

14)  Earthly Primrose

15)  Twilit Briar
Skill

Another easy bullseye, quick hand deftly draw and knock another arrow.  String tight as steel, sure and studied aim.  Certainty and a blue feather, release singing shaft, perfect score.  Winner of tournament, the celebration has started before the sun sets.  Just as easy, pick up your shadow off the ground and carry it away, against king's orders.

This is the way of the practiced hand, the keen eye, and the sure of step.  Once, twice, and a third time for the focus.  Hands on virgin, hands on time.

Just as quick and easy as a sleek feline, killing grace, turn a tide with every step.  Ask the seer for mapping, and ten doses just in case.  Bone up!

It's a certain shadow that takes with it the thin and gauzy.  Briefly demonstrate, with the telling of why's, for the shakers and arrangers out of time.  Chess all your governors, and badge all your stones.

Peddle not the tide, said the fisherman, for your saltings are as quiet as the sun.  Take from the net what barter will fetch, and beach as a passing of the brine.

Much like picking berries, gathering fish from the rolling blue, tack of wind, winch strain under heavy load.  The harvest from the sea is the merchants dinner, bread crumbs and a twist of lemon.  A gentle bow to the subtle seasonings of the chef.

Age old arts, our stone age cousins, all clipped and bone hook, we are nothing but centuries of practice.  To what ends do we now attain?  Graceful measurement is like a legend of the consequences.  We are spun of woven cloth, and the stains of our ruminations transcend to the butterfly's wing.  Oh, yes, we dart, and fly.  We are lifted by the breezes, and magically, we weather the storm.

Keen and perceptive eye, steady hand, rope up your hours of knotted nets, and with a careful nod to the waiting, interlace your dancing.  We are colors, we are rainbow, we shimmer where darkness sighing.  We have splashed the cotton with our rambles, just as many lines as our brushes are troubled.  Patient and trying for long passages, these moments together and the mind's whisperings build the ship of crossing.  We tie all words to the mast, and all hands to the sails!

We will take the time to pick apart the shadows and lay bare the noosemakers visage.  And why did we chip away stone and make an axe?  Yes, a hundred times and hundred times more, our calling is unanswered.  We have taken to your hiding places, so bothered, and come out just for the supper.

Blood-stained grass, and silver whisper of knife hove gristle and slice tendon and muscle.  Scrape of bone, and hide skinned away.  Hew meaty cuts for our platter.

Before death can do his awful dance, tie him, bind him tightly, captured for our stew.  Longing for animus, it jumps, it runs it flies, and we put it away, as at the conclusion of a chess match.  How sharp our bone?

We know our glistening fangs, all polished, and sharpened pearly white.  We, the tigers, we, the falling axe, butchers and doctors, all.

New shoes, cobbled fine and sturdy, adorn the feet of the simpleton, striding down the dusty lane.  His clothes are simply tailored, with a fashionless, rugged stitch, and roughly woven cloth.  He whistles a tune but cannot quite reach the high notes.

Joining in the melody come the strains of a violin somewhere nearby.  Curious, he wanders toward the source.  An old bearded man plays an old and beautifully cared for violin, his sweetly gnarled and practiced hand still quick and knowing.

The simpleton watches for awhile, studying the technique of the aged musician.  Then, he reaches in his purse and pulls out a penny, dropping it into the hat by the violinist's feet.

With a final flourish, the humming bow is lifted from the strings.  The simpleton claps gleefully.  "Bravo!  Bravo!"

The violinist bows.  "Thank you.  And is there any song in particular that you want to hear?"

The simpleton's eyes grow wet.  He names the name of an old folk melody.  The violinist winks, and begins to play.

The notes float up, sweet like the scent of wildflowers on the afternoon breeze.  The young dolt takes to crying, and wet tears stream down his face, though he is smiling.  As the evocative melody finishes, he thanks the musician profusely, and with a bounce in his step, waks on down the street.

He was not quick, mind you, perception not being one of his stronger qualities.  It is a question, however; if he had been more of agile mind, would he have felt his purse shift slightly at the fingers of the thief?  Would he have caught the glint of the knife cutting the strings.  Would he have heard the muffled clink of coins?  The thief was very fast, and very quiet.

Thus, his small inheritance, a few coins his mother had saved and passed along to him when she died, was lost.  It has been enough to buy his new clothes, and to keep him happy (for the moment).  Now he walked on, oblivious to the missing purse.

Soon he caught sight of his objective, "The Lost Rooster", an old tavern.  He went in and sat at the bar.  A few people sat in corners nursing sour drinks.  The now penniless idiot ordered a sloe gin and soda.

As he brooded over his drink, melancholy memories crowded his mind.  There was a mirror behind the bar directly across from him, and he could see reflected there the image of a beautiful girl seated directly next to him.  He shifted to face her, and there was nobody there.  His eyes widened, and he stared at the reflection.

She spoke.

"Why do you drink, simpleton?"

Her voice came from directly next to his, seeming to come from empty air.

Too shocked to speak, the idiot looked frozen over his drink at the wild-haired and beautiful maiden in the long green dress.

"Are you lonely?"

"Who are you?" he half-shouted.

She put a finger to her lips and shhhed, a few people staring at them.

"I'm a muse," the green-eyed maiden carefully asserted.

The simpleton began to cry, tears falling into the strong white liqour.  "My mother has died, and now I have no one to cook for me and do my laundry!"

"And you miss her!" the muse exclaimed.

"Yes!" the dullard fairly howled.  Now everyone in the bar looked at him.

"Put a penny every day into the hat of the old violinist," she said, and she disappeared.

The idiot cast this way and that, looking for the strange girl.  He was troubled and decided to seek out the old musician, to hear that old folk melody again.  He reached for his purse to pay the barkeep, and came up empty.

Even thatched and muddy, boarded up or nailed shut; bricks falling apart and broken down dump; tent of caravan or frozen igloo.  And can we now thank the men and women who, needing shelter from the rain, found ways to tie and plaster and nail and lay stone?

It is a happy patter, that rain on the roof, lazy sit and mellow the day away.  I patiently carve into wood the shapes of animals of the forest.  They growl and cry from my shelf.

We are as likely to miss in aspirations as we are to gain by failure; we catch trace at each turn of events.  So we bungle, we can flail and flap a bit.  You are as certain as stone, and once captured, stand enumerated.

We are taller than the trees, and fresher than the grasses; we are deeper than the seas and hotter than the sun; we are sharper than a knife, and faster than a snake; we are brighter than a lily, and stronger than an ox.

You are known as a riddle, an enigma by the animals which know us and love us.  Why do the dogs twist their head just so when they look at you?  Their ears perk up and they snuffle and bark.

Are we cautious, are we poison?  Are we the spider or the fly?  We are like the dogs, tearing up rose gardens.  We stumble and clutter when our glasses break, cut.  Facing rust, should we spring and bat an eye?  Your journey is the busted's condition.

We stained bedsheets, we stained glass.  Printed on papyrus, and printed on plastic.  Raced mercury, raced time.  Dined on pheasant, dined on gruel.  Once we are finished (are we ever finished?) will we be satisfied?  Will we pat our stomachs and smile a proper smile?

The man on the moon has always been a pleasant companion to our endless struggles.  What has he learned from watching us?  We are mices to his smile.

Paint out dissatisfaction as a studied response to tolerance, brook no false complicity.  It is our snaking, our winding in comparisons that shares our unearthly expression.  Lie no observations, follow no lies.

Mind meets hand at an ordinate junction, in an inordinate context.  All that we untie is made apparent in reason, and we manufacture light as a manner of timing.  Shadow not, beaker of brew.

Go and boast, shout from the mountaintops, we already know your name.  Erect a monument to your disencumbering, just as many others, granite etched with fine tools.  Yours is a small fortune, as to that you can readily attest.

When eye's touch shares mercy with gentle twist or parting of tatters, swear to the passion of the sparrow.

It is climbing mountains; it is spanning rivers.  It is sailing skies; it is painting roses.  It is killing and it is saving lives.  It is cutting wood, and it is laying brick.

Perfecting our skills has lightened our load.  Just like a thief, fish and loaves, we tread softly and carefully, leaving with the goods.  You pull, and I'll push, we'll topple the hard as stone.

Cheers and applause for the cautious surprises, just as candied and rulered as ever were eternal. Drink to the spirit, a toast to the bone.  We shout, we glee with the shine patterers.  But your is upended, yours is autumn wind.

It's true and measured response, only one passage to the dipping and grace of conclusions.  We must slowly press on, past sharp and pointy, how dull, past burn and crotchety, some luck.

Yes, it's a patient tempo that looms exquisite.  Painted of yesteryear are the craftsman's torpid suns.  We didn't bitter, we didn't squeak.  And you can bet your life it all came up roses.

Although we stuttered, we found the words.  Said slowly and awkward, and, yes, understood.  Not such a bad try for the just initiated.  You didn't, I didn't roam.

A measure of success, some notable high points.  Moments of genius. moments of strength.  Next time around we'll know the story. Next time around we'll know the way.

We'll doctor all these wounds, we're known to someone, known to all; but keep those axes sharp; your elopement is known to the poses.

Yes, cheer and tiding, we'll clever, and bundle.  What driftwood rots close to water, the salty tide will wash clean.  All tassled and tawny, we sink or we swim.

Terse Pill

The moon cries dusty tears, crawls on its hands and knees through the sky.  It cringes at the dusk, and hides from the approach of morning.

Razor skill and sharp, knife edge of shadow.  The night swallows the sun, a clumsy fire-eater.  It swallows waking life, swallows nest, and eggs, and tree.  The night is over in a single lucid moment, in colorful letters a spelling of rain, stormy volumes, an argument with thunder.

Don't joke with me, old scorpion, don't push me, or steal my pillow.  Take your medicine, all scars and discontent, and heel to toe, walk the line with practiced missteps.  Challenge the barber, pick up your toys.

The must of the guillotine, the never of the hanging noose, the bang of the sentence... it is realities that speak, not in words, but in excised tongues and unheard whispers... and it was only a heart I stole.

And while I am stealing, let me steal your spirit, your voice, and your virtue.  I abdicate with the halo, leaving the keening lust to meander gracelessly, tiptoeing around urbanity.  Once dust, you shall not tremble, or anger, nor fear the clammy hands of fate.  Your is loss, husk, and take a better look.  What I have taken you cannot replace.  It is reflected in your vanity.

Bend your back to the labor, and sweat, profusely, twice, and a dozen more.  More where that comes from.  I swing with axe or shovel... John Henry, you are an easy kill.

The love of my life, the beacon of my heart, the life of my breath... my lovely Jill.  I'll take the bucket, and you carry the crown, and if we can just sneak down the hill, you'll never know the difference.

I cheat, cavorting with the muses, angels all horny with harps humming and halos hastily hidden.  Adultery with oils and palette, lust with pen and ink.

Treachery is a bitter medicine, and even a bitterer poison.  Treachery is a coven of witches, doing untold evil, casting wicked spells on naive lovers.  Treachery is the strike of the rattlesnake, quick and sour.

Moxie quick, and moxie strong, moxie cut and moxie kill.  Known and unknown secrets, swear, moxie do evil.

A friendly soldier, a grinning, easy Nazi, and oh, I guess it is all toy guns and rubber knives, your friends.  I shine, and you shine, fire, gravity is a clever toy.

Brutal and cloddish time, act out your murder in stages.  It is the thrust of minutes hat turns the fear to flames.  All your pining, our hollow crying, won't stop the clock from turning.

Death of ballerina, crush of gem, slow-footed and ugly beasts wander the fluttering hallways.  Jeer at sweets, you whining dogs of apathy.  Shudder, and chew your candies cactus.

Buttering the curses, we are brief, we are shadows.  Didn't goblin angrier, clapper peers, and grip clocks teeming?

If adders were as common as rocks, what chances would children take for candy?  How quick our skills at beheading, how familiar the taste of venom

Jilted song of bees, a yellow and black susurrus, twenty sweet stings tell red stories to tired memories.  Flinch at swatter buzzing, cowslip pertains, just a soda hour.  Winging windows flit from sun to shower, past the roses wherever cuss may mended.  Fang of egress, stare at ouch for eons.  Follow her back to her hive, spirited away in some fallen log.

And just like a woman, to sway and sparkle, run like an antelope, deer one, costing a comma, expecting an exclamation.  Share a pale moment, more than one, yours for the asking.  Heat of battle, turn of hours, taste of salt.

Welcome to the brown party, blow up the leaky balloons.  Put on gray hats, someone mumbles happy birthday.  We'll drink sour beer, and shuffle aimlessly to top forty 'till the sun yawns up.

It is just places of yonder, faraway whens, gush from a hole in the boat, a hop.  Some fraction of a journey, out of gas.

Pack of snarling dogs, held together by a gristly contract, parents of scars, lunge and bite in the cold snow.  Fang tradition, hole up for the night, kill is over.  Stink's aggression, yours is a wet curse.

Herds of bankers, schools of Wall Street investors, set upon your easy meat, butcher, baker, clammy corpse maker.  Your silver bondage is as light as a feather, heavy as rain.  Shame on your big smile.

Jest is aggregate, a slippery honeycomb, virtue an antbed.  your hundred fellows need a tan, bask in the sun, bake, roast slowly on the beach, turn a deep red.  Char quietly, kingly meat.

Granite giant, may topple, hold your own.  Lend Davy your chisel, watch for the fall of Goliath.  A hundred battles won means little if one battle lost is to the reaper.

Slurp your bitter honey, won at the cost of a hundred stings.  Sift your black sugar, gooey coal.  Sour green molasses, poured over cardboard flapjacks, a rancid crusty supper.

Oh, smile your downcast smile, laugh your hopeless laughter, cuss your prayers, punish your innocent children, for your time is just a candle, your clocks one tick only.  A hundred times I tell you, but your are deafness squared, multiples of ignorance.  You are a broken kite, a counterfeit twenty.  Forget it.

The torpor of the sprint, the magic of the ugly faeries;  the silence of the bells, sterility of mudpies;  the quiet wars the solemn jests;  the open safe, the welcome pests.

It is just like a dull razor, a frozen pizza, and empty stomach, dirty linens, buried treasure, a horse with a broken leg.  Sharpen it, put it in the oven, dine on steak, do your laundry, dig it up, or take it out and shoot it, depending.

Quiet, clean shadows, and the crisp white bells ring out over the snowy landscape.  An easy crunching walk, crumbling rocks a dime a dozen.  To the specific store to buy a copy of Sanity Fair.  Pay the indifferent cashier with a five-dollar bill, a picture of George Washington on it.

When the smiling policeman comes and puts you in glass handcuffs, they will take you to the unlocked cell of your choice, and then you will stand before the sympathetic judge,  Plead innocent.

All sweet women and understanding men, good friends and weak enemies.  All happy days and dreamy nights, fresh lemonade, and cold vanilla ice cream.  All finished thoughts and merciful deaths, all strong hands and graceful walks.  All gentle kisses, sweet apples, harmless snakes, and friendly smiles.  All, I tell you!  All, all, all!!!

Old and broken down, like so many I've known, brittle cane, and rickety walk, all those years gone by like leaves on the wind.  It is to this venerable wisdom that I put the question, why does innocence go unappreciated?

We hate evil men, and anger at their evil deeds.  We strive to acts of beauty, and fight to our dying breath those who would despoil what we consider sacred.

But we put to death or imprison innocent men and women.  We spank a child for his innocent rascality.  We drive the animals from their forest, and we laugh meanly at the mishaps of those cast out and unwelcome.

It is just a world, just a world that we are destroying, more quickly as each day passes.  The pace of events overcomes the sobriety of caution.  But such a world!

Yes, we can dance on the graves of great men, and laugh spitefully at the wisdom of the prophets, each others.  We can exploit our women, or enslave our strong men.  What is the reward for all those years of hard work, old man?  Do your children  listen?  Tell them the truth.

When I am bones, when, dry as dust, my grave is no long visited by whoever I leave behind... when I am no long a memory but just a caricature in the mind of whoever is then reading this poem... then, then you may consider all those fleeting years, all that wasted time, all those censored words, all the starving children.

Don't ask me when...

Spoor

In the dark intermingle, muddy tracks, frightened doe bolt and breaking branches free.  Immeasure of tangle, owl's nest, stream slick with algae.  Off and gone, lost amongst ghost trees.

