There comes a dragonish time
when truth must shed its crimson fire.
Take owning of Antigones,
break poor rules, wear its pulse
on tattered sleeves.
Stains and all, blood crust crying out
in red for lift above a cherub renaissance.
Its content fresh but dubious.
My nerves claw at the screen.
I whine into deaf ear.

You will stew here
in a valley of putting greens
manicured like pretty nails.
Surface chatter rattling its hailstones
on pool halls of silences.
In the thrashing of splitting corks,
bottle caps for Sunday bonnets,
Mother's migraines will be
waiting in the cold sheets.
Last night's wine, barking at brain's thick door.
A blanketing lie to keep you warm.

Meanwhile, I fuss with the cradle
of a soul speaking its first word.
Scribble myself like earth worms in spring dirt.
Move full amaryllis bulbs from closet dark,
spread their roots, replant a girth of joy
outside the corset of our ways.
You might wonder, you might not.
You might ask, but I won't hope
for questions to erupt and dance.
"Why leave this climate stocked
with festive scented pines?" And I will say:
"If clouds had valves, you'd shut them down."

Liquor picks our pockets.
I cannot recall an evening's moon
without its Cyclops biting dream.
Check the ground like homeless men
sift through alleys of the grit
for scraps of copper suns intact,
some wealth that might be hiding there.
I blame the bottle for our flaws,
their bobbins knotted at specious hour
whenever a cork or can is close.
You drift in clouds of sine qua non.
Tables set with solid silver
free of tarnish spoon a lie.
We're trading tears for Chardonnay
that could be crystal waterfalls.

We've stoned our voices crying out.
A beer stands tall, foamed in facile Ivory Soap.
On shopping trips, I wander down
a grocery aisle with rusted wheels,
marbles of forgiving weak
on rosaries with brittle strings.
Just once I ask if we could go without a goblet
packed with rivers born of toxins
poisoning a moment's earth.
The question thins like vapor trails
above the runways of our choice.
Linguistics of denial reign.

My books are coasters for a glass.
Their cherub bindings never broken by your eyes.
Their cords detached from renaissance.
We've pickled those affluent dawns
that come with blizzards, thunderheads.
My soberness is just a prude
in prunes of livers locked into their own demise.
This loneliness, a damp receipt I toss aside,
wrinkle in a bitter fist.
And we address our saddle sores
by riding into nothingness.

I'm dreaming of a moving van;
wheels are turning as I sleep.
Guilt soaks through my paper skin,
burns its paint like acetone.
I am moths that bat their wings
in closets of a cashmere life.
Eating all the wool we are,
whining that Euterpe's harp of joy
was dropped and languishes,
sits note-less in comparisons.
"Here" is loaded wishing wells
that rule with their 80 proof.
"There" is moisture glistening, discovering
the cant and operas of it all,
the channels of clear river beds.

As hearths go, our ash is cold.
I toss it over shouldered bruise.
I want wood, stacked for winter's
snow ahead, even when the splinters slip
inside emotion's swollen thumb.
One mother holds a goblet's stem,
and asks for more relieving juice.
The other pushes rolling pins
as if the sugar of the world
is made to keep and pass around
between the lines of suffering.

One sister lights up living rooms;
the other dusts its furniture.
One father steps on missing toes
with mute dismissal's semi-truck.
The other takes their voids in stride,
looks beyond a body's carp.
Explaining this in fractured terms,
I'll tell you we have better jobs,
since we don't speak of loneliness,
of worms inside an apple's ball.
The contrast here between
a greenhouse and the earth.
Marbles scoot without my hands
toward avenues that catch the light.

Booze and chatter parry levelers of grief.
Eyes play hooky from the dark;
in between the lines of fog
and sips of artificial grace,
we lose the gist of orange juice,
its pulp and seed an entity to strain,
remove, bury in our absolut.
Just once I'd like a sober meal --
where we aren't yellow rubber gloves
afraid to break a fingernail
that catches on unseemly truth,
where tears aren't silent acetone.
Borrowed smugness, false release.
Czar of liquor loads the dawn.
It rearranges furniture
but never scrubs a dirty floor.

Talking turns to stocks and bonds,
the rising price of paper towels.
Twists again in jagged knife
to runways in a fashion show.
Food grows cold and Mother asks
for just another little sip,
poison foison, grapes distilled.
Pennies in a petty jar
filling up the spreading void.
This corset for our sagging flesh --
this hill and Hell, a trip to take
on wings we trust because
they fly when we cannot.

Soapy confrontation stings;
I wash these goblets gingerly
as if they are a child's bangs,
leave you to your chosen rinse.
Wishing we could own our wrecks,
dig the glass from crimson wound,
make honesty a christening
of more than superficial lace.
I bite my tongue of fancy crystal heritage,
feel it snap like chicken wings.
Our tablecloths, a perfect press
of exit's trite menagerie.
This raw and bare, this sacred wood
that might have been a family tree
with leaves that ease a winter's ice.
I shake my fist at evenings
lost inside the blur
like trailers in a hurricane.

Come sit with me, in valleys
of my shoulder blades,
whistle something in my ear
to quick correct his hollowing.
Be an owl that takes the night
and pats its haunting in a song.
Tell me straight and lovingly
that I should go from void to wealth
where speech is more than chattering --
idling in alcohol, preserving ghosts
and lies of black obsidian.
Tell me I should prop my feet,
wiggle my unpainted toes
where struggle is a loaf of bread
and every hug is trimming crusts.
Where lunch is more than padded menus
scribbled with a choice of wines.
Where aging is Vienna choirs
and harps have music in their strings.

Ahead I see a Christmas tree
of borrowed pine, its glade
and mint approachable.
Its ornaments are made and spread
by open palms rushing over river rocks
toward seas of blue entelechy.
I need to hold the raisined grape
of wisdom's aging fruit in bowls.
Crave a carriage made of wheels
beyond the rusted shaft and stone.
Dreams crawl up between the cracks
of silences and guarded ways
like earwigs pinching soul to life.
This opal set in front of me
is scooting toward a summer sun
and milking teats of miracles.
You show me portraits of a flower
and I can't live with tumbleweeds.

Just one cell, one tiny speck in traffic veins,
we head for homes I've never had.
We're racing toward entelechy.
A wreck clots this path of edgy joy
anticipated like a kiss.
Seven cycles litter green,
their bodies sideways in the dirt.
A storm of smoke and TV crews.
My tongue goes dry;
silence smothers chatterings.
Helicopters swirl and land,
take the dead or dying flesh
to hallowed halls of medicine.
Minty straw of fresh cut grass
covered in a spray of blood
and tears of shiny watercress.
Beside the road, a patch of flowers
becomes an instant funeral pyre.

I sit and think inside this wait,
patting down my selfishness
like wild horses at a gate.
Ahead we'll have a warm embrace
closing months we've lost and left,
renewing love that needs to leave
callous closets of moot dream.
Tires screech. Sirens blare.
My voice seems illegitimate
in graveyards of another's death.
This broken glass mortality,
a sliver in myopic eyes.
A rash of rainbows made of borscht
emerging from potato clouds.
Waltz of luck a heavy leg,
a bubble on a bar of soap.