HAVE THIS DANCE
Who, having received cruel honoraria,
extended a limp hand, extended
the daybreak
in the