Haunting this thicket, a dank spirit is creeping low and musky, along and through.  Share with craving, paw and shake of head.  Dizzy with insurgence, low grumble of heart, chase looking by moon's sheerest.

Slow, cumbersome grace, a change of mind, love's willful reckoning sometime hence.  Tired and dusky, milk of enrapture, stolen and tawdry like a handful of copper.  Stalked down and pinned down hard to open-ended questions.  I drank from the pillows of the air.

March of humanity, painted archetypes etched on granite frieze.  Who can reach in and tinker with the void?  Open or shut, seen and unseen, object of pursuit.  We formal air where we had lost ballooning.  Clasp.

Slow handed scent of water, murk uncoupling.  Scent of blood, scent of lust.  Sky high orange eye, eating tinfoil.  Landed of tinned and tested.

Cloying and musky pheromones startle spider's capture.  Risk out cocoon, digger ruckus, party after bone.  A sisterly Everest elopement, deepen jointure's clay.

Hook and spill of concept, into dreamed and boxy fated.  Douse imps wobbler as a text assertion.  Bent and angle of shine, now you see it, now you don't.

Diffusion is a pail of milk, spilled by a milkmaid at the gate to the pasture.  We are seen from dress and bray of owlish.  Focus and print of status, framed as a glossy loom, we are indolent and reflected.

Fray soften coarse meal, sense of surface, sense of soul.  Glib and duty bleating in that smiling though the mask, written somewhere are courses in stone, pose and hitch to chimera.

Sleep gently and sweet dreams, you towering mices, living next door to the tiny gods.  You will see, when bitter is so hard, what taste of answering will conjure.  Size of coin?  Oh, dicker and swear at allegiance.  And your candle looks more like a torch in afternoon's torpor.

Grumbling and driven so, I set to wandering other hallways, now stalking dices, gold will follow.  Clear acted stabbing.  Chemistry of objection, chemistry of fear.  At parentheses I ox and garner.  Where trucking, cobble one lattice.  Overture to emptiness, spaces deline and refracted.  Divided by three, clear eye of once.

Told of hunting, there red pitch shows shadow of reluctance.  Off contrition, shining is a barter.  And fire at fool, costing grope is shallow.  Smiles all sappy, lacing mirror's breath.

But stare at intent, moments for moments.  Such is inquiring, and just so many raining.  Ouch, and thud!  To trek on, chasing and stone.  I flex, and I garner no tack.  All this I wrote in a letter to myself.

After leap quickly, in hot-blooded pursuits grows clang and inmate of restless.  Stop to pull handle, cogs gnash and train of whichever.  Sort though boxes, find the oil and fruit, numerous successful and serene hunts.

Meanwhile and forgotten, I had lusted, after glow (afterwards), plain sensing of shy locks, image propped, tilt, and within steel frame mingling capture.  Arrest and/or lunge, position.

Bribes cages; stuck, all eyes cemented to silver kiss and lusting tender grasp.  Have another, and another, maze's tender steak.

Any beacon is as plainly dressed in sunlight as a monk; so why not unearth asked and hidden?  Together its known and gnawing are to rock, similarly one.  You prime stemmer odds, struck as poses biggen; catch entrance, bog bolden roar.  The weeping will drain the days' mountains away.

Grief of clapper tidings, again and again reaching naught but bell.  Fingers in the void, loose your now wiry grip.  Boxed or appearing, filled with stone shadows.  And still the boil and burn of hearth.

Stir and flutter, flap of blue jay.  Brief entrancements, lifting and arranging of word.  Light shine forth like crystal spring.  As fitting is spoken, so extension is remainder.

Peering from between the branches; eyes deep in shadow.  Traces of hulkish form, snort and low breath of brute.  Crash and breaking vines in glade of sun and butterflies.

Traipsing is over; stare into fate.  Does stench and harm of measure send rushing into snarls?  What of the hooks and entailing?  Are we shouted, are we blossom?

Singing and sweet breath of angels, on high mount.  To every harp is given the gift of the spirit.  Strum and vibration of warm and scented youth.  In her beckoning is a glad shine of campfire.  Sweet surpasses fury in her friendly nodding.

To the musky mélange we must add the pepper and salt.  Add to this pain of loss, and point to section or arranger.  Token of will, study of impact like a splinter out of time.  We sort, we poke further.

As we are glacier, as we are ivy, we encompass, found part and stranded from whisk to tender.  Across division, piece together a portion of time.  Ache is eclectic as rain, shell passion is as buttering fruit.  Washes next to tears amber, caught in gasps of long hefted sand.  Scope of tradition, as our handed for founded doorways.

Drink from druid's cup, and as our animus is waters of soul, we will enter and entangle.  Snare tore heart, tore peace asunder.  But no words of caution will put to rest the rousing of the spirit.

On, and forth with your wily reckoning. So stricken, joust with exception's pretense.  You dust, pierce, and enable, look over traces of station.  Grasp of white marble, painted wooden mask.  Archetype as a cruxt of action, positioned and figured as the sum.

Carried away from the shine of day, deep into the cave.  There is hoard of gleam, all oxen thither and oft.  Piles and boxes overstuffed, all stolen and stinking of seawater.

We take all, we take every inside.  We make marry physics, and doppler combine.  With sextant and stake, we are fenced and posted.

This stumbling of hearts overtakes all names.

Given Like

Castle on snowy lake, jar of wasps, my pillow like a compromise between clowns and magicians, jail her fury.

Shudder lonely dragon, clad in dark iron, lance like a window, steal from black forest tales of written maids beseeching.

Foul oak motion padre, pail inquire, door at table act of mission.

Post evasion, lamp of butcher, pact of bloodless king.  Wrest decision from missing snake, scale mountains down.

Found in cavern, behemoth stands on pile of gold, roars shatter eardrums.  Stale scent of bones wanders feckless and hollow.

How can I kill this ageless denizen, married to time like the link of a chain, porter of rhyme and caw of scarecrow, I must repair.

Scant rations of wisdom, barter syrup with skeletons.  Rank all endeavor, slant if quelled in attrition.

Bite of enrapture, quest for attention, sting of butterfly, raise any question.  Mail from incredulous foreign examples, maple rack shaken, pitch white excuser.

Withered ashes, ill luck at stolen, risk old division, as blistered repentance.  Architects dying of still exhibition, kidders demeaning exigency pilfered.

Corded but obedient, in her dank recesses lurk dungeons, deep and clammy, prisoners lost in agony risen.

Frank and  open portal, dusky, lucid, sun approaching, wind of nickel.  Frame piston driven or chime pipe derision, for wistful pretending is mice for ebullience.

Portent is impatient, boxes for incursion.  Slay yellow potions, for tracks are a stepping stone to lakes of red imprudence.

Slap newborn and train patches, slow and inelegant, to fetch worn slippers.  Pi in dysfunction, lank and battered oval, nicked in pertaining, or act or inversion.

Palette mix and dither, stank wedding, baste casket, sell parrots to indigence, fear casting confusion.

Secure and/or batty, purloin or reluctant, wear ratty necktie, or dare apple curtsy.

Chase common mudpie, or cinnamon candy, care about clergy, unusual tasted.

Fail at matched impellant, mare bolted, crashing, burning.  Piety, dig a grave for my artless shell of question.

Impair all aching referrals, stain wicker baskets, frayed.  Impune mere sugars, pellets for racehorse.  Ear to ground, I am listening.

Work over cashes, stare pudding, eel stand for chilling wishes.  Web pulling stitches, all nagging acerbic.  Paddle shale cameras, step on chaste improvement.

Shape fine china, berry tick marble, chattel, leaping tigers, impurity ask a fracture.  Errant curtain magic, sleight birds evading.

Shine of riches pale, my lovely widow steals home after hours of study, brings me pastries baked in ovens, stone.

Bird of paradise, next in three act play, up in balconies puppets sit and gander.  Silver pocket watches, stolen glimpses part in a shipyard.

I work at nothing for reaping inclusion, paper for sheriff, I meet with rose's handle.  I dissect shadows, capture echoes ensnare reflections.  Circles on water all traipse to hug mirrors, wicked chapel.

She wraps me in poses, ardent impressions, latch tricking daggers, open doors to late arrivers.  Penchant for romance, skins of wine lately emptied, stagger and fall, drunken archers.

I am swallow, I fly asking peers of volition for meek over pattern, sleek standard pictured.  Cherub break window, sly friction, and dance at mastered echo, winded, elicit.

Parting of sorrows, fix rain, lend willows.  Pain scurry hither, pine after delusions.  Elide patter nixes, increasing witches' tallow, skins falling inches below kisses.

Snails or lichen, pins or fissure, ripe or rotten, rips or tension.  Waste and pension, might and tremble, pitch and poison, spool and diction.

Sang for rented ladies, odes to apertures, most every backdrop a pick for reckoning, what mended sorrow a pact with broken bones?  Where aren't feathers?

Asking little of dirt, I parade billowing closets,  number six a purchase, for found is delivered.  Pewter is scalded, all ask forgiven, powder is footnote.

Tails are appendages next for allegiance, tusks are sturdy, and whales are big.  Rest on erasures, sound wet, poor enclosure, ramp.  Loom Saturn tassles, for wept is sadly woven, your skill, your attainment, kept wistfully, or shaken.

Dice rattles dickers, and sand wreaths implacement, wrought iron skillet shank wounded bullets.  Semen steals leases, act of encryption, lace finds immersion or never release, sad trackers, bold fissure, sheep naggers.

Priest fiction mappers seal eons, miles out of Kansas fights rabbits, miss candle shallows stakes wonder, steel apples post all collusion.

Merit is captured, or candy is pounded out, cramped Parthenon told, saddled, and taught.  Shatter no function, no salt on those fries, but catch-all, and end-all, char headstone, reciprocal.

Purse mill depth open study or activate, meek crafting lizard mirages.  Glance at return or apportion remainder, meal for snake.  Might I turn, might I wonder? Edge craftless.

Pod wrecking earnest times shadow, men punch timecards, clock licking flames, arching marrow, met callous hand, rent purchase, stork paddle.

Past meadow, and forest, on grasses, and through brambles.  Out of excursions, in mesh.  Marsh and stranger, stool pamper crust.  Makeshift melody, find moat derision.

Parched I recall, though I'm smoking a Camel, I riddle familiar, and band recognizance.  Part as a mother, and part as a vixen, I peel carted castles to dither all commendations.

Shackled red shatters crazily, though skirted openly, cattle graze mooingly, paces traps and pages dark.  Black ink charge credit to debts all forgiven, but hooded, and ointment, pastor yield the flock.  After graces, and blessings, and prayers, you hold tightly to what is yours, nothing but reins.

List Entwine

Stickler, puzzle, and queer dilemma; locution, incentive, and lockbox; but transigence, latch, and rigidity; thus increment, distance, and perspective.  Scope and conclusion.

Trees and boxes, pierce and predator.  Degree, angle, back, and between; escape, injury, and assent... elopement, flinch, and artifice.  Penetrate or portal or mask, tangle of comprehension.

Definition, structure, formality, and language.  Delineation, rigidity, construct, invention, and distinction.  Elements, action/inaction, capture.  Occupation, apprehension, condition, endeavor.  Registration. diffusion, retention, and proportion.  Status, image, pretense.

Roots, sinew, smile, and tinsel; one equals three minus four?  Reflection, motive, and liberation.  Rain, unfolded, grasp, incipient.  Trappings, gnarled, accessory; hypotenuse, point, parallel.  Content, basis, exertion.

Post, assertion, print, axiom, theory, postulant; approach and engagement.  Stanchion and position; tradition and cooperation; stance and radical.  Difference, cost, and impression.  Event and perspective.

Pattern, figure, distribution, index.  Causality, seriality, origin.  Apportionment, angle, feature, impression; jointure, recognition, registration.  Consequence, expression, sum, condition; detail, insight, analysis, formulation, accommodation.

Accreditation, consistency, process.  Nomination, association, conjecture; involvement, application, probability, conduct.  Implication, convention, tangent, and hypothant; reconciliation, reflection, contrast.

Confluence, fixation, variability; indefinicy, flux, dependency, hinge.  Integral, express, consequent, and serial; extant, substantial, concrete, evidential, tangible; palpable, profound.

Lynchpin, pinion, cruxt, pertaining.  Predicate, host, immeasure; muddle, increment, inception, innate.  Possibility; option, oxen, ineluctable.  Aggregate, potent, execrable.

Commutation, reluctance, resilience; placement, inference.  Intolerance, figureable, obfuscation.  Elicit, demonstrative, clarity.  Omission, category, imperative; equation, polity; proposition, exigency.

Commerce, ossification, sophistry, element, blueprint, coherence; Oedipus and occident.  Martial, density, division.  Authority and bias, imposition and limitation.  Parameter thus paradigm; influx of attrite and implicated.

Pause and reflex; coil and comity.  Ocean, rank, and preening; poise of indescript.  Obtain, comma, means, declare, impetus.  Alignment.  Congress, inadequacy, impairment, concealment.  Hesitation, barrier, enterprise.

Imagining, look, volition; momentum and measure, quality and construct.  Continuum, constant, affinity, aspect, property; interest and ardor.  Opportunity, extension, commonality.  Apex and aptitude.

Chaos and context.  Adjective, handle, and ratio.  Metric and model; analogy and effulgence.  Emergence, delve, diaspora; insecurity, variation, transition, growth.  Expansion, egress, evoke, completion; energy, sequence, and manifest.

Structure, stronghold, clamp, mortar; foundation, inforcement.  Bulk, friction, grab.  Recondite, emigrant.  Stanchion, text, composite.

Ease and formality, fluidity, resilience; utility, facility, foresight, function; effect.  Comparison, garner, imprecision; characteristic, supplement.  Listed, implicit, adroit.

Comma, pronoun, example, problem.  Cogent, considered, standpoint, algorithm, synthesis.

Amend, correct, perspectivise; mistaken, contradiction, revision, summary, inclusion.  Relevance, inquiry, remark, opacity.  Basis, function, integrity.  Sensibility, product, inversion, exemption.

Explication, posture, proof, examination, address.  Edification, interest.  Gerrymandered, receptivity, inch.  Occlusion, presentiment, article, ideology.  Frame, increment, mindset.  Argument, statement, position, adherence, tenacity.

Retention, structure.  Rigidity, slip, dissociation.  Ebb, motive, clutch, fragility, strain.  Collapse, array, intuit, implacement; unstable, hard, immobile.

Regard, impairment, appreciation; insight, repression, liberty, benefit, page.  Accumulation, emphasis, pertain.

Inhibition, confinement, aggression, hang-ups; philosophy, uptight, endocrine, reckless, opportunism.  Course, progression, plan.  Tunnel, apprehension, past, trauma, highlight.  Rage, indelible, reason, reality.

Sequence, method, logic, pursuit, awry.  Persistence, exaggerant, object, restlessness, obligation.  Resource, incentive, means, alternative, occupation.  Obsequience, tolerance, failure, hope, ambition.

Costume, relentless, grotesquerie, mottle; map, driven, boil, craft, homogeny.  Puffery, determination, boast, assistance, niche.

Factor, stakes, urgency, leisure.  Primitive, stoic, naught, aspect, fixation, immersion, inertia, liquidity, viny.  Picture, inextricable, attention, conjectural.  Hindsight.

Sense and subtlety.  Sniff and roses.  Administer, scent, toss, underpinning.  Seasoned, age, party, sell, predilection.  Hair, fine, said.

Success, possibility, indefinicy.  Option, altitude, omission, superfluous, inadvertence.

Spell Cushion

Under tomb, through eye of needle, cast magistrate's glance, icicles token to import, stance at shadow.

Infuse scepter, boast of fringes, post open stare into stank of inches, prayer at solitude, song of impressions, stay with intentions for intelligence poised for wing.

Ache of instrument, shackled hiatus, snare irrectitude for position.  Close door, hiss at spider, bay at lamp.  Local inference acted implement for potion.  Left remark framed by echelons past, tigers spell out reference to bitten.  Sandy hook part at tides juncture, rift by laughter.  Intrinsic altitude kissed of reticence, spill over platitudes, spin under full moon.

Spare imprint, scene of stolen spool, shine under shark's tooth, launch yourself at spider's web.  Candle wedding ocean chaotic thrust inward.  Clothesline over well, stand at birthday, canyon underneath black crow.

