The most common
form of suicide
is committed by Everyman
done in by
neverending performance
of social niceties…





Shallow Conversations
Liberally Peppered
with WonderfulMarvelous
OhHowNice.
the distressed soul,
AllIsWelled to death
One too many
Forays into
Congeniality
and it’s a Willing Plunge
into a grave dug deep
by Platitude.

(Image: Joseph Cornell, Inkblot)

Graduation Day

Put on your silver dancing shoes
and waltz across the floor
the rabble grows impatient
but Life will wait
while you steel your soul.

Stars on the wall
take one with for luck.
Beyond the door
a dark abyss--
a what's-next crossed with wires,
foreboding but in the distance
Life shines.

Philip Larkin

Train Wreck*

Who knows when you lost the muse--
maybe it started to go

back in nineteen-sixty-three,
along with your virginity
and the scratched up
Beatles album.
Maybe the first time
you heard Bechet’s stick…
Was the voice that fell like love
the inception of your silence?
Pure bliss to give birth to such noise
but the closest you came
was the poetry of the gutbucket
and so those evenings spent
with Kingsley
Ginned up at the pub
Staggering back to Monica
and the House on Hull…
Trampling the frail cut grass
Dreaming of the Bayou

while baying at the moon

over the imminent white hours of death.

*Train wreck: Event during the playing of a tune when the musicians "disagree" on where they are in the form (i.e. someone gets lost), so the chord changes and the melody may get confused for several bars, but depending on the abilities of the musicians (it happens to the best of them), there are usually no fatalities and the journey continues.

Charles Bukowski

"Throughout his life, Bukowski held a series of low-paying jobs so dismal that they are unbearable to list, though he did keep a position as a mail carrier for many years...." (King of Pain, Jim Harrison, NYT 11-25-07)

Day after day
you carried my mail
and the days when you rang
I hid behind the door
until you gave it up,
hiding my packages
behind the rhododendron,
sticky note tacked to my door--
you've got mail...
How does one greet
such monstrous visage?
Lovely weather we've having?
You're looking well, Mr. B?
And one day I read
how the words had gone
how you’d waited to die
while Linda vacuumed
Nothing to declare…
If only I'd known of your love

for that godforsaken cat,

if only I’d asked Esmeralda.

Cardboard Boat










The thing to remember
about Hope
is that she is
always elusive,
will o the wisp,
a wily little imp
who asks you to dance
and smiles sardonically
as she steps on
your toes.

In an unguarded moment
Is/Will Be
dissolves into
Was..
Separated as if by a hedge
grown high--
no passage through.
Voices on the other side
Whisper Taunt
What if /Would have
and should some oh so clever mind
Invent a machine,
a transport through time--
we would only
despair at the moon
howling over opportunity twice missed.

(Image: Odilon Redon, Bateau Rouge)

Beautiful

He saw her bright hair waving on her neck;-- “How beautiful if properly arranged! ”
(Daphne and Apollo, Ovid)

Daphne my dear
you’re beautiful but
that curl would be far more
compelling tossed
casually over the shoulder.
Beautiful but
my dear that dimple
--precious, overstated--
subtlety rules
except when it comes to
The Twins...
Daphne my dear perhaps a tighter tee
would afford a lovelier view,
and those dainty little feet
--delicate shoes--
before we know it
Daphne New Improved.

I know you've dreamed
of days on the lea
spent hunting the prize of the herd
My Dear you've snared
a magnificent catch
--immortals die before me
sacrificial demeanor
breathless with desire
their loss your gain--
Dearest Daphne, I choose you
Delightful in every way
Dare I say "Perfect"

well perhaps...

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs

They met in Mandragora
in the unfading light of the sun
and fell ever constant

until

obsession crept in--
hunger for the unhaveable--
they longed to kiss
in soft candlelight,
to wade hand-in-hand
in a gelid blue sea,
conceal love
in some dark corner
far removed from curious eyes.
But the eye of the sun
burned endless.

In moonless Mandragora
love is only a game,
satyrs at play
in sunpressed skin.
Love holds no mystery--
vision transparent
nothing unknown--

every flawed soul revealed
in the light, in the light,
no secret concealed
in the merciless light
of sunsurfeit Mandragora.

(Image: Dawn at Maggiore, Turner)