1 New Poem

Living in Motion

The best of times were there
behind silver-painted locking mechanisms,
sealed with Easter morning breeze,
swaying in time with suburban railway
track bends, conversing with
every conscious echo of Jazz Age
novelists, Beat philosopher and
other riff-raff whose egos litter
square, that make just overpriced
café sandwiches.

It’s when you’re there with all
the other jetsam of empire’s
backwash, trying to find those
stencil signs to head back home.

1 New Poem

Temps Perdu

The washers still clear water
on the cobbler’s handiwork at
a strike past eight, stilling
in brisk chill of Lucky Strike
packets, crisped up as offerings
to green square signs with names
of half the freshman philosophy
chart scribbled on them by
the same half-handed adjuncts
who threw them to nursed coffee
mug mercies when they still
had breath, sparks and such
things.

The halls of wrought iron
still clang with scrap-ash of
Industrial Age candor: that time
the magistrate knew better than all
this mouth-wording weave
made of spindle-breaking code
lines near the airport, acting
mechanistic, acting charitable with
still life cadaver oil sketches
of paving stone springs we
feel as consecrated myth,

driven out with waited time.

1 New Poem

Where the Light Gets In

The harshness of city windows,
scrubbed-clean expanses of red brick,
the finishing school cafeteria clatter
up against inky cooling cauldrons
with tire rubber finish that stay
straining against foresight fever of
how much I needed, just to be
steady in the brigand morning.

Not staying there with anyone else,
imperfect in glassware revolution
style, shoelace fabric without
courage to slip out into
gossamer thread of kindred
spiriting, a blank repetition of
lyrical truth eluding us.

The darker silence of pastime
spaces consumes chalked-out light
fixture; how stars hid, blinked
beyond raising up
of old stone spires to where
the leaking of sun-faded fates

too do.