Timely Futures
Once I saw a daydream
For a quiet prince
Projected on a deadframe sill.
I couldn't quite
Kick his feet hard enough
To wake him, but it
Sure felt awash
With the lint of love.
But when can Diana
Ever marry Dionysus?
Sometimes you just
Can't tell the moon
From your trousers,
And that's when it's time
To sit down at the register
And bask in the bliss
Of standing in sunlight.
Can you play the lyre?
I have a song.
There is a certain masculinity
To the Universe
That is reflected only
In Mars and Venus.
Somehow, the sunrise is important,
But perfection is a sideways twist
In crooked-eyed daytimes.
I guess this is why teardrops
Look like raindrops
And the manic depressive blue
Jags through and under
The night sky.
But little differences
Relate to the crime
Like just yesterday
And maybe tomorrow
There's a tree that stretches
Into last week and last year
And at least a decade more.
I swung with it;
Sat in the crux
Where one arm split
And watched wind
Flutter through us.
Have you felt the wind?
It folds a symphonic orchestra
Through the kneading grasses
And bends the quiet haze
Of a half-smoked cigarette.
I can't wait to be there
But I haven't left yet,
And laying on the rooftop,
The striated clouds mar
The opaque night sky.
Or is it translucent?
There is no substance but light,
But substance is slippery:
Like a virgin's first time
It paralyzes with ecstasy.
Once I met a cobra--
His name was
Sodden-in-the-world
Beneath-the-marsh-pile.
He slithered his words
Across a mile of snow,
But by God, he told me
What went where and
Sometimes I disagree.