the things I leave with you

change

where we’ll make it

if we’re lucky

the chair

the home

piss-tinted in our dreams

but I don’t mean to be depressing

it’s only vigor fears this

as a young girl shies

from baby cries

must

There must be control,

there must,

when the object walks by

no sighs but shut tight

in the notebook.

There must be control

mustn’t there? Or

how many hearts like glass ground

dust under sole? How many worlds

like glass tipped from their

shelves by too much light, dust

suddenly shown?

For spies, double agents, those who compose

limits

restrictions

preservation

under glass

must serve.

brekkie

sweet and nutty

breakfast companion

Soymilk

(don’t let’s have him over every day)

shells

you know that shells are deathbeds

goodbyes you can hold

so beautiful

pearled with

the hard work of living

now living on

brightening

the shelf of someone’s bathroom

sprinkled with parfum

jimford asked: Even when I asked nice, she wouldn't answer.

Eek.  What?  Nice to see you here.  :)

dry eye

was it better that I took you

little dead bird?

I didn’t want you mawed and mewled on

so stoic though you were

wrapped up in a safe towel

high tree crook

forgotten till I went to claim the rag

I wanted to find empty and it was

did I give you time

for a new breath or escape

one or the other?

What did you want?

Your fate was none of mine

all the cat’s

though I lifted you

art work

dribble your minutes

here

take the ink, or the chalk or the

chisel

be obvious

with us

stop time

Magnolia

when the bud finally gives in

lets the sun gently

finger it open, something

calls the bees

onions and mandrakes

I pull their round heads

lolling and birthing from the ground

in mind of Potter and Mandrakes

the roots hold no dirt

I strip their ambitions

and take them for their tenderest bites

their most beautiful swollen places

now under the knife

No screams escape, the

story’s magic stays in its place

my stolen eatables don’t know their power

sting stabs out my tears

The Balladeer

“…In Ireland he was often a village citizen, a bystander at political events and natural disasters: a storyteller with an ominous errand.

…the ballad keeps an audience awake.  Its subject matter is tabloid: death, murder, suicide, disgrace, mystery.  It is lurid, musical, communal.  It leaps from event to event.

…The form is designed so that the ballad maker’s voice is clearly heard.  It is a human, downright voice.”

from The Making of a Poem:  A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland