"Age is a short word for a long sag,"
she spat. Then sat in still birth sigh,
an envelope with wetted chin,
as words just fit because they do,
twist a stanza to its close.
Her hair, a thick mosquito net,
a shiny silver teapot gray
undyed by shame,
soft as tiny cookie crumbs.
"As you get nearer to a grave,
your wrinkles gain their passion creases
penciling some chasm's lip."
The art of it all bubbling
in her toothless smile.
"Blood" she claimed, "is lipstick
of the perishing peeling off a setting sun."
I shut my ears to this defeat,
couldn't let it penetrate.
Her skin as thin as breakfast crepes.
I rhyme too much, but so did she.

Her eyes were marble messages--
I was a child at the top of the stairs,
fearing light and wisdom rocks
would roll and fall and not return.
Her skeleton a banister
I'd leaned upon in times of knives.
Our kinship full of fathoming,
fish guts of a carnal lot
disappointed with its view.
My busy hands were making beds,
pressing lumps in pillow cubes,
bothering with miniscule.
In August heat of knowing
quickly shrinking hour,
my mind went back to planting spells.
The way she dug a hole for roots
as if they were an artery.
When she laughed and snorted dirt,
her nostrils looked like daffodils.

Across the wires, this family tree
appears to be a noble fur.
Fleshy branches pinned to trunks
with bark of bygone suffering.
Forest, cool. Garden, green.
Ghosts are boiled until they're dead;
tarragon of love remains.
We're driving merrily along
like nursery rhymes and pat clichés.
Dinner, for once in blue doomed moon,
will not have goblets full of wine
and plastic forks of cocktail hour.
I can call at half-past nine
and know you aren't anesthetized.
Measuring the worth of life
with yardsticks bent on leaving it.

Shady arms to covet tears
so much a part of morning dew
I'm wishing to delete the night.
Liquor's penitentiary
and boozing's crematorium
was shoveled sand for all these years.
Brandy in the drawing room
left nothing on the median,
but greasy alligator rinds.
Nothing in the skinny margins
circling a loaded dream.
I want a different Etch-a-Sketch
where tongues aren't thick eraser heads.
Hope is an ant going for sap.
I see the sun in tasseled braids
of golden wheat and think
an angel dropped its seed.

Fortified by swizzle sticks
and party time, I grew up
on the nice side of town.
Fence posts slid into the mud
and money bought another house.
Dangling from the coalish clouds
were gargoyles, ghosts, presentable lies.
(Because we had our make up on.)
Thick mascara of a tear
never had a willing cheek.
I want to grow old differently,
where credit cards don't open doors.

We will meet on Ivory Soap
of sober moon, even though
the path is slick; nakedness,
an emperor without his clothes
and brandy's lure, Delilah's wig.
This will be a bra-less hour
and moments pull at pubic hair.
I fret at promised clarity
the way all possums cross a road.
Better this than absent that:
where suns are just a branding iron
reminding me of evenings missed.

I will tell you that I'm forty-five
but still a brand new jar of peanut butter
when it comes to being hugged.
Affection in its ether throes when 5 p.m.
takes our family's bookish spine,
turns it to a bottle's neck.
The same routine:
say "Hello," pour a drink,
pour another, say "Goodbye."

Two months from now,
you'll introduce me as your wife.
And no one there will be drunk.
I shiver at this honesty,
but plan to chug it just the same.
My plunges in the world of touch
were only tiny wiggled toes
where whole immersion is the quest.

File me down to cuticles.
Strip thick polish from the marble
waiting for the striking light.
Braid my hair at morning coffee.
Rib me with a question mark.
Life is not a meal to dress
in Chardonnay and sluggish gin.
Thinking carries off a dream;
hope is splitting cantaloupes.
My flesh cries out for chafing rites
like dogs in heat, their hormones
basking in besoin.

Sky's palette this day is a blue bulb,
the soft booty of a baby boy,
fresh from box of willing womb.
No dust of cloud;
wind is a refreshing thing.
No blood has shed
and saxophones of daffodils,
their brassy wings,
are playing gusty promises.
When you come home for lunch,
my hair is dripping wet.
I have been swimming in
thoughts of us.
You curl a tress around
your thumb and pull me close.
My insides stretching
toward your warmth like bread
against a toaster's wires.

I'm in the mood of a moon walker,
lighter than air,
a fat cliché of happiness.
This hour when pain
is a patted itch and bones
are working instruments.
I'm bouncing because I can move.
Whispering behind
the stiffened back of death.
Later, this sun will set like spun clay
and I will be that broken dish,
where wrinkles punctuate my face.
Live I must, around these cracks.
Push the stage to arm's extent.
Suffer's old binoculars zero in on clarity.

The pool was warm;
we were seaweed
slung and drifting silently.
The locker room was a cold blast
reviving aches, reverberating
moans and groans
and other mortal assonance.
Nipples taut against the wind,
Brussels sprouts on cracking plates,
youth just passed at hurry's gait.
Rose of easy gone for good.

We talked about the trivial
of temperatures and icy roads.
Breaking hips like toothpicks
on an olive ring we tried to skewer,
but hit the seed.
"Yesterday," one woman said,
"thorns and bristles lined the street;
I swore at them, their littering;
today, in frost, they looked like lace."
Taken back and whittled down,
I sensed the way her struggles
brought her fish to fry.

Nature plays with leveling,
always finding Middle C
on dusty old piano slats.
Orange sunsets hanging out
in boxes of stashed ornaments,
beating up the black of dark.
Mercury of rising stars
in glassy-eyed thermometers.
Standing now would always be
that quick green kiss
beneath the drying mistletoe.
Our bones, shot tigers, all of them,
had things to say about the world.