Ritalin

As God sits and pets his Dog

he wonders at the rest of his junk

he's too timid to throw away,

dinosaurs in the basement, trilobites in

his garden pond, the glittering remnants of

galactic whatnot he means to string up

and plug in some time.

There is an ocean of unmeasured time, but

no time to get anything done.

He keeps meaning to get back to us, throws up strands

of probabilities to the kitchen ceiling

seeing if they stick and hang down, al dente, then forgets

he's looking for a colander and finds the

Etruscan crossword puzzle instead which makes him

think about that song

with the flutes and so he goes out to the car, because

he's sure that's where it was last time

he heard it and so becomes entangled in the

fact that he forgot to water the lawn........

Time boils and rolls never leaping over the side

but teasing at the strands inside

while for some reason, in the distance,

the leaf blower starts ringing its heavenly chorus

throughout the empty house.

If you lived here, you'd be home by now!!

Cloth swims through

gasoline and fried chicken air

over broken front teeth,

of a wooden fence

buildings eye each other,

black hole windows

mad dogging

across parking lots

now comes a jester

dressed in red and yellow,

racing wind

stoplight to street sign

to eye bruising slushie pix.

clock work against

Brownian drifts of plastic bag ghosts

and diesel

"why he dancing

daddy?"

Why indeed.

I wish it was only trash.

There was a red paper plate

behind the tree that

must have been there for months

must have been there for years,

so long, in fact that Cleopatra might have

flicked the last crumbs of cake

from her dainty fingers as she

licked the tiny mountain tops

of vanilla frosting off her

lips along with a few dots

of salty perspiration.

Remembering your birthday

that came in the beginning of the Summer

on the green lawn, everything so impossibly,

ludicrously, lush...verdant as a more

educated person like him might say, with the promise of the heat

and our skin touching skin by the pool or

beneath that cast iron fan the one with

faded gold letters and an ancient pedigree, that

smelled sometimes of a blender motor

that reminded you of making cake with your mother, when

you talked about your mother.

That seems so long ago, this faded pinkish flake,

because it's autumn now and

this land mine of the relic past

hiding beneath the leaves,

made me think of you when you

are gone, long

gone.

When the rain comes down

with thunder

on a warm sunny day,

they say

"the devil is beating

his wife",

Those ain't tears.

Graceful, latent,

clouds

sheets hung out to dry

almost touching the quiet

room basking in the sunshine and

turning the wooden

floors into a sea of

shade and light

a hot, dark hand touches

the pale skin of a shoulder or a leg,

warming the back of the neck

where the hairs curl a bit

in dark nursing curves

with grinning breath

and tenderly asks if

she wants a glass of

ice water.

Bones

In the grass that looks like

the fur on a lion's back,

(all tawny and moving in

the breeze)

the candy of your bones is

no doubt a cathedral

for the rest of us tiny

creatures.

VULCAN'S DAUGHTER

Her hands are small but strong.

They grasp the hammer's handle.

Dawn to dusk she weaves her song

with the bellows and the anvil.

Sparks fly 'round her coiled locks

and her eyes reflect the fire.

Her lovely skin hides the chiseled rocks

of her muscles spun like wires.

Some men look for fame and gold

to steer them to their bliss,

but these are all too frail and cold

for one who felt her loving kiss.

enchanted rock speaks rain

blue eyes far away

water lays in desert rock

the sky stares downward