Old sandstone staircase, do you climb?  Wince after shadows, strands of silver woven into blossom.  A shaky step.

Adjectives break away, avalanche of dry earth.  Raving idiot left inside, pant over tryst like a monument to clay, porcelain eggs guarded by rooster.

Prayer for enigma, washed by waves, next at turnstile.  Open envelope for inside is ticket, open closet, open mousetrap.  Find your strength, for weakness is but a hands width, into dark sand, immersed by the whirlpool.  If after hat we sandal, blue candle  left on snow.

Snowman watches sunset, red crackle of dying embers companion to arrow in shadows.

But after reflected moonbeam, spell attribute.  Spell thornbush.  Spell cushion.

What ugly reciprocal?  Wherefore art thou, Romeo, and two plus two is four, what is left for you?  Can we peel an orange, knot or cut a rope, swat a fly, open well, trick kite, kill wrench?

No, our fangs are dull, our scissors would not cut butter, so we are left to ancient symbols, which fit like tiles into the ethereal mosaic.  What practiced hand has laid open this puzzle, had shown umbrage to the guesswork of figure/ground?

And what spectre has passed through these hallowed grounds?  Bowed to needs and shackled bones to consequence?  Bandaged wounds and eluded glances for evidences of mirage?

Scant inkling of shattered bones dust the surface of the ground.  Overturned rowboat rots like dry kindling on desert floor.  These is an oasis, forgotten but for the reminders of terrible thirst slaked and quenched, the dying embers of a scattered campfire. Clouds dot the sky, offering darkness to the sun's relentless shining.

Thigh bone in hand, stare into darkness.  Silhouettes of what might be inside collide in dream's warmth.  There!  Two eyes.

Telling blow to jaw, leaving piece of ox skull at party, balloons, streamers, candy canes.  Shed skin like a snake tired of dry furies.

Ax lies on green grass, fulcrum of melancholy, ocean of rainwater, slip from grasp, where reminders of curses?  Snare shadows, blade keen, ape ranchers.

Now hole.  Slither like demons, away from day's etched brilliance.  Climb cross-cut, waste not your energies.  Summoned as a witness to this altar of change, take from children their lives, their candy.  And out of caves, show teeth.

If you can walk on tightrope, fashion ring, can't you open doors, sample cherries?  Never as death is silver's chase.  No print of time remains untouched by sparks.  Free absinthe from magic's stale imprisonment.

Find clutch.  Broken, like teeth in a barroom brawl.  Function of driveshaft corroded and fierce like solid rock.  Now loosen, now shift.  A lifted shutter, a purring cat?  Open jar.

But budge an inch, or curtains drop like iron gates, and spell intransigence in fiery letters on your private sky.

Why simply budge?  Why not stir, and flap your wings, pounce into the air?  If so, hunt, but drop prey into bitter fires.

Your ace is on bottom, rabbit in hat.  Don't forget that your key is lost, your rose in snow, your candle out, your ladder broken.  Because soon you will amble out of closet, confessing all.

I was a child, and only the flowers grew, pale mist of perfume, strewing colors about on the forest floor.  I did, I laughed.  And I held on as tight as I could, when time began to slip away.  But I remember her.

She opened her eyes, and fed the hearth, cooking soup to feed all the puppies.  I remember, for she wore a tophat, and needed a cane.  She gave the apples a barrel, the bed a pillow.

I am grateful she never cleaned a rifle or castled in check

But I snuck away one Saturday, to the brook, and fished for words.  I caught "tattle" and threw it back.  A "senses" worth eating.  And a "sorrow" that gave me quite a fight.

Porcelain brick, it took hours to fashion you, hours to paint you, hours to fire you.  But you can be shattered in a moment, dropped from a height.  You are hollow, and still.

Scissors on the ground, rust in the dirt.  It is time to work.  Slab of marble, chisel, hammer.

Something now breeds in my mind.  Is it a question?  Is it a resolution?  I'll find, amongst tangled blackberry vines, the largest cut diamond in existence, and yet still I wonder.  Am I rich?  Am I integral?  Am I a ghost?

Here!

I spill forth on your table, a harmonica, a wristwatch, a pill bottle, a pen, thirty-odd cents in change, a small mirror, a Bible, a package of chewing gum, and package of condoms.

I ask you, count these, how many?

I ask you, which of these can you use?  You can't answer.

I ask you, did anything in particular catch your eye?  You say, yes.  Whatever it is, I say, think about it.  Do you love it?  Do you need it?  What about the rest?

To open fields of golden grain, a village in the distance.

A kite floats in the sky.

Water drops splash onto a rock from the cave ceiling overhead.

And you wander out of the cave.  It is a bright spring day.  The birds chatter pleasantly,the sky is clear, and you can see the waterfall up on the mountain.

Shall I jump for joy?  Sing a hymn?  Milk my cow?  Capture a bird?

"Now what?" she whispered in my ear.

"Well," I said.

We dropped the handcuffs on the ground, by the spring.  It was a long walk to the town, but we thought we could make it by nightfall.  West, toward the setting sun.

And then we saw the clouds on the horizon.

Large, black, looming clouds, alive with traces of lightning.

Through this maze of forces we would have to wend our way if to walk to the town.

We looked for a place to hole up for the night.

Your day is over.  Off to bed, nodding off like a sleepy child.  The dark side of night looms large that night.  But the engine of dreams grows another flower, to catch the morning light.

It is behind me now, and I search the pale for the magic amulet.  I talk endlessly to myself of the manna, the Godhead, the serpent, the halo.  A stack of ten books will I write, chill the wine.

I got up off the floor and hit him again.  He was in no better shape than I.  He grabbed a pool stick off the table and swung at my head.  I ducked, and grabbed a torch.

Given that a broken line consists of two points, and an infinite set of line segments, and two rays, is there any indefinicy possible if a proximal measurement is made to quantify a space because of the inherent qualities of of the system?

Ask you local ice cream man.

Or... let's go out and play!

Because the rays of light from the sun have formed a box, antlers of doe goddess, and sketches of the moon litter the landscape.

Grasp for straws, table of contents, candy for supper again?

Break coconuts on rocks and play violin, for the return of the dog spirit is imminent.  Stopped clocks portent little, and where there is a door, there is a hole.  Is the door in the hole, or is the hole in the door?

Give yourself the broken chains of tempo, the tattered cloth of shelter, the chalice and the scepter, the microscope, the book.

Look through the magnifying glass at reddish-gold leaves.  Every vein a passage, a hallway down which lies yellow books in tatters, unreadable, unbound.  On the doorway to the room is a complex spiderweb, with no spider to be found.

We are finding books of definitions, to words too arcane to be good riddles.  Question marks after, what shade has come from the night to haunt our aspirations?  And fear not, for we have thrown off the shackles of night, banished the demons!

I don't like to have to tell you this, having a skull and teeth and eyes and a hand, but you have, like it or not, summoned a multitude of good spirits to you to fill your life with light.

They bless your every step, kiss your possessions, and watch over those you care about.

Your mind walks through canyons, climbs mountains, swims rivers, and walks tightropes.

Your body wanders aimlessly through the trees, taking paths worn by rabbits and deer at random.  You come to a white coffin.  You are very sleepy.

You lie down in it.

You are no longer troubled,  Gifts lie around you from elves and animals of the forest.  The mummies, vampires, and ghosts that own the forest have all wandered away, and continue in the other direction.  Their thought is as of a curtain.

A brilliant light comes from the sky, and in that moment you know, you will never perish.  As you drift in a dream, you are taken into the sky.

But axes cut, and chains do bind, some dogs bite, and drifters dream of better days.  So, like unto these, you will find your solace.

Wasp nest is sold at auction.  Carry your wrenches, your flashlight, and your eggs.  You will find a barn to sleep the night.

Can you still smile?

More Mostest

Bloated sums times effulgent and broken quotients, tracking the sun down the rose red sky.  Seared cinder of a burned spirit, ghost candor, old laughing candle warm a host of poses.

Stale trials, brunt reminders of custard's sugary goo.  Peppermint arrows pierce the salty wave, improper precautions to addled divisions.

Just as the piercing is hollow, so is the staining of reminder.  Cold and proper lining of the angels, the hand that smote is the mule of the replier.  The dusting of the shadows speaks to ashes and to furrows, aimless tattles to the generals.

Diamonds, check, and slash glitter gleam.  Silver clasp on cash piled skywards, a dozen banks folding up like so many paper roses.  Bricks of gold can build castles in the air, towering monuments to the millionaires' brides.  Pitter-patter of raining gems, your lovely tinkling washes off the climbing.  The sale of one encrusting is the other's bent condition.

 My prayer is to the aces, and for every fettered caution, there are seven minks for mating.  Sleek and silky thirst, slake for copper thunder, patient as the starry.  Brazen ship of doubters, cost no quipper donkeys, but jape at meek disquiet.  Though you juggle donuts, the breakfast is only coffee, you will waken to the sneezes.

Oh, brakes, and tracks, and charging horns; oh tricks, and locks, and shattered bones; oh cameras, shutters, flash and eye; oh will, and hand, and muttered lies; did your impression slacken jaws?

Did signs encroach the holy laws?

Parrot's shadow, spit of lamb, train of lion, butt of ram; in spite of woman, fear of whip; for type of letter, verbal slip.  Did you walk, though tightly, rope?

Bite of apple, hit of dope; aim unerring, slick of soap; death of adder, pop of fly; read of anger, taste of lie.  Was the trouble with the pose?

Reign of clouds, sale of price, stamp of pressing, duo twice; scroll of listless, scare of crow, ride of cowboy, shine of show.  Did you fish from on the tocks?

Luxury, your shy fingers knit and bob the fine sweaters, and do not turn to dust, dear sir, just as dry as the rest.  You pampered groom, smile quickly lest the teething be forgotten.  Free to chase the owls from the rafters and to the mousy moon, a quick heartbeat, like a runner passing hurdles.  Sparkling water, chilling story of a man banking shiners with the dull.

Grey patter, tone a farthing past the rent.  Pray for chuckling, dance at wedding, toy.  Sheer martyr, fooling packs of matches for the diction, for the ticker.  Does fire borrow tiring from the wire? So as a quibble, dust abrasion seals the batter in a shell.  Every falling rocker bones a banter for the coven.  Axes.

Strong man, lift a ton of lead, fear axles for your groaning is a shipwreck.  Trounce little tappers, grief like dropping is mistaken. Forty bullets fly across the campers' boating.  A kill is as good as a counting.

Own up, withered general, flail at relent, and to the running board the pirate for escaping.  I'll cost a genie, broken bottles cut the chasten.  Three wishes; wealth, love, and copper coins over the eyes of the prisoner, losing count of stripes.

Snowman sick of candy, an M&M smile.  Fleece and sugary cotton, quivering web, sticky fingers.  Share with me your spearmint bungles, and I my sparrows' loom.  Cane and shake, riddle me too many lies.  Cascading syrup, glance foundering angels, gingerbread men to the running molasses.  Honey is captured by the fifteen sissies, and grasped whenever the erring is apparent.

Groans, rails from the gnashing caresses, and just as well, for the screech of rusted breakings is as cautious as the mouse's.  Bare bones creaking, Jane Doe a proper temptress, but it to awful dances fall the rhythms of beleaguered.  Grain of rice chaff knotting to the picture of repairmen.  Pack of policemen, crack skulls and nightly thwok! of billy bear clubs, rear straining barter.  Old apples withered and oily sweet, it's a patient loom that yarns the quilted night.  My sale, just as easy, easy as fitful.  Yours is buck for a conch, spare reeds for a match to a willow, and barely working.  Big boat, bossman, tumble over falls and crushed on rock.  Wire the stolen to the fences, and care not what emboldened may put asunder.  Grief is but a camel in the winter.

Did barges carry badges to the wounded? And did every jumper veil a painted package? Were your beetles betting rent against potatoes? And was Saturn fairing well against the martyrs? I was asked this once and forgot, my back to the well.  The bell, rung once, rang twice, for the maid is but an oxen.  Squarely.

Poor jester, your clown is but a pushover, and always laughing, as likely as a priest to wear those old sunglasses.  Always rains, and never moons and tans, crazy sun-up, rinse your tags and place your daisies on delicious.  Just a bored old blue, jailer sea; roll, bony ocean, rig your thunder to the masts.

Brimming with tears, jaded eyes have met mine, washed my dank spoor.  Thick moss is waiting at the footstool, green trinket of goddess, dear cloak of wind's whistle.  Scamper up a tree, reminded as we are of camp mushrooms coaxing closets from the gloom.

Peer winner, steer your arrows, forward, and stall your targets.  Homeward black horses, gust of blazes, catch soil as wooded as thorny thicket.  Drawn and quartered, the cold and severed carcass of a lamb, pester your saints, and turn the hourglass nightly.

'Twas the scattered cards that told the gypsy twice of the fool's trance and his childish vixen.  She had stricken flint, and placed upon the tender, yellow sparks.  Catching fire is the purpose of the torch's trap.  The entrance to the inferno is at the bottom of the deep well.  No flame is cautious; whether blown by the wind, or walking on water, fire is an infectious dance.

The dapper are upended, the puppets, all gluttons.  Dare is the seed for the boasting tree, every leaf a brag, and the impossible fruit.

'Tis honey that's spilt on the ground, dear Diana, liquid gold that drips from the busy hive.  The bees have made too much.  It fills their waxy coffers and pours down the sides.  The queen is fat, and her requests are ignored by the gluttonous workers.  Even the drones sup hungrily on the amber trickling."

Comb the yellow beach, searching for the windy-haired mermaid, who will break the waves, and whose salty smile glances the schools.  Tide of fools, and siren sing of starry-eyed sailors, once for keeping, now briny and reef.  Horny, and five-armed and clinging to a rock; tell me, starfish, do you hold to the rock, or do you hold to the sea?

The gentle swell of lonely and ever-changing ocean sweeps the tiny and the gargantuan alike across the face of time's timeless passing.  In the darkness there is a stirring of a solitary light, and after this bright beacon rushes hordes of devouring fish, intent on blackening the already-murky depths.

But I plow, dust and grime muddying the the sweat which covers my forehead, up and down, across the long furrows which stretch for endless miles.  The oxen drink the sun in long gulps, tails to the plow.  A chorus of cicadas chews a high green.  The earth slowly gives way, in plans, for the crops, Father Time's dowry to the earth, for the rain is the bride.  And so the soil unfolds, and folds back up with seed, and given time, shares its catchings with the air.

Just a tock to the well, plow on its side in the dirt.  Draw seven cupfuls, draught for slake of thirsted.  Cost of a button, ride on a dry, parched camel, told of the end of the hayride, break for the winds sudden palace.

Chiming of the dinner bell, speak loudly of my evening's timeless leisure.  Cast the shadows aside and drink foaming sales.  My happy day is caught up in the bramble.  Tomorrow's workaday beckons quickly hence, but shuddered are my tempoed dreams.  Post the chamber's silken sheets and pillows.

Dropping out of daylight, a candle is my nightcap, and the brightly feathered bird of my dreams graces the branch of my plow.  In my dreams, the sweat drips off my brow as I plow the long row.  Work is like a soldier on the march, and to the beat of the drum, his ceaseless footsteps leave determined prints on the dusty road.  I, like my mule, mark no time, leaving for the clock that sandy ticking.

A cloud parts, making way for the rays of the sun, which are cast around me like rice at a wedding, and a voice comes down from the sky. "Leave your plow, and go to the well and drink."

The plow lies on its side in the bright sun, and even the birds seem to suffer in the heat.  A silvery mirage slips through the dry air, a clever acrobat.  I walk to the well.

By the well, a maiden stands, naked, and looking around as though lost, but not frightened.  I stop, and she sees me, and beckons me to come closer.  I walk to her and ask a question.

"Are you without shame, fair maiden, that you stand naked in the fields? And from whence you come? I have never seen you before."

She answers. "It was my father and mother that cast me from my home without clothes.  I have been wandering for hours.  May I drank from your well?"

I draw us water from the deep well.  We drink deeply.

Work and play, neither knows the gentle caress of the angel's hand, which flows from faith, as the oxen falls, and dies and turns to sun-bleached bones.

A man full of bread toils and turns the dirt, his hands strong to the task.  A man full of candy is like a pinata, turned this way and that by the sticks of boys and girls.  A man full of fire is like the leaping wildcat, quick to the rabbit's tender throat.

Turning the will of the sunburnt worker is like turning an arrow from its course.  It is like turning a bulldozer that piles up the earth.  Or it is like turning a rocket headed straight for the moon.  The closer to the bull's-eye he comes, the more dirt that piles up, the bigger the smile of the man on the moon.  Is that all he wants? To make the man on the moon smile?

Give me three reasons why to forget the treasures of the earth, and listen to the Lord, and I will stack them, one on top of the other, and make a ladder to the sky, not tall enough to reach heaven.  One, two, three; three steps to the sky, and many more to the sun.

The first step is your undoing.

Pail of Night

Darkness is entreaty, begging loyalty from starry velvet.  Shadowed spectre, embrace our hearts with chilly hands.  Intertwine amongst our bones, with fingers of dark blue ivy.  Swallowed by the crow, ache over, swear over chains.

Cuts, and burns, and broken bones; it happened by accident, it happened a thousand years ago.  Hell no, you didn't share.  In recent memory, can't say where the problem was.  Are tracked down, and are involuntary.

High sheen of oil, cackle of drumming machinery.  Stamp another prisoner indelibly with green.  Dented sharp, oh you pious postings.  Brace yourself, swampy tempers shout.

Slash and crack of whip, more bricks to carry.  Sweat, and stench, muscles knotted like dry cords.  Impossible pain like a hammer pounding your salt.  Sight of red, stumble into dense tangle.

Elocution of conditions, all in black ink.  Mercurial and subject to pretense, envelope cautionary principle.  Cold and solid standard, bloody the terms of engagement.  Tick, tocking, all the way to the moon.

Eel's deception is a sly twisting of fate.  Gold money clip, light cigar.  You just got took for a dozen.  Smelly fish and cold gruel for you.

Park Lucifer, and paint a shadowy dungeon.  Grimy story, winner take all.  Lift skirt, chide sinner nightly.  Dose of old, dose of red loosely.

Whence lost teeth, butter up dapper.  Tired as I am of stale macaroni.  Slithering agelessness, stake a pattern forward, conclusion of the struggle and drowning.

Up and over, off the top, and roll to the bottom of the hill.  A moment of glory, touched and running shameless to matrons.  Babble of gods, parrot ogres, fence with imagining.  Blown socket, shock of trepidation.

Sullied and stained, covered with mud, scrapes and bruises.  Plenty of sticks and stones for children.  All hard tricks, learning to slaughter the cash cow.  Exquisite turning and twisting, hand tied behind your back, stink of idolatry.

Swear to deleterious, hold down agony 'till ashen slipping squirms.  Injury and acquiescence, two coppers and a book full of droll.  Always more cutting, patent solutions failing unorthodox problems.  Mind of an animal, concepts stiff with age.

Hard man over, hard man hammer your nail.  With a certain obstinence, ready for axes, earlier thunder than the hat wouldn't cover.  Show those teeth, grapple biting inconclusive.

Dark eyes and sweet aroma, sell your soul for a shot at luxury, you flower, you pet.  Camp out at candy land, just for a genie.  Hotter fires, hotter days.  Drag me through the paper-cash confetti.

Early bird gets the worm, missionaries of rough and tumble.  Turn over sundial to spite the gods.  Champions of spirit, holders of bones.  Rains familiar, ask of emboldened and spoken.

Then it gets serious, hides for sale, forsake your hopes of standing unscathed.  The clubbing and piercing of angels, just as common as clay.  Crashing fell and bloodied.  Afterwards, the sight of the dead.

How many did get away?  We tracked down plenty, striking down walking stick.  Torn hearts and famished dead roses.  Awful predicament, high steeling of iris.

Downing drank of poison, black fissure to the pit.  Drip down, trickle thin and red, costing you dearly.  Can't pretend to smile, can't extract a thought.  I wonder too, gnawing indecision and the grating screech of dread.

So many eyes, staring at you who began it, you who drafted its unblinking resonance.  Red is blue and yellow, green, one plus one is three.

Estimation is a bird that watches from a tree, just outright lie about the sleeping mutts.  It counters one, or all your awful telling.  Breeding and foment for ill-founded superstitions, cost you a scarecrow for every inch they buy.

No bright light shines from down that crooked hallway.  Sure, puzzled patterned, but jointly inched in appled for the loom.  Bramble scratching boxes, open them and what's inside?  Wink an eye to the hollow and brittle.

Ancient words of wisdom, can't scratch his high color.  Swearing by fiction, or else.  God-awful, bitter, swearing of words.  May as well use them as acid.

Who will fall prey to the whips of anguish?  Blistered, and blackened, raw and blinded.  To undergo the worst is to douse yourself in fire, bite wheeling for crippled or permanently lame.  Chess games in a funhouse mirror, mind of torturer.  Where are the touches and embraces?  Lost in the flicker of razor's scent, broken as shatter, as bottle, as bone.

Stale sheen of trembling, craven fear, list your kill for worry of miscounting.  Rent, and file, ripped out of kindred, chill.  Spill crimson, gore and cistern bad omens.  What is left but rattle and clutter of death?

Slow liberation, too late for that crier, and freedom is such a little sparrow.  Didn't we tickle, didn't we groan?  Fifty pounds of spareribs on a slow orange fire.

Weep, you women, fight the conclusion 'till the fires override.  Hold your stoning, strange men of harness.  'Till fists overtake our children.  'Till the sacred is junked and undone.

Darkness is all for the bereft and lonely.  One soul is a shadow with no sun.  Only with the concrete do its soundings intermingle.  From these intricacies there is no escaping.

Snare and pain, side by side, a vivid showpiece.  Steam erupts, and feverish, a crooked is born.  Bake in boast and battle, jabber, cost is saddled galloping,  Mix it up a lot, and it comes out fruit salad.

All in an angst formulae, grief stand sooty long lane's owlish paths.  Particular, and inward.  Bittersweet faces pass timely but momentary... and caution, once again, does not prevail.

Slow ant equation, how to kick bed.  The jagged, and darkling, the crust overdone.  Pandora again is triumphant.  Fast fury of exertion showing stank of fear snarls.  Enter, men of danger.

Howling quite literally, shape one for the customer.  You, brat, you, closet of sloth.  Your visionary defeat is a page out of Nostradamus.  Swan dive into octopus ink.

Takes an upset to prevent a disaster.  No time for story, pounce on moment.  Until I hear the cattle call, love is upended.  Once the drop happens, they call it the end.

Carved in obsidian, totem of bears.  Sure will is arrows, when does the chipping end in shards?  No lack of endings, plenty to go around.  No mercy, and one-hundred percent.

Process and function unhindered will klip-klopping forward, dropping spears and shields.  Guesses firm or scratchings pun erasers.  Measure of gratitude, dollop of bliss, if hacking and gore are avoided.  Pet swimmer, dip tightly gave or found a yearling.

But hooks of enigma, bollixed and bottled like a brew.  Fanged snake of quandary, tricks at attar kiss.  Roped and bound, begging for relent at point of gun.  Cost for missing riddle; your right hand.

You engineer of clouds, hailmaker, crackle stabber.  Costing us more than just friends, smiley.  I don't fall so easy.  Didn't you always batterer?  Plum.

Ha, yes, I'd resort to it.  Bundles for confirmed, twenty to one.  Impish and shallow for the meat.  Backward I'd walk to the poses, shifts and arranges on cue.  Say, hey, wrong mirror, exit and shadow immeasurable.

At tempo of axes comes the thrust of hours.  jackals nip and growl at leisure.  Oh, you can have the quiet couch, but thunder of guns delivers.  Tackle  your posers beforehand.

Style of Time

Rant at frame, rat caught in trap, gnaw at stiff wire.  Stale cheese or apples as bait.  Throw switch and light goes out, pamper caged rabbit.

Milk cow, three-legged stool, and carry pail to churn.  Ape at plow, merchant of corn, cradle redemption, interlope, and tempo of revelation.  Footprint in forest, leave like bat.

Steep stair to black tower, song in guttural tongue, ancient curse ascend.  Salt shaker on table, eye white flower, crawl under desk.

Steal rose and ache for love, sail over cloud, magic carpet, and bliss spill from heaven.  Cogs and wheels of commerce clatter and jam, fury of wind shatters chimes.  All passion bears fruit, and shade's teeth snap at air.

Stand still and grace, white marble statues, show us truth in form, subtle beauty.  Grasp gently brittle scroll, sage's words, writ of wisdom shorn of hatred, and persuade fossil.

Supple runner at line, sound of gun.  Matched rhythm, footfalls pace out fast on path.  Know your finish line, find speed in endurance, outrun deer.  Faster than his shadow, he will break ribbon.

It is just the process of completion, the fast patter not blinking or losing a second to time's immeasurable girth.

We are given one second, but we cost an hour.  Our moments are constructed as our lives are constructed of girders and rivets.

You are known to us, iron framework, shed close tears.  Fork in dirt, postage for bullet, lick envelope to seal fate.

Pitch of wind, bind careless impression, shiver tree, not in scale.  Spared or shattered, windows stare into space, dividends of glass.  Seed of dandelion floats on breeze, fertile and ready for clear rain, settle on dirt.

The sun rises over the hills.  Trees wake to bright greens, and a rose colored sky opens to the morning light.  Flowers open, and the grass stretches and greets the day.

When heaven opens her arms and spills faith into the day, time will walk like a man.  If he should stumble and fall, life will pick itself up and dust off, space will fall like a feather to the ground.

Patience like a dove will spread her wings and meet her flock.  Simple stories from storytellers will hearten and bring hope to your children.

Elope with shadows, and love, if she shows her face, will calm you and kiss and snuggle.  Time saunters away like a gunfighter.  Another showdown at high noon.

Man grasps his bottle of wine, and drunk weavers knit multi-colored cloth.  Cold and snow greet the homeless fellow, wake him from his nap.  Alone, he will face the wind, and clothe himself from the discarded rubbish.

If ocean's calm is a restful rolling, then also will the swells wash to shore the empty homes of mollusks.  Collect them, bright pieces in jar, on shelf.

Spanish galleon, loaded with spices and gold, weather strong wind.  Take down sails and drift, man crow's nest.  Take down flag.

Perfect gem on wine stem, crystal egg mist potion spare watch.  Unopened letters, old postmark, dusty, ten-cent stamp.  Lists of textiles, print of cotton, pastel flowers on muslin.

Parcel of gifts, powder and perfume for privileged woman, happy accoutrements.  Each is wrapped cheerfully with colored paper and ribbons.  These are the potions she hopes you will drink that will offer love to the caring man.  Written in stone are the axioms of fidelity.

Ode to artifact, open window, bird flies through, lands on arm.  Message from lover, wed spider nightly, kiss rose.  Send a long and happy message back.  Leave window open.

We carry stacks of books to dusty archives, after hallways echo with our voices.  The echoes speak back, talking of news from ageless shadows.  The wind will carry us clippings from newspapers printed on a free press; we read them.  Some turn away and some turn to face the turmoil.  We bless our contracts with perfect and punctual marks.

Throw spear at tree for practice, snare shadows for traps at post, catch mailman.  Pocket his letters, and take them home and read them; love letters to other people, and news of faraway land and strangers.

It is these letters that plan for fidget, remark on them and throw them away, or forward to recipient; they fail to inform.  You will receive them after morning exercise, they are forged in Christ's hand.  They prickle and gloom after stars light is darkened, but are on scrolls old and brittle.  Handle gently.

Walk easy, and they will be clear as a bell from your vantage point.  They cry and weep for justice, but offer a broken key, that will fit no lock.  They are at best crutches, windows into the conventional wisdom, look further.  There are gems to be found, left by great men.  And language holds great promise, every concept a signpost for the wise.  The senseless void is not a common thing, and reason walks and leaves it behind.  In our time we do not celebrate it, but later there is the promise of a consensus.

Drop your sticks and stones, fashionable or sly, they make a better fire than a weapon, cook your soup over it.  No position ties rage from consequence, over nightly.

Subtle expression, partial to endings, hope on rocks.  Carry briefcase to shadowy man, his money oils the axles and springs.  Stale endeavor, police toy soldiers, return broken gun.  Hand clasped over fist, stay hard punch, using energy for motive veiled.

Brokers of entertainment bark and whistle, and sell their services, passing grades for cheers and applause.  Study in blue, pool shark making bank shot, fifty dollars on table.

Split up coins, penny for bubblegum, quarter for candy bar, the rest is kept in a piggy bank.  Impair count, never to shovel, grip on rake, wire to trap for careless banker.  Slot machine clicks and whirrs, and comes up all cherries.

Walk away from the clatter of gold, then sighing, turn back to your palette, colors are only the recommendations of flowers, you think.

Commerce beckons from her white pedestal.  Answer giving credence to old statues, makeshift memorials to justice.  As you pass see their shadows, and observe their marble solidity.  They will remain to persuade us of happiness.

Find path or window, its happenstance.  Rare cedar door stands open, do not lock it.  Somewhere in the distance a train passes.  The clatter and clack of the wheels tells time.

Clock the weathering of stone; tick, a mountain, tock, a pebble.  Sort out grains of sand, fuse into glass for our teacup.

It is dusk, light filters though the trees which stand on both sides of our path.  Refuge for birds and squirrels, their roots reach down deep into the earth.  Their branches reach overhead, a wooden canopy.  Murmuring, you walk slowly under them.  Stop, stand and listen, the wind whispers back.

Looking down, rusting on the ground, a find, an old bicycle.  Lifted and admired, ridden fast and long ago, memories of jokers and clothespins.

And time to ride, setting out along the path, filtered light from the all but swallowed sun streams through the trees.  Legs push out a tired rhythm, propelling you forward on rickety wheels.

You make progress quickly, passing homes and shops alive inside, caught suspended in boxed and stately grace.

A taxi, riding through the park, approaches, flag him down.  Abandon the bike to its crumbling, and hop the cab.

Leaving the park, and through downtown, buildings tower high above.  Past gas stations and fast-food restaurants, the stoplights blink in astonishment, eyes of god.

At your request, the driver drops you off at the train station, and you pay him.  Catch the train, its route winds through the countryside past small towns shut down for the night.

Sleep through the night, and the low rumble of the train crosses under the moon, and at the early crack of dawn, the train stops before a granite quarry.  You get off the train.

Here man digs for tonnage of stone.  Quartz crystals crackle underfoot, laying about in haphazard jumbles.  The morning clouds part, and the hues of the spectrum fill and sparkle around you.  You have found the rainbow's end without knowing it. There is a high crane, motionless in the quarry.  Suspended on steel cable is a cauldron, a pot of gold.

Take one coin, and one coin only.  This is yours, the rest goes to needy leprechauns and tax collectors.

Walk away with your small treasure.  Hop the train back to the city.  Flag a taxi and back to where you left the rusting hulk of bicycle.  Pedal back to the trees, and give your gold coin to the first squirrel you see.

He will keep it with his nuts, amongst the seed, a glittering artifact of man.  When he cares to, he can spend it on candy or cotton, a taxi or a trick.  To do so he will have to leave his nest for the bustle of the city.

One step takes you past door, you are inside.  Go to window and look out.  There, the garden waits, formal and stately.  Birds chirrup in the trees, asking after the sun.

Sit in easy chair and close eyes, listening to the sound of music.  They waft, and wispy, dance in the breeze.

Puppies play among peppermint sticks, time but a hopeful word, lapsing edge in cleft of gorge.  Next a pail for milk, dogs lapping at frothy cream.

Should a priest arrive, give him his leave for a blessing.  His walk is the walk of purest rectitude, and will ever relinquish wine and bread.  His eyes spark new impressions of truth.  Embrace him, and walk away.  Worth your ruler, let the blacksmith of happiness fashion your steel.  While the flock grazes at pasture, you take your bread and soup, and are free to watch Mother Nature shed her evening gown.

Every tree is like unto her leaves, and will shudder and sway under the breath of god.  His nameless aura will infer melody to the leafy flute.

Ashen is helpless fear, and forever its toll will take to task dreams of acquisition.  Work for wealth, win race for silver platter.  Give up pain, for it is only a falling away.  Walk through life without it, and smile, for the lines of age will trick you, and the mirror will know.

Hope leaves the way of lattice, sparing honeybees at holly leaves and misty caves for waterfall. Soap like a stranger will slip and caress your instincts.  Your stance will spell its hatred, but walk further into the woods, they will not follow.  Apple games and candy houses for printer's touch.

Interstatial frame, mate with interstice, fiction in its intercourse, evolution giving fractions away to impress all plans.  Footprints trail away in sand like a mermaid's song.

Asking questions, gingerbread men ride second class trains to revelation.  Step off at kitten station.  She is hungry for milk, and will purr, and rub against you.

Put on glasses, read ancient script, it poses questions about your path.  There I am the loser, I stand by the spring.  I watch as animals take their fill, come and go.

An apple stands on a table, the subject of hungry stares.  Give unto soft cotton every dance, open to nature.  Hope for strength, but don't fear weakness, affection to soothe your troubles.  Smooth skin and a kind hand.

Take pen in hand, and verse flows out, still and printed in ink.  Here is man's fruition.  A white-haired lady is the wind, given unto sleep in the snowy arctic.  Her sleeping hand guides all endeavor.  Don't wake her, for she dreams of roses and honey.  She will wake in her own time.

Soul, open to life, and walk through toys, puzzles, and blocks, fearless to your home.  Life, unlike mischief, knows its path, will always have teeth to bite, claws, to scratch, and can score a bullseye.

Pair off, and wander under stars.  Patience leads us to standing stones of destiny, pass them, they speak of ancient symbols of rectitude.  Step over stream, it winds through untouched nature.  Drink deeply of the clear water.

Some games pass, and some languish and ricochet, echoing in caves of deception, dark and wet.  Pools of edifice forward lasting treasure, artifice a remote island in the rocky underground landscape.  Truth is a beam of light that cascades through the ceiling and lights the underground pools.  The chemistry that is life is brewing in this sacrosanct chamber.

Clouds cross over land and sea, so will the determined man wend his way to his destination.  Spokes catch angles and position wheel, axis of progress.  Each foot forward gives us new purchase, should we fall back, we fall back one inch.

Hawks wheel and hover, looking for fresh meat.  Sharp is their eye, and their talons barbed for the clutch of prey.  Quiet, the rabbit hops in the brush.

Shelter for broom, staple of kindred, house master for ocean.  Paper for fold, open mystery leaves ashes for inspection.  Fashion is a fixture of society, like every vacation.

Storied cement, proper and underfoot, hardened years ago, poured with muscle and sweat.  Every footstep widens the cracks along sidewalk, a path of commerce.

Ocean of money, waves crashing into the beaches of institutional reality, roll for sailors, and wash up denizens of the deep.  Solace for fishermen with woven nets and wooden rods.

Prop open chest, in grandma's attic.  Old quilts, dresses from a bygone era.  Dusty fur coats, bowties and cufflinks.  Old brown penny-loafers, and black belt with silver buckle.

White shirt, black shoes, crisply pressed black pants, black tie, formal coat.  Clad in this uniform, commerce in the industrial age drowns in its edifice, and though in a river of wealth, can't swim.

Man is hypocrisies, intolerance, prejudice, greed, vices, stubbornly closed-minded, he stands hapless and in ignorance, wearing only words, his petty excesses the results of nonsense and deception.

What cats span the bridges of the establishment?  They sniff and roam the city, looking for mice.  Pad of paws on pavement, pussycat piece of puzzle, every cognizant move or angle of eyes stitches a new coat, alterations given in hazy retrospect.  The momentum of thought echoes in fragments of silence through the city's empty streets.

So be it, we can still return.  Back to the pages of our journals, let others man the rails, they want a happy journey.  Shadows bind thee not, not black enough to shackle, only lifted in afterstudies, your home gives you chance enough to pattern.

Shiftless paces, pressed in open pursuit of love, ocean of stolen signatures, aloof and passionless against the open sky, fly over village and wish upon our ancestors answered cries.

Lion's mane, pride of kings, worn like a crown given of yesterday's reason, answer to cold vision woven of fantasy's loom.  Dance, spider, weave web in bouquet of flowers.  Your slow hand and delicate touch afford perception for lovely passion.

Lower mark than frozen, river winds through misty hills, a milk of questions.  Flow through and fish swim, insects glide atop the waters, walkers on impression.  Under ambiance, sun is measured as met in shadows, arrest intransigence on ice.

How ambling step, marsh of gratitude, glow with grasses, the cries of birds floating up, hollow log a drum for green moss.  Yellow flowers meet green leaves, patches of color lost in amber light.

Glimpse of smiles, seat of fortitude is unmasked by healers, scent of passion.  Pour honey over fried dough, sweet consequence of reason, powdered sugar or gunpowder with your pastries?

Sly of essence, purloin factories watched over by ticking androids, chocolate kisses, dealt with jack of hearts, diamond necklace, try all your naked wages on paper.

Drunken bulldozer, work trenches, build foundation of brick, gold walls solid as rock.  Granite basin wash clean marble floors, ten-thousand footsteps later, marble pillars straight and solid.

Register notion for glimpse, under tides and mistresses, mast's shadow impressed in sand.  Romp over sand castle, chase crabs across sand dunes.  Birds' nest in tall grasses, fishermen of the sea.

Waves of industry shape the industrial landscape, supply and demand carve shapes into the rocks of potential resource.  Scope of reason shed light on happy aggregate.

Plant in furrows seeds of thought, water with imagination, stately rows of concepts.  The fruit is words, sentences, phrases as branches and leaves.  The fertile soil of history gives purchase for the roots of culture.

Wise old owl looks over the fields from above, day after day.  Notion of spark, she brings the rain.  After sunset, the clouds part and the stars shine through, and the owl speaks.  As the night rolls by, the owl hunts mice.  The sun-up is rosy, and is wet with dew as everything wakes up.

Standard of compromise steals fear from sleeping badger, section offered as meal for hungry birds.  Opulence a gem, reflections as fragments of mirror's shine, planted in crystal.  Shard of yesterday's light, meat of daydreams, and imp's abode.  Bread and fish our foodstuffs, woven baskets hold grain for hungry children.

Stand at crossroads, failure of change points to left road.  Amble down it, it leads to wealth immaterial.  Spiritual development happens to man slowly, every turn a guidepost to the soul.  Dirt road winds slowly through trees, ride a horse.  Penchant for charm, ask not of weathered wizard where wand is kept.  He will answer but will hide his true intentions.  Open chest for riches, the ladder beckons.  Look to wise men, they will aid you in your climb.  Many will try to scale it, wait your turn, there is room for all.

Should you climb out of turn, you will land in apartments, school but a ghost of a book, and the money man tightly will clasp his purse.

A spectre will hand you a book; give this to a saint for safekeeping, do not read.  His answers are paths to the conventional, but will provide you milk to go with your cinnamon toast.  Don't drink wine with your breakfast, it is too sweet.

Demons aspire to height, they will climb poles and wait.  You are safe if you don't taunt them, they only bite when they are angry; so don't depend on angels to scare them away.  They have no gift.  Be cautious when they are about and find your way to a place where there are none.

Missing reply is altered by the peripheral silence, a notion kept by lances and fires, sound meshed like porous rock.  Glancing sideways, we see only a semi-colon, a pause.  Press on our doubts need only terms which are common among sapient creatures.  Common to them, and they work for them always if the work has integrity.  The puzzle is missing every piece, but is worked in seconds by the mind, grasping silence.

Old prayer, always providing that which is sacred to ritual, lit candles, and pace forward, your walk lifts all which stands in the way, evil takes flight, scatters like a dropped crystal goblet.  With these, there is no need for life, for in death, we are passed and glimpsed in reflection by our progeny.

Soap up, rinse down, dry with fluffy towel, clean and free, do not wash again until trial is given to earth, no  need.  Dirt and soil are where rainbows touch earth, and cleanliness is no sacrifice.  Just wash, and all will be clean, and passage will be granted.  The river is my tub, the rain my shower.

On the wall, a portrait of my grandfather.  He had no watch, gave me a poem instead.

  Climb that mountain

  Cross that sea

  You will be

  Completely free

  Angels, devils

  Hand of light

  Free us from

  This darkest night

Were I to wear his shoes, his tie-clasp, his hat, I would look just like him.  Gray beard, attentive look, weathered eyes, happy smile.  In ancient turns are nested snatch and gather, for these I sometimes frown.  The difference is, the chains are rusty now, and though some will forge them anew, my friend will leave them on dirt.

After rails, all simplicity is rust on wind's cogs, jar of nails given to hammer, lilies stretch and drink air.

Strange and succulent, wine's aroma is blessed by leafy vines.  Porthole open, miss smell of salty sea by five leagues.  Glint of gold, mate two breeds, swimmer on diving board, passage to caves.  Foreign currency pays for television and new car.

Snails crawl over plants, eating tender green parts.  Their shells are credence, a home and a boat, never to fire.  Slow pace to wander, searching antennae find smells of food.  Offer bounty to them, their slow hand is the spark of compromise.

Which spoken word is the wheel in our traveling wagon?  Letters for spokes, axle of press, we carry notes, letters, books, and documents by the grace of our forefathers.

Fashion clay into sculptures, plain and objective, source material for ideas, a beard for Occam's razor.  Pages of wisdom are turned in conclusion, effort generates innovation.

For every lake of fear, there is a river of progress.  The frozen peaks of hatred turn into glaciers, and feed springs of emotion.  Renewal happens over time, after refreshment.  Falsehood is sandstone; truth, granite.

Push candles outwards, as is proper, to ask how when challenged, road to king's throne is paved with stainless steel bricks.  Cows graze in nearby pastures, attending to their grace, and caring for their calves.

Small reward, but open season for flint, bow and arrow, or wood for fire.  Kindling now lit, coals glowing, sparks fly up.  Rusted bicycle is warmed by the flames.  What sundry repast is given to shells?  Sand, a dry river, has no tides and does not wax or wane like the moon.

Ask your priest, does God watch each child, watch as tears fall from angel's eyes, watch over each poor or homeless man, bless each meal, and keep us safe from harm?  Mix a potion, and drink it dry, that will give your eye a new insight into love, work, and death.  Symbols are the meat of religion, dogma a stepping stone, for the prophets work their pleasant and dusty miracles in the search for a better and stronger foundation.

But walk past these articles of faith without conflict, for each will agree we seek something.  Truth is known, and differences cannot change facts, but will exist, opinions, beliefs, and faith give motion to the petrified.

It is into this story that time takes us, and strangely, time as it is known to us is not complete.  No ray takes corners, and the jarring inflexibility of modern enterprise gives testimony to the fact that the model of time is not finished.  Only in a truly free society could it ever be, for presently there are too many dead ends and compromised principles.  As a physical principle, time is related to energy and mass, and is ethereal and tenuous.  As a function, a tool of man, time will clatter on, broken clocks its only true measure, but will hopefully not be an idol forever.

Locked closets full of masks and cloaks, do not bend for idolatry.  The rusted wires and switches on the machines of fate cannot stand for destiny, give us our measure.  Fortunes lost and swearing at concrete blocks, our potion is sweet.  Rusted bicycle now junk, walk instead.  Where, is the question, where will work the polished and oiled aluminum wheels of industry?

Where is compromise, its addendum, its dry measure of worth?  Promise to tomorrow its bread, its wine and roses, such as we can gather and share, likelihood giving us the way to a playground, a paradise, or a police state, frankly given, and seldom agreed to in practice.

Exercise your rights, the fleet of foot will deliver their message back, and a pact written by sages will be drawn up and attended to.  All will sign.

The ripples in the water move outward, and slowly new ideas are taken into the fold.  People foreswear oversight, and passion results in endeavor.  What moves man to the collective good is good also, and none should be dismayed if evil is done.

In practical lessons are overt responses to regal import and overture.  Tear draperies from window and flood of light pours in.  Stand in nameless, wordless glory in the sunlight.  Love is done in timeless emotion, life a natural source of pleasant beauty.  Every feeling is a feeling of appreciation and comfort, security.

Seasons change and revolve like a waterwheel, spring a parent to white flower, a brother to sun and shadow, a sister to the breeze, and a daughter to the rain.  Summer glances at gems, and leaves untouched growth of young life, giving a livelihood to the violin string.  Fall strikes us red and golden, cloudy, and stroke of lightning foretelling heavy rain, wishes for compromise unfolding on a carpet of leaves.  But try as we might comes the winter, a white old man, talking of troubles he has had, and whispering down like snow.

Apparent to us is a gap, an unexplained blankness that opens up before us as we count the minutes to scare up a notion of this clever realm.  This gives us pause, though it is only a supplement to rigidity.  Think it through, it is the focus of debate.

Separate rooms, patches of austere cotton, left to cover after missing, loom still and not weaving any new cloth.  Into the web the fly falls, and is stuck.  Fear calls the approach of the spider.  Wheel into grain stores the baker, the oven, and matches for bread.  Wrap warm bread in cloth for lunch, the spider has his own meal.

Status of fly, position and consequence, and slip after stance for struggle and exit.  No sleight of hand will afford you freedom, but will heighten amazement, and bolster your reputation.

Building blocks give tailors to time, and we walk down paths in formal suits, never to return.  She feeds us our meals in darkness, and given a free hour, we can find the paper ordering the purchase of a shovel, to dig our way out.  No free lunch should you decide to participate in time as it stands; it will never give a handhold, and the only way is out.

Eye broken latch, and name for pet, or lucky dividends rip apparel.  Special place for working ghosts, chains bind hands and feet, and silent footsteps walk the halls of time.  New ax taken, fresh wood to chop for cooking fires, soup, and bread, and beef for supper.

What portion of bread is eaten by your children, and what for old gypsy?  Painted and still are the consequences of shadow.  There are always words for any living man, and build with blocks new towers, leaving space for door.  Hang crystal chimes.

Light pours through the trees, giving the perfect atmosphere for study, and after the last wave rolls in, our sandcastle may stand if buttressed and surrounded by a moat.

Why will afford no redemption, but will fire passion, compromise only if they give you free access to time's artifacts, if only to let you tour its museum.  But why is spoken of who and will inexorably lead to what.  But to whom am I speaking?  Someone on a road like me, and with a heavy pack

Always options, and rear children so they can make choices, theirs is the baker, the barber, the butcher.  Taken to opportunity, give back the tide of reason in small packages, wrapped in red ribbons.  What is known is held, and what is unknown loiters in possibilities.

New things wait for you who wander.

Priest

Black robes, howl at the moon, night's black tendrils intertwine.  Slip past Satan's scowl, and touch the hand of God.  It beats yours, aces queens, sevens, and portent infers, score apples or fresh milk.

Kneel and pray, the Lord listens, the last violin tunes to relative pitch of orchestra, bow to string, wait.  Angel sings hymn, her lonely voice butter on bread.  Lemons fall from tree, fielded ball, third out.

Sit and ponder, clatter of tongues, spilling out numbers.  Six, two, and five shake hands.  A falling out with gray, shattered pot, share daisies with hapless judge.

We and the animals growl, so prowl and root.  Track the swift footfall of prey, for we carry on, and the other side is a climb.  Kill, now or further on, for the teeth of your prey are your coins for eggs and bread.  Break not your mirror, you see?  Your guardian stands behind you, trading aces for steel.

Now, parishioner, pick a card.  (The deck is dropped in hat.)

The preacher asks, was it a deuce?  No?

He leans over and whispers into your ear, and he says, drive the ice cream truck to the knife forge.  Enter the front room.

He beckons you goodbye as you drive off.

At the forge you enter the front offices.  The secretary tells you, it will be just a moment.  After a short wait, she ushers you into the dagger's office.  The tall, thin, angular man sends the secretary back out.

You and the dagger look at each other.  He hands you a card, and winks at you.  It is the queen of spades, the one you picked.

How did he do that?  He must have had puppets, mirrors, trick wands.

The dagger gives you a gold coin, for the tithing.

Hidden spirit, smile at grace of woman in white.  She bows.  Her alabaster hand is a prostitute, holding shadows or turning key in latch, piano key.

White rabbit runs away.  You cannot steal from me, tackle jester, and paid no rent.

Dark hallway, you are lost.  Gentle voice says to follow, and takes your hand.  He guides you through the broken maze, and won't frighten you with pretensions of spirits, angels, or gods.  It is the hand of the priest.

He cautions you, up three steps, don't tread on me, and through the door.

