apothanein thelo

We have idolized
Ancient Greeks
who, few are aware

were the first to veil women,
electing to remove
them from sight

We put their democracy
on marble pedestals,
columns rising

the District of Columbia,
chiseled statues in the same
proportions, the same

golden mean, the same
ratio to overturn a veto
this is another step removed –

representatives of
representations of
a cross-section of a district.

Aristophanes imagined
women in charge
as a form of humor,

Plato imagined
removing the family
as a unit altogether.

We have copped their forms
with the Parthenon
in Nashville,

taken the Memphis name
straight out of antiquity,
out from Ancient Egypt.

As a fine morning mist
settles in over
The national capitol,

the very foundations
of our system leak
history all over the street.

a tenuous tuesday

some days you just gotta hang on,
it doesn't pay to be in a rush,
grasping tightly the bent limb
like a squirrel dangling from a bough,

or a snowplow with no traction,
skidding across the ice,
into a shopping mall.
result - window substraction,

shards, both ice and glass,
scattering over the pavement,
like when you love someone too much
and are shackled in enslavement.

celestic dispute

venus and mars
split custody
over the moon,

the sun of gaia,
daughter of earth,
which gave birth

dislodged with
a prehistoric
asteroid,

dropped loose
from the chastity
of eternal orbit

in a belt held
so tightly
by gravity

and sending forth
a runaway
in a cloud of dust,

luna to the moon.

you are cherry blossoms

(for Kristin)

you are cherry blossoms
i would like to scatter,
unlike the many beings
whose lives do not matter,

yet every year, born anew,
every day another spring,
i would like to ask you,
but it would be nothing.

Stourbridge Glass

a single red cone
rests in earthen tones
where natural fireclay

and fine sands from Ireland
down the locks and canals,
navigated by narrowboat

down the Dudley No. 1,
to the outlying areas of Wordsley,
Amblecote and Oldswinford.

in the town whose foundry
lent the first steam locomotive
to New York City,

these factories have been
fabricated where labor is cheaper
and the glassblowers have all gone away.

Secret Life

Regardless of how often
the actor plays the role,
some part of the secret life
slips thru the pores
that separate with thin membrane
of diaphanous tulle,
presentation and interpretation
of life's most golden rule.

If only I could say that I
am only this and nothing besides
If only we could work together
without such open divides,
but some ideas do not transfer
over borders, under radars,
like a soviet defector,
society's meddling detector.

And lo! these are the songs
that shout out of showers,
ring the decks with wrecks,
put head to shoulders,
rubber to roles,
masks to characters cast,
reasons for all the past
excuses, excuses, excursis.

between two towers

I started this
in the living room,
with no clear trajectory;
two large towers --
a symbol of the old,
columns with glowing embers
announces all's right
on a Saturday night
pointing skyward over the capital --
the other a prod of the future,
ridges rising like thorns
or the horns on a lizard,
with all the incoming people,
how do we keep them
out of the afternoon sun?

I sat in the shadow
of a clock rimmed with bells,
suspended between
the future and the past,
the taut slack,
thoughts, comments,
and questions posed,
neither well-conceived
nor well-received, but asked.
In this distant present tense,
when moments elude
the abacus of memory,
the collector's appraisal
shortchanges value,
and I don't know how to finish.

catch a tiger by the tongue

once upon an evening jaunt
from down inside an unknown swamp
i came across a striped feline
which made for me a right beeline.

with obtuse fangs in mighty pangs
and anise in his pounce,
he shaked his head quite fussily,
but must have weighed an ouce

too much or more the branch he left,
bereft of hue, it snapped in two,
and cleft just like a sentence through.
but deftly did the tiger up

and found me so alone hopped down
and pounced upon his little snack.
i hope you didn’t want me back –
you'll never get me home again.

so if perchance you come upon
a tiger of your own,
do unlike me the wiser thing,
and leave that cat alone!

The before and the after

He was never concerned
with how things had been.
As the ash dangled over
the precipice of his fingers
his snore caught a chortle
emerging from dream's portal,
he spoke of future memories
dreams of retirement travels
that lingered in the closed-up
basement with second-hand smoke.

Rising from his recliner,
taking an angle from late night
broadcasts of Larry King
from a timezone six hours
behind the ticking clock,
the second hand counting down
his days left to pass.

He rarely spoke of the past,
always the impending soon
beyond misty Bavarian mornings
fantasied as our ancestral home
drinking the amber lager
that ran down in barrels
tapping out oompah, the opas
in pheasant feathers and caps
the frothy mugs and beards
in the shadow of the Alps.