In this room, light filters through the dust on a friendly repast.  There is a table and chairs.  We sit and eat our alphabet soup, talking of cherry pies at Easters past, and of chickens laying on Sundays.

His image is graven in shadows, and he is strangely silent, but after a while he tells you, through that door is light and wrmth and love; are you ready?

You shake your head.  I cannot go, you say, for He will not walk beside me.  The priest nods, but says, walk with me, I am his friend.

So you take the priest's hand and walk through the door...

...and scare the squirrels away, who go scampering off.  Love is there, and she lays naked in the sun by the spring on the hillside.  You have never seen the glory of her nude form.  She is full-breasted, and smiling.

Ask her, how did you come to shake the apple trees, why did you put away the jam, and how did you break the eggs?

Did I?  I wanted the love of the priest.

The priest answers.  All my love is not for you alone.  And better that I simply share my love with you.  For I too am somebody.

Now sit on my bed, for I have a story to tell you.  One time, a long time ago, in the forests of Brazil, in a small town near the edge of the forest, there was a monkey who raised peas and squash.

He was riding his mule home from the market one night, when up along the road they saw a light. The monkey was fearful, but attracted to the light, so the mule kept klop-klopping along the dirt road.

Soon they were near the source of the light, which was a pumpkin carved into a face, with a candle inside, a jack-o-lantern.  They stopped.  The face smiled up at them.

The monkey dismounted.  He approached the smiling face, and the jackass brayed loudly and bolted, heading up the road toward home.  The monkey cursed.

And what good, he thought, is an old pumpkin to me?  I cannot ride it home.  But he picked up the jack-o-lantern, blew out the candle, and carried it with him the mile or so home.

When he got home, the mule was waiting by his pen.

Why did you run? he asked the mule.  Why did you run away and leave me on the dark road?

The mule looked at him and shook his head.  I knew that evil spirits were about.  I wanted the safety of my home.

The monkey said, I should not feed you tonight.  I should leave you in the dark, hungry and cold.  Nevertheless, the monkey let the mule into his pen, and put grain in his trough.

He entered his small home.  His wife was cooking on the small stove.  The smell of peas and squash filled the small room.  His wife was a white rabbit with very soft fur.

He sat the jack-o-lantern on the table.  Look what I have found on the road.  She clapped together her soft paws with glee, and exclaimed, then we shall have pumpkin pie for lunch tomorrow!

The monkey frowned.

Cream in coffee, ocean shore, tree by spring, bowl of fruit on the table.  With these fish for spiders.  Next to pond, antlers held high, frame the sun.

Spill water, sugar in my oatmeal.  Do you syrup, necktie, watch without pancakes, suit, time?  No.  But crack in glass, strikes tree, and kite string.

So, ponderous hitchhiker, you left the safety of the red kitchen, stale warmth, for the road, the climb, the happy rocks.  From here you can see the crowd.

Plain white frock, can you cover the fragility, the antiquity, the falsehood?

She felt sweet, the kiss from the priest, he was not torn, nor rented, nor mist on a garden.

Her dreams were velvet, his touch a secret blossom.  White flowers he knew, he touched with his lips, old expression made new, but we would not consummate our love until the echoes of the ancient jest died.

No scholar of law, ins and outs escaping through holes in the rocks, but he knew justice.  Rights like birds in flight, no time for doubt or question, South for the winter.  Man like a babe in arms.

Oaken staff, honest and sturdy, scare up food for denizens of forest.  Walk on red dirt, catch rain in hat, and leaf conceal.  Clash quietly with blue cypress, tender fight.  Bucket lowered into well, bring out sun.

Now ghosts, and their friends.  And do concepts have friends also?  Can they scamper, puppet, and swoon?  Do ghosts cry?  Have veal for supper?  Do they kiss, and fuck, and drink 'till they fall over?

Instead of it candles, shall we touch on poison?  It is bitter, deadly, and black.

And now to the rocks, over which flows holy water, down cascading wet and silly, through and among rushes and stolen fish, into deep pool.  Cool water reflecting sunlight, and like a prisoner, growing improbably out of the center of the pond, is a single, ruby-red rose.  The peal of a bell arcs across the landscape from some distant church, or train, or firetruck.

And I, Satan, will walk on water to the rose, and cut it with black shears, my tail, and water it with my urine.

Or I, the angel of light, holy spirit, will smote the demon,, and hurt, water the rose with my tears, a petal one for urges.

Hello priest!  How could the mist have chained to a rock a true parishioner, captive and forlorn; a man, naked and bony?

His collar a promise, his robes, the roots of time, his cross, wooden ladder.

The man begs.  I have been captive for over a year.  Take me away from this steel dragon, he feeds me naught but worms and red wine, can you steal from him, chill his bones, burn his corn?

The priest answers, I cannot free you.  I can only help.  Here.

He hands the man a file with which to cut his chains.  This, he says, will release you from bondage.  Come to my church, enter the fold, then you can be free.

I cannot stay while you break locks, free your bones under light of fires, and walk on water.  But I will come tomorrow to see if you have gone, left this desolate arena.

He left.  Why thrust glass into fire?  Why bury ice?  Why keep sand in a bottle?

And this priest is never home, his ache is for clasp of earth, bottle imp, and chase intact.  No chains, only robes.

A rope is tied to a boat, to dock, to tock.  Smith works iron, not he.  The spirit is fashioned of clay, but blossoms in white, and razors in shadows of zeal.  Print.  Prance.  Prince.

But he sends no clown, covers not the mouth of Jonah, or Noah, or Samson, or Christ.  Let their words echo down the halls of man, taking shape in the doorways and closets, for adage.

He goes himself to where the naked man was kept, and finds empty chains.

The rose is gone, the pool filled with honey, but the bees did not carry it off.

Some image, a stare into buttonhole, had lowered the drawbridge and entered the orchard.  We shine, and look through the branches.

Don't scare the sudden joke.

Spurn Jester

No, the king was not crowned because of his royal wit, nor, as we know, because of his way with women.  Why I entertain for him when he could have twenty dancing girls is beyond the grasp of the common worker.  Not to disparage the exquisite beauty and grace of the queen, her royal highness.

But having been given this... this monumental honor: it is thus bestowed upon me to relate the best wishes of the entire kingdom which your majesty so justly relishes...

Crown thee, oh knight buffoon, your prickly candor not as careful as the rest.  Parting ways, can we share your secrets softly?  One is point nine and touch is flinch.  Prattle your backwards aphorisms.

Will you shine like a crooked penny, trading allegiances for purple patronage?  You stick nightly, but after rinses dropped and thrown away.  Let's cattle, let's primp and proper.  Little shaming and a thin willow switch.

Monarchs were boys once, was he full of crayfish and hot damns?  Did he trade his banana for cookies, did he fall and skin his knee, crying for mommy?  Did he give her grief when it was bedtime?

No sir, of course not, the king was a model child.  Never questioned his mother, the queen, and always ate hie veggies.  Listened to his tutors, wore his pajamas.  Never spoke unless spoken to, and always said please and thank you.  Was loved by his family and his kingdom as well.

Now he rules his loyal subjects with love and discipline.  His wisdom shines above us like the wise old owl.  He is knowing, and graceful, and fair, and just.  And he does not let his great age (underline great age) interfere with his leadership.

I am not the only one in admiration of him, all his knights, his court and servants, his maids and mistresses, his minions all, royal subjects, though dirty and unwashed, all work for him.  We are all beholden to his golden overhead, which shines above us.

We have all heard stories of the king's fair tolerance, his discipline in dispensing justice when it becomes necessary.

A few rolling heads is easiest, the least expensive solution to problems of wagging tongues and greedy fingers.  Tch tch at sight of blood, tsk tsk ye hungry.  Lets stamp them with a blood red t, for thieves.  Take not from the king what the king has taken.

No one shall talk ill of the sun, for the sun has gifts aplenty for the royal court.  No bitter tart shall slander its shining reputation with false words of accusation.  No greedy and envious ruffian shall words of scuffling form.  Be advised to trade only with those who bear the king's seal.  Skillful craftsmen and honorable entrepreneurs, where your coin is a measure of quality, not quantity.  Come share with the lion, not with the lamb.  Why we have a hundred measures of grain in store for your every one.  Dicker not with grubby merchants with a handful of dirty rice.  We have a cache piled skyward.

Sons and daughters of the royal blood, step gently across the cantankerous divide, mockers of high station, and receive the blessing of the robed and haloed priest.  Lay down your sticks and stones, briefly put away, for absolution and forgiveness. His holy glory in the sanctity of gold, he watches carefully over his cattle.

After all, jesters are pawns in a larger comedic struggle, but we are all bound by our words.  Underneath a question, there are always a few slugs.  So like a petite swan, turn your nose up (underline up) at the stench of the rabble.

Jokes, he swears, are like ice cubes on a hot day.  Sadly for him only penguins know it.  Look what your mudslinging hath wrought.  But your words are slippery as eels.

Put it to the test!  Silly man with sillier hat, what sense can we make of your practiced stupor?

Oh, sure and swarthy of step, I speak as a humble servant to your golden and precious time.  The great weight of your busy agenda is unimaginable to such a prattling misanthrope such as myself.  And guests tonight I imagine; barons, or lords, the princess and the royal knights.  Roll out the red carpet!  This gracious opportunity you have given me, these moments I will always remember.  Allow me to swear this minute to your mighty grace.  And now I must stumble off to poorer and lesser realms.  I must humbly bid thee his utmost grace and high appreciation to your every action.  May the blessings and treasures of light shine in your deeds and spirit, and may you be well throughout your day.

Lunch

Moans and groans, wail into the night.  What am I given to make the grumbling go away?  Just a little upset, douse black butterflies with warm milk.  Cost all portions, just as done as black and sorry.

You brag about bologna, you do.  You just say you wanna monkey, your critters poke and roam. You with the dogbone, you with the razor.  Brat, oh just as borrowed and buddied as bottled.  Didn't you whisker, didn't you fort?  Drop it on an antbed, good for the winter.

Hock all your spiders for another cold lunch.  You didn't, I didn't catch a lot.  Snippery and miffed by one half hour.  Cancel that order for coffee.  Mustard or mayo?

Lunch was just splendid, and didn't you just swoon (underline swoon) for the strawberry crepes?  Your kindness does not go unappreciated, it's just that I'm feeling a little bit ill.  Oh, yes, I too (underline too) liked the sugar-cane soup.  And the honey and yams were delicious.

I brought you some cake, didn't you order?  I'm a lucky man, a very lucky man.  Taste more butter, no, you don't chew.  You show me your chocolate, I'll show you mine.

Itsa pressed lemon, she!  Someone paid more than they thought for their basting.  I guess it was proper, yes.  But didn't you mingle with sweat?  Yeah, sharp, and yeah, grab plenty.  Stand at enrapture and golden.

Delicate lace tablecloth and fine china, sterling silver tableware.  Sure of luxury, recipe of swears.  One chair up, and three chairs apart.  Bite into tender black steak.

Delicate aroma of flowers drifts up from field of scattered hues, lay on blanket and stare up at sky.

Tried bottle of wine, she said no.  Fine cheese, expensive caviar, no again.  Tried to kiss her, held her hand, picked flowers, no, no, no!

Makes you wonder when you see those clouds go by how many men have offered her lunch and have blown away on sky-blue breezes.

How many pennies could you eat?  How many tacks, how many nails?  Why refuse because it's indigestible?  We have plenty of chemistry for you to eat.  Red is for polish and blue is for box.  I bopped, you bopped over.

In punches are twisted fruity.  Chapel on a hill, real bread for sacrament.  Boast again, boast again, bottle or bone.  Don't just apple that, sweet a lot of the time.

No necker drinking, no slow caresses consuming milk of spinster timing.  Spoon up syrupy, draught a part of platter for the tinkling.  Stroke the dinner bell softly, and not a word for the drooling.  Hearts of jackal, hearts of lamb, you know the recipe.

Slap 'er on the grill baby, jokes about football, corny July.  Burn the steak, black and skeeter, show me your fences, show me your sauce.  Put the buns in the toaster, don't need the flash.  In all fairness to the cow, we grinned a lot.

it's easy to be skeptical when the soup du jour is 30 weight motor oil.  They bring us some bread, old crusts hard as rock.  Main course; skinny rubber chicken braised in linseed oil.  Fake plastic carrots, newspaper mush, and irradiated mushrooms.  For dessert, a tray of wax fruit.

You see, I see, how much to eat.  Tons, and roads, minions for the stuffing.  Cold, or hot, just as easily done.  You heard the hymn, who made the offering?

Made up funny, painted bold acrylic.  All wigs and several folded masks, bowled over, screech staccato laughter.  Neon perfume, rainbow robes and hoods.  Say, is it gases?  With a click, does it ended?

Dines batter romping.  You coast, I coast, over gray, over clumping.  Chatter, tsking clobber.  Bray hunger, we'll toast gay.

Old ritual chant, say grace.  Now it is time to fight for food, bloodlust inquire.  Driven and angry, muscle craft a drone.  We hang chintzy for our supper.

Tattering struggle, hard bitter strain hack at what is left of hoarder.  Wrestle with the notion that none is overdone.  Win or lose, you'll turn up a dead man.  Shatter bank, shatter old tome.

Red fever pitch, desperation.  Now it is night, killing is darkness' prey.  All across the moon, dog eat dog.  A blood red sun-up is lunch.

Hot and steamy, pepper in your stew.  Slide and slip a fire in my hearth.  Handy with the pinkest, rump roast for the slathering.  Warm naked aroma, baked in seamy compromises.

Sly oyster repast, dozen, no pearl.  Easy, man, try again tomorrow.  For score, and seventeen years old.  Wine at the passing of the rices.

Could I see a menu, dear rabbit?  You'll cost yourself a tip if you frown that way.  We want the whole thing.  Could you bring us some margarine?

Oh, it just goes on and on.  When will it be over?  The luncheon is just tidbits, but this speaker!  I gave, I gave, already.  Isn't it time to eat, yet?

Slow train came from across the river.  Time wound down as pains murmured in my stomach.  Promises, promises, when's twelve o'clock?  I'd walk a mile for a roasted camel.

Minute hand crawls toward straight-up noon.  Clatter of bell, noisy echoes down crowded halls.  White hat, costs fifty cents.  Skip breakfast, suffer through English.

Predictably so, and not a moment too soon, lunch is as certain as anything.  Taxes, death and lunch, you groan.  But what if it didn't happen?  What if you never ate again?

Hide's parameter, certain chop of butcher.  Red eluding, more and more green.  Drink, we're water just as any; any wildcat, any crow.  Yes, and tomorrow's just as sure as two plus two.

Let the chafing squeal, let the crush of moments drive every last bone past cracking.  Stolen (underline stolen) are the wheat's tenderings.  Cheap ham, free eggs.

All you can eat, way past bursting.  Bring me more pork chops, bring me more bread!  How can any man eat so much mashed potatoes?  How can anybody put away that many pies?

For hours and hours, stuffing his gullet, it just goes on and on.  Raise the flag on the table, call for another round.  I've never seen, who could've guessed?  No, but we knew.

At the end, at the finale, he never showed any shame.  Just reached for his wallet and pulled out a hundred.  He didn't leave a tip.

If you had just one wish, what would that one wish be?

Supple to Luck

Fleeting glimpse of shaded ore, knee-deep in snow, reap cherries from white tree.  Unbuckle wet traces, stir briskly, and sly in oven.

Don't bone over sixty oars, man the chant as steeple bells, roast beef for supper once, twice, a third time, and rain.  Placed as a stance, lean rear up, and watch over trees, they grow.  Plant deer antlers, bony sprouts.

Nix on toggle, preen at wind over cogs, tickle djinn.  Takers afire, lapse into storied fugue, flaunt yellow dress on starers.

Anger, spoon up ice cream, wear silly hat, jump hurdles as practice, and sit on mountain.  Thin as helium, rise and turn to ghost, haunt shuttered windows.  Turn gray and fall to earth like snow.

Plan call keening for mate, fall as trees under axes, trip on clutter.  Arrest tigers for razor teeth, or snake for hiss.  Claw at breeze, clench fists, roar at ocean.

Rest in fire, slip away as pausing cats rip at yarn, sharpen claws.  Spool of shadows, ripen fruit and skills upon roof, hammer one nail.

Stiff drink, ice and pick, slough off nightmares as if cotton on cut, rattle knives like skeletons.  Scales measure pendulous wood, craft works from cedar, ruler of generative depth.

Hopeful quartz, break into splinters poison apple, sleep frozen snow dreams, hammer lodestone 'till iron pail awakens.

Bells peal at lowing cows.  Answered infernal pockets, rope ties rung to ring, low toll of cinders.

Crusted scuttle, driftwood wash to shore, but ample tricks for dancers pounce and scoff.  Stance is speculative, but pinion of ocean, like a redbird on marsh, the axis of slant, petrified leap.

Impostors, hop freight train, ride with the clatter of wheels on tracks, the sound of half-remembered doorways, the engine of lives lost, broken and in pieces in the hallway, trip over clutch.

Posting shadows, return aroma to flower, or wheel up turn, corner boxes, and pound of hammer.  Next is purchase, stealing rent for ounces of lead, or feathers for policemen, and snake up ladder dancing pony.

Slink off worst sparing dagger, slope tired, and run of taken syrup stone.  Lamp and specter shone after trail, trot or lope to spring.  Prison window spells potion, pie or pudding stolen at gunpoint.

Grab sand, listing grains on sheets of scrap paper, cancel impress.  Curls of smoke rise, find and register, chiseled in granite.  Yesterdays fall into todays like an old ladder precariously balanced.

Paper storm, fix on practice, plan for rope, dance at station, and stolen plank.  Work for nest-egg, pranks friction elope, stand on corner with blue balloons.

Drown bucket, spill on ground, water like a river, groan well or toss in dime, wheel up spring, drawn, posted, and plucked.  Waterwheel, turn and grind corn, make meal, poke fun at bread, make fiction kind.

The song of angels' behest rings like hollow chimes, fleeting and played by the breezes.  Beggars, elope, fish for tales with thin cotton thread, words for bait.

Echo, frail, white flame, float and borrow from butterfly, and sing steel bells, letters like flame curl from broken logs.  Stitch amends to needle, rope has sad words for well, beer hides from bottle.  Fold still at black iron.

Wire untold cast shadows from stain, tune piano, hiding pedals and keys, hammer strike ebony note, and mute with cloth.

Peek at runner, cloud in race, purr thunder, rain in kettle, douse fire.  Shatter glass keys, hard candy for locks, clocks, tear black cotton, moths in closet, pester mouse.

Stir in sugar, smile, try package, turn flapjack, pour syrup, slant at griddle.  Score bull's-eye, trip walking man, under shout of skinned rabbit.  Grain of rice, lost in field, hip-deep.

Right angle, part of square, diagonal to hexagon, place in circle, pi, nestle star, fleet of degree, pendulum ticks out angles, incremental degrees in flux and motion.  Pendulum, graduate inertia, post-momentous at upwards swing, stand still at noon.

Alarm does not ring, and all clocks are dead, fallen to guns, war over tock, while energy seeps, and cries over matter, sun sets and rises in the standstill of commerce.

Confusion, swear at dust, chain death to agony, rust in jumble, high numbers and fragments of images, collide like sheets of wind, rumble and hunger.

Soup and bread, its excess for prisoner, locked away, nourish escape, steak and potatoes, nourish capture, gun, cement, and bars.

Stern visage, mirrored in economy and sacrifice, look into coffers, frown on rabbit's hutch, leak into the town's dynamic interlude.  Stand over desk, crumple paper, pipe shout.  Stand on chair and whisper into hard drive, sample popcorn and watch commercials.

Stacked in boxes in endless hallways are folded the receipts of tomorrows enterprise.  Remote are the rolling passageways of the innovative.  Stand off brick, or stroll amongst the statues of industry, dance intrepid.

The leaping tiger's stance is shifting, and industry's hard questions point to statues of past oppression.  Cardinal interests walk apart from artifacts of yesterday's regress.  All laughter echoes past, and all walks are through the sticks and stones of hardship.

Still are the swords and axes of hate.  Held together with wire and paste, the cogs and levers of prejudice and hypocrisy rust and fall to the ground.  Each birth revives the passion for truth and justice.

Slow the hand of oppression, snared fox, hold to breast phones and presses.  Speak of wheel, smile at iron jaws of trap, frown at vulture.  Drink from crystal pool with bear and cougar.

The blade of hatred cuts arbitrarily; see it in the distance, walk around.  The fallen spectacle is lifted by cranes and loaded on trains; don't turn your back.  Wait until all are gone, then back away.  The birds are the first to leave, find them.

Dirt road through forest winds through hills and trees, wear a tie.  Nude flowers stand next to furrows.  Wander priest and find god in the leaves, the green jester who plants seeds in rows, forest just a garden watered by his tears.

At the covering dusk, stand in deep shadows 'till mirrors reverse; look down well.  Join birds for a congress of flight, stare down angels.  Howl with wolves.

Rewired apparitions, haunt yesterdays, as the breath of dragons, pass through empty houses, cold specter, hand of shadow.

Plant roses in rows, cut and lay on grave, spare blossoms whose scent is lost, escape.  End of commerce like a precipice, death of dollar, where is mirrored man? Five minutes late to work, stand on stack of silver, saw in closet, register ring while clock reads noon and felon is loose.

Cat's growl and swear at dark tree, tempo broken like acorns underfoot, badger cuss at fish, flint and fire, burn and ash.  Spoken words spill and flaw, open satchel on dirt, under proud flag.

Hand on knee, luck or prayer, sample broth, sip on tea.  Slow legend, open scroll, throw in fire.  Time winds like a toy, to clatter and walk on two feet, add flour to pie crust.

Mail for ridden, ripped in shadow of moonlight, they call for you afterwards.  Approach nightly one wasp for honeybees, or better, flower.  Comprehend scent, skirt thistle, approach sweet rose.

High in spacious satchel heirlooms passed down through generations, they open closets long closed to view.  Find in old rubric tender tears and touch of hand, they call you to your birthright.

Walking down lanes in old neighborhoods on a sunny day, dreams rest in houses like crows in a tree, waiting for their moment for flight.

Years will pass, and will hold out to you, golden moments; embrace them.  Make them yours, for each will be a memory.  When night closes in, tired and misty, you will need them for your scrapbook.

They play like puppies in the open field of your aspirations, as men wind clocks and build with blocks.

Time gives back the objects of pride, take them and keep them for show-and-tell.  When people ask about shadow, turn on lamp.

They will find you, and if their offerings are spare, swear at mailbox.

Trade in tempo, open house for ghosts, drum beats drop, spin melody, and harmony will weave itself from reeds that sway on riverbanks.  Opened shutters so sunlight spills in if and dance around the wells of tradition.

Open book and read look closely at illustrations, schematics of path, a blueprint for destiny, the dogs will read it with you; let them.  Their noses find footsteps ahead of you; follow behind, they bark at intruders.

Their voices speak to clear water, as vines cover rocks, so we cover fate.  The thieves have no hands, and the boxers sit blindfold it in their corners.  Walk along your chosen path, the arms of tomorrow's sunlight will embrace you.

Earthly Primrose

I trance all stern further.  My leaf is ashes, but all is rent.  Smile, I say, but you frown.

Some sample the fruit.  Some laugh at crow.  Some apple core, in the brig.  Donuts for sale.

One prince died, and left interred a mouse.

I cried for life, the libertine, a bottle, and furthermore, a couch.  Imprison the candle, stew, not the maiden.  And pry at door, because in mystic tries are fondle and peer, so lifter.

Do axle, stern and bother, but wheel for more, not lever, or wedge, or standard, but boor.  All gearshift, recompense, of pledges, not ledger, but enter, not gift, or presage, or plunder, and apple, not blunder.

Spare nickel, for ale, not stew, and I wonder, did oldster relax in sunder, saunter, did he feel for Mr. Wheel, in separate rooms?

Spry he flaunted, but sly he stepped up, and settled on stretches, not of puddles, but of wind, and did he trounce, and pester, and lift an ox?

I tried, but failed, but stroke me not.

One cares not for stewed apples.  One cries out, appeal for reason, stale tears, once accordingly.

Breath of stare, one piece, of night.  Break out liquor, after gin, and bourbon, and tonic water plays and broke, fix it.

Bushy tail, foundling, torment, and alter piece.  Not you fork, but sandwich, bread, meat, and cheese.  Mayo.  And lettuce and tomato, should you care to.

Open to luck, and hence, to open stars, all breath, mums the word.  Dirty flower, or shovel, all intaken breath, but yawn, all for hidden wind, open flower or ghostly cloth, but for priest in robes.

Abandon fruit, no, not ever, for we are but raisins thus.

Scream on wind, carried away.  Not pestle, or mortar or shell, or death of prisoner.  But ribbon, of hoarder, of prince, of Saturday, of hopeful hand not given, of stale imprint.

Some that, hoping, given away, lucky, to tears.  Smart, but resting, on play of words, all fears, abandon, but wheeling forth, on stair, on balcony, prepare for boorish, son.

Scale, or climb that great rock, 'tis other words.

Trick, to blunder, open, but long, and winded, for mist is but a feather, a rose, a garden.  And peace, but a mile, yes, we will, I do, I say, but good job, banks, press on philanderer, don't broke, wonder not, if, my money I keep.

You, open hearth, spell chocolate, eat fire, cook my puddin', and you, raisin candy, get eaten by my children.  But baffles, don't open, now shut, your grave interred in iron wince.

Hopeful grow, my tin of sardines, now hence, but wonder, if love were for docs, I'd hope for better, joking and different, but over a pair, of aces, you bet, and scare pretty leaf.

Slept in roses, feathers, cane for fishing pole, or gone I give it another, old people, worth, another, breast, and chicken, but eggs don't, I do, break or crack them, entwine.

Spell things, with a "T".  Spell purse, a "P" to my clever clasp.  Spill water, on dishes, or other carpet, but floor, and wind, and songless.

Use not overture, for crying is allowed, and reason for pleasure, not hence, but afterwards, and over dale and hills of brother, I smile.

Open pleasure, I rinse of dog, and wince, for there I ply my trade.  Tape, I make the sticky stuff, I plead with dishes, steer the fork, abandon, spoon the breakfast, and stair for door.

Antelope rain, more to one than another, likened to apple trees, followed in open beauty, for naught but jerky, somebody's idea of fun, a cretin, perhaps.

Awful in agreement, ideas spill out, breaking locks, and sword in hand, I die of old age.

And older, the stain, perhaps, of somebody's heart, a pillow, I address thee, no plenty, over log and harbor, for tests of reason.  No fill, empty perhaps, but exertion, or plunder, tests.  An "A".  "B" for you.  "C".

Oranges, the fruit of gods, I spill poison, but myth will come under strain, for eyeglasses, I see through.  Will us onward, therefore, and quell or quench wisdom.

Sunder forth, onward therefore, and through the day.  For glasses hold drink, and reap a harvest, old sun.  Long steps, a pace, about three, for next, I wonder.  Difficult, yes.  But under welcome mat is key, and under it, a mote, a seed, flower therefore.  Paste cookies, and through that a slanted spoon, but wonder, wish, apern, and real, open, and candle wax.

But never, if.  Always, because.  And scarcely is wry, but never plus or minus some, the always, the trial, the jury, hung.

Plot out fashion, post-industrial madness, spoken to, by breathe, layer cake, and angel food.

Spoken by breath, posting cups of coffee, as words will have lists, of breath, of cane fishing, of cream and sugar, and of Christmas morn.

Or glasses.  You need glasses to read them.

The cups of coffee.  The nest.  And each morning it's off to work, for wrestle me not.  I car.  I push.  I there.  I swim.  I work at the pool.

And pool tables next, clack, the break.  And sticks, and stones, and velvet green.  A sturdy book, and we are on slate.  Clack, click, fump.  A pocket.  Trick.  On to stick.  Chalk.

Our pool table is leaking.  A pail underneath, therefore.  But, on its feet, and waiting for its balls, underneath, and a special on greens.

Sunny day, oh blow away the clouds, we next to them have, every right, and blue sky, and follow it with fields of daisies.

What mystery, next, unfolds.  And I wonder for never in life is also paired.  I swear.

Her path through jungle undergrowth clear, her days all stolen, her nights given back as contributions to African empires, like ebony, a drum on which beats asking rhythms given to myth or moth clear of candle not spoken.

Red flower, all dazed, and spoken with, wire shadows from shoeboxes, all broken, and tilled under, jest in closets, from one to another, and compelled dark and crested, from stolen void.

Grapefruit list no consequence, no shadow, fruitful but nailed to wall, wanted, dead or alive, fleeting, sugar fit to be tied with bows and ribbons of cane syrup, or hop on one foot with serrated spoon.

  Paint us adder black for inner pocket.     Glimpse cat use poison

    out stain, four river pine, our glues giving open luck tatter.

Chalk diction powder   next fiction

   glass peal shard    don't tint slanted

and mutt is rabid    fur chuckles sour

     Stir, don't cut grilled rabbit, tho' stale dough

   won't slant out target, forget word.    Work week

       for penny, eye shadow.

      Mist ol' parson, need experienced help, graveyard

  shift, old person loan only need apply.

Stork, never chicken, but graceful flight over clouds carry baby to mother, and swan, mirror over water and glide with son in wake, swear by trees and acorns alike that never worn, your scent be petals' reflection.

Sworn to apple's casket, don't crutches walk on street, grain up wooden walls, and tumble grail on ice floe?  Shale and spike, could doors relent, and share fallen logs?  Bus token on floor could be oaken cask, if wine were silver ore, and oranges atom's be changed to coal.

Cheery owl, stand on branch with eyes toward prey, don't open or close trapdoors without latch unrusted, or swoop down on mouse through thorny brush, start fires with keen sense of smell, or even land and dance.

Blindfold, do not listen, I am bound, but without cane, to donkey's stairway, secrets whispered at its top, at its bottom, dark shadows, and a well of silence, and tie it in back, won't you pregnant mouse.

Futures made of gold ore, and rough and rocky diamonds, stand like a man, and flowers fall, but citrus peel to root fallen branch, leaves and scattered dirt.  Blackboard list fossils ancient and found in riverbed, at the outset; but with corn do musket, with husk do hopes political, erudite grain must proper to see, read will with tears in eyes, for your shadow drops like stone.

Buck knife open on dogsled, we follow huskies through white wilderness, their breath is snow to snowmen, parched but ridden, over lakes frozen thick and pine hollows.

Speak of cinders after sun-up, after fire's soup has looked at frozen, and broken to low glow.  Red there, on dirt and rock, we arm our coffee.  Snowmen watch from the distance.

Rabbit scampers over snow, thought in muscle, if spark in eye kept, through brush, trees lean over cotton, birds dance like puppet's song, where she went trail and tracks islands in ocean of sight.

If she is warm, thick robes and blankets, and furs, best cover and sworn, peer through trees for squirrels and minks, spoon work.  Blue mittens, wool, and socks, warm thrust of life, kindness like apparel, cookie work, sink for treasure.

Three tine fork for lobster, lemon butter in cup, spear in corner, never walk in unexpectedly, but for price of spool, get needle, thread, and thimble.  Side of beef on hook, close or frozen, blue shift iced and wooden fence, spare soak or wretched phrase, made of lead,.

Piston locked and rivet coaxed or steel, three nickles, a quarter, six pennies in handbag, forty-six cents for gum, to tie engine to barbell, arms.

Balance under tree, big gift, blue wrapping and green bows, the four year-old up before dawn, before mom and dad have cracked open eyes, and have warmed their frozen snores, torn blue paper on floor, heavy, a jackhammer.  The tag, "work, son."

The parrot on her perch whistles bluntly, and says, "What's the score?"  I preen, like beetles and blessings over bread, only in message, sore muscles, hammer away, another chunk of concrete, throw in truck, we fix sidewalk, driveway, road.

Only mule for sweet carrot, build a rock, quartz, or granite, or salt for card game.  Pretzels, therefore.  Ace of clubs, struck eight, clock on mantle ticks thrice, while grass grows.  Shoulder to wall, push house over one foot.  Bluff.

Scat me three clacks, scratch on cement, brick on break, for water, skull, or blood.  Poke on ax, ton of anthracite, burn slow, roast bull, split log and horn pudding.  Knock toggle out, brakes over stoke troll upper coddle post.

Cattle walk on path by cliff, lowing, actual spent for pastures heavy green.

Gem, cracked spectrum, return yellow light to facet of crystal, moor blue to pier, rowboat built of topaz, oar of absinthe, three angles reflect glowing rays on orange fruit.

Light wind rake fallen pieces, lucid blades and yellow rope to hitch.  Smile amber heart, wean flash of prism, mirrored drops of spring water, cold rubies fate.  Sixty-four diamonds in well bucket, mix well, add sugar.

Pin, necklace, earring, bracelet, watch, all to subtle glimpse of covet ring, next privvy to luck, camera flash and lit every stone, wedding cake.

Tie clasp and diamond cufflinks, holding to sharp every linen fold, monkey on branch,  Glass cage won't release, under pry, stole proper trick to open.

Rock candy swizzle in gin, crystal bottle.  Ray escapes crystal lock, key broken on floor. Shards please exude white light, and to elude, next rhythm place for geode.

Salt purse, all open stares.  Champagne therein, plus apple in window, twist of lemon or olive, don't exert paste.  Cheap paper tux.

Grinding wheel, chisel, your work is pricey, hold still for nothing, steal.

          Broomsticks at a slant

   ax to door for kindling

             battered raft on rapids

     lock wooden gate

         chair in splinters

    old wooden cart, hay, oak wheels, axle

          tree split by lightning

    wooden balls and mallets

            pine stump, green moss

       box

          four-poster bed

     bureau with dusty mirror

          foot bridge over stream in forest

    knick-knacks on shelves

        toy boxes, treasure chests

   harness and yoke

           old shack on seashore

    Shovel, rake, and pitchfork

       unsteady tables with wooden dishes

dutch shoes and windmills

          rowboats and canoes, paddle

Without bread, haste and certain fluctuant pose a reprimand, curtains, cover window, to shut out light, but open, illuminate the dust as well as the room.  The curtains are blue, and rare is their occupation to wide, for a peek reveals all that is necessary, no criminal outside, the saints are with us.

But fling them wide, and see the road that passes our gate, the grasses deep, and trees whose roots know depth.  Curtains, like water, like bones, like passion, not to stain.

If taken down, for wash, day spills in, a melody, singing sweetly, till rose at sunset, and starry sky at night, up comes the sun, dry and clean, hang them up again.

Close them, for there comes a time to every man when he would be sure, secure from prying eyes, his privacy remote from the things distant, at home, never questioned...

And open them again, because never is there willingness without illumination, and cause is just with clear view, and clarity is of open air, and open window, fresh air, door too, and let the breeze sift through, offer its hand, slip through shadows, and sort out sane from incomprehensible.

Fair play, duress, fail to plan, ordinate workhorse, or broke sawhorse, saw into sections, green fruit.  Spill apron poor flux, nap for honey, stamp raised or flute to lips, step over remnants.

Parched crawl on sand, rocks spider lint presser, loom per thirsty, approach green oasis.  Word is planet, mustard con, aper prints on dune, for insect, once tern ants.

Peppermint stick, silly ants, squirrel nuts away, as landed craft still on morning, plant in furrows.  Cruel tides jest with milky fate, pull grown tantrum from hat, and stare at argument's teeth.

Worth, like chalk, scare poses flat forlorn and preen with corn, dull knives wicked, and fail mire thick.  Almost wind, and sheer cliffs beckon, but vantage is masked, to leave in bundles all looks elide.

Peer at window, at door, at hallway and stair, for sudden crisp allusion to primp, for clear view on stain, or better yet, for depth of placement, to wean forward prance.

Tip, on shame and cleft in package, lean, or balanced, step upon stones, do not touch.

Tracker's lance, fur gathered at bowl, don't impinge on traffic, or noisy tock, don't appear as a wince, or clown.

Pure as cotton, silk wrapped spun egg, rail on pudding for joke, press shirts fall open stale prison.

Hiss at pelts, for stones and madness alike will properly boil, will jump and jury until breath scorned is golden brown.  And bell rings, ting!

Put all on back, package, breath, and silk, and carry with person rung, up ladder, till stolen glances tarry, and merit stands free from ambition, move, and merit follows.

Leads, and cannot follow, upon hot springs will calcium snow, and edifice regards as face, pull of remorse.  Leads, following therefore, and follows not, as appears to stamps impeachment.

Toil at corn, and print of demon, won't cloud at reason, integrity maintained.  Won't callow or foot, or scale, rinse, or open.  Will demand, reply, shelf, rain, or stand.  Ply trades if magic, and steal kisses like candy.

Rested, I rode night's horses, plowed rant, and rhymes to ponds to fish, and look at reflections.  Well, scurry, firth and forage prey at pauper's scale, stand like building for inspection, soil.

Jerk and pull out plugs, so ash trees will sap flow daily, will pronounce stern and bow, a vessel not paid double for ration.

Brother, if I shirk apples, not ripe, and if denied refuge, bother, no peasant peal of silver alloy will apply.  Shadows, even, trip on traps of winged hawk.

Peace at hand, and she, my earthly primrose, walks without stain on shackled dirt.  Knows no reaper, and proper, burns slowly, not wicked or life.

And pieces fall surely, out of place, but from hands to soil, and rest attuned to magic.  Forth apply, and find upended shallow streams.

Dreams of running pilgrims, turkey, roast suckling pig, and corn will follow that with truth.  Forever is daily thanks our blessing, straw hat.

And turn, not on jester, into winds, to see and not to rant, to quieten hallowed woods, for the birds' chatter is given, but never without shadows.

But turn back and smile, if given that water is frightened, so water will draw up from well, and rankled, will story paints and linen.

Tell us why.

Twilit Briar

Curl of tender leaf, lay up from wicked twist of wood.  Was a coddled space of air that snuck by the rabbit.  Winnowing quandary logs, trail at, scratch at thick.  Down from rump, all down the spindle.  One Og, to ol' dang.

Still of blood on thorn, cramp against, scale ought crane song dent, sweet peel trance, ail matter.

Trail down land snitch, while pop cane brought stain nod, greet your long yawn, in gaining, gain a lot more.  Bray alter cancer, bray at marsh and loom, until drop lick cain't pull hang.

Banter your proses toon and big, load ladles, bend batter off critter fork.  Wean, tail, wean a gag louder than durn.  Pitch of scream skank fisher at two.

Brain dawdle, snigger ream and tanager, cheat yellow on prayer boot, sit stall.  Woeing over ladder up snake.  Keeling over groggy motors.  Booing at grab bags of sticks.  Bail, bail, bail.

Oh, jam, Jill and Jack can scamper out of green sole snake, can down, dog owes me three, wood bright stick along skirt.  Odor ask Kong, weed tinder, teal nagging prig.

Patter on the back, as creeding bollux ranks smatter spoon.  Dire breed of kilt mangle mesh of trestles.

Ogre lock throne, bank atcha brown down town.  Your word is as good as God, sheer locks potty to the beak moon.  Po' dandy brewed, chit lager dig, rag, rag, rag.

Your shine is the shine of the log, as great as supper was, agin' I growl out fierce moan.  Ditty brewed? Ditty longa jig, our bride skits out balloons.

De' string ran down, ran down, ran down all fire, we kitten pigtail oaken willow, saloon, saloon, saloon.

Attar don fruit, cheer chain sliver print chime, oh, chigger, wean cats down.  Dust cackle down, grab gaggle, sweet Bernice axing ridder for two.  Wanna, wanna, wanna?  Thee bribes, sow liquor lamb.  Pox enter, drat bushing agog, no, petunia.  Leap outward, over sullen Alice.  Beat down bog, camp rice inward, further and further rope.

Pertaining to the bleed, bat; ching, ching, ching.  Rigging grin, tap shoe for whence goeth gongs? Indy logged, or outs de' room, vellum lock seek bored swam, light chess magnet.  Clock drop jaw atcha too.

You broom, you sweep up rat.  Ding my durn and ain't my own short.  Belt word high sot.  You giggle.  You grope for great.  Sallow ought set its moon.

In teepee strong, wheel, chains, oxtooth, hairbrush.  Ladder we down, baby all kidders are nix, balloon, balloon, balloon.

Sleek and slit quandary, and sticker and stilt all dote.  I can walk over crutch, I can cut down cane.  Proper pots, brandy bribes, cig cinders, stony stops, pepper prudes, dies dickering, mini mages, trickers tawdry, ogre oxen, bad boozers, gabby gloat, hoppy hoaxes, lippy lugs, nippy knocks.

Derringer, sand me a bright shine.  Reap me a wrong meal.  Dent me a long gale.  Boy Adam, eat me an apple back.  Rub me a long tweet.  Ring me a cold swine.  Beat poet, share two per cog.  Drink for raping dune.  Bait stick like tweed.

In a dram there are three mickeys, song, song, song.  Jay dill, bollixed on brigand, left Allah, the wot brung off.  Twitter wunna crib, wunna long, long day, my look.

Into a trap out of turn, in maze ensnare if moment is just thong.  Riddle beast, along and, too, poses.  Daft addle, wrench toggle cringe, and dad, rope my baloney.  Blossom wild net, weeds, weeds, weeds, sting and stutter all tries.  I bulge better, creed and stock wool fish.

Needle stickler bode, grapple thistle archly of tune, scarecrow.  Bond loom groove outta congerie, grown up, grown off trig.  Nailed like a groom, pinned up like a cobbler's sash, stark, start, stark.

Slither is S to the stone mansion, but around to the right and back to rooty loam.  Wide berth to snicker, and gone to field batter stranger.  Across a quail nightingale, board all the underdogs asunder.  Ouch!  Itta chased little soap.  Tree at, tree left town.

Do rude pants rig sallow? Do greed hatch whittle lack brown? Is grab gibber? Do graft goat beer as a jam?

Sticky slog tuck me under, bad as bad doom, gale fly hair romp, and piddle me truck, damn cramp to lifeless.  Garish roar swallow, hard as a marble, and wash down hemlock battle.

Babble, breed up Jills, breed up Rays and Randys onward.  Jewel up your digs, and dampen down your heys.  You are dog's end, you are fly's butter.  Breed, breed, breed.

Slattern, dig your Scotch Prussian.  Down, down the rabbit hole, to the big up big.   Did you drink a gig happy? We trance, you trance, we deep dole.  As tone is jagged, wheat out brooded.  'Tis a whale of a meat, all for the offal.  Carry fruit down.

Weeks old apple spent, what I juice is what I basket, so grapes and orange bud my cocoon.  He will stalk it over, but you're over first, and under that ship, go you.

Thief chow, you bitter gray stupor, candle screws painting to dock.  A dollar's worth of dug? A check for a chimera? Fruit, fruit, fruit.

Isolate the worm, droop over wire, ring the barb to the long Chaney.  Boob at doe dot a tongs, bastille in anger at the snit.  Wood, wood, wood.

Rig oft beetle nut, drab oxy lagging gab con.  A rib too far, middle stack poly aper don.  Seesaw.  Shunt poor knicker one scene.  Still ticker.  Wig shame tiger brute frog.

Bandages; rain like April dew? Snow down as if cotton were thick? Paste mud the dicker of stem and strong wind.  Grunt of goal met, konk bucks to at long steamy posies.  Done blind, done racked and wrought and ragged, done hurt, done ganged and garbage gall.

Sigh off perch, landed soil pew.  Languish gaily dodo et ptui.  Brand cock arm, bowl the oven, Gigi.  I'm inna outer toot.

The wise wend wisely passed lolls of darkling green, pensive pondering past squirrel's ghost and bright threads of leaf.  Waiting past the knoll, a white specter with dark blood on his mind, no whistle, no tune, no crunch of boot on cone.  Dark me whistle on down to the only hole where a dry hunter with his fill of hare can get a drink.  Maybe lay there all day, maybe say a prayer to the gay sway of pines.

Thrash of brush and knife coming fast at throat, swell of fear lank in my fast yell.  Quick to the fight, mere moments before wrestled down and split like a chicken on Sunday Sunday morn.

In the lazy hollow, follow where breath meets crystal air, it's a bone array, then crack! and fast winding to the quick and hidden hole.  A surmise as futile and imponderable fox, print long triples on dusty, and as untangling as the party I'll exit.

Rage on doe, miss cracker brunt in brushy scent of all along now, I do miss your charming blush.  Go feather waft, wing up 'till hats flip of wind's tossing legal will, pinned, pinned, pinned.

Lamb's pie, knocked up and lock up, all a tangle of fleece, bleat, and woody vine.  Mary stalks up there on the lie, and can't sweet no more.  The wick meanie is coming all down, down through the tangled briar, down to where twilight is redly shaded and glint through the dark thicket bloom.  You old adder and jay.

The ranch stew up, bubble up gravy lick and stern old cod.  Chops down mess, along, along, along.

Hatchet down through undergrowth dog atta heel, wish machete.  Toddle and thickly until stop and take a breath.  It could be Joe, it could be Sally.  Lost, lost, lost.

Thatta way.  Cookin' for a half-a-mile, then slowly sit and wonder what the fuck for.  Boast on up, and another quarter dropped like red needles to the sweet mess, I, lie, lie, lie, like a brick I sit I am no catcher of sun, my mind reels out of time.

Then, then, the swags come down, and the ogre where had docked came off with oaken coals.  When burned, burned down, the coil of rope that ran up the law was as cooked as a fat old hog, cooked like I was joking all along.

The grief tail under, I had skews that bantered all the moss, back and forth, back and forth, no more lost than a rooster on the corn.  I'm a long day, daddy, I'm a long, long day! Well, catch some moony brat. We'll tag along some Sunday.  Jeer, I gig, jeer jeer jeer.  Widdle gag along, I'll ride up slow, and steer your cattle swell along the fence.  When I babble, tears young sold to the snares, just kick 'im on along, kick 'im on along.

Sly slick whisper, movin' little clumsy through the thick.  Grin 'em down, I thread pretty well, 'till then.  Jest go around, wheel, wheel, wheel.

Under, slip, and duck, and finally, climb a splinter and brew a view around.  Nothing I can see but more for as far more but see can I nothing.  Over it! But, no.

Well, back to whittle, lick, and bitter, angrier at tangle with every creepy scrape.  Rash break, and I bust out crying, because every little thorn stick, every little flap flap run.

But, boo, I grave onward, 'cause luck is the man who guesses it straight, straight as a city, straight as along on around.

Apparent chums, dicker on down.  On and fewer smiles as the sticky laughs commence. Duhs, dogs, raps, Kongs, and dalliance, would you ever? No way, man, no way.  It's a gone, gone tuber who is sunk so low as to latch onto arid clay.  The pussy wend through, pussy, pull me out.  Shank meal a grub, eew, log gross I'll wager.

Didja stank 'im on over? Didja stale 'im onna foam, short five fivers?

Well, git! Or I'll crack your nut, you blued out pony, you bitter crab Peter, you better change your diaper quick!  Oh, shoe, skill me up a apple, June, June, buggy! Thrill, thrill, thrill.

Iff'n I had a coffin it scrape, and iff'n I had a cold sepulcher it thrown wide open by the moon.  You had a tweety, it gasp, and if you had a toadstool it sit right down.

Though the dust black crusty red, and though the dawn has set one and two, I'm stir up a dried-up stew, and thickly gasp grown, creak, and muster up a spark, through moss, damp though black dirt may be.

Head lift up, thick lips muster croak, roll over.  After hours lift myself up, and clamber slow to the hollow water log I spy with half an eye nearby.

Drink a cuppa Julie, I jest a sallow and shallow as Rick.  Moon, moon, moon, for a long, long whistle I clamber back down to the coals.

Fishin' deep in the overalls, I find what the deed did offer, my copper housekey  that had finished all races and stolen all brews.  If I stand on my head for hours, I could not change the upended twist.

So open jaw, face up, and open throat as far as would, and, drop the key in.  It's a choking fight but swallow I do and swallow it down.  Blue, blue, blue.

She the bramble, she swallow all but the pork.  The boar it ran, the coarse hide scold.  It's a sure one that follow it down.  It's a lost one that, around and around, thinks he can catch up to the razor tusk.  It's a pretty dumb lie that threads the doggy through the cut and pierce of needle-sharp thorn.

I Betty, Will, eat berries.  I Betty, Will, drink from the log.  But stutter me not, onion out, you just as right as rain.

It's a slow day in flora, just as slow 'till grind is out.  So, sweet, sweet, sweet me along, view over and over the bit of thong, I'll tile it, I'll pass it to the mass.  If I exit, I exit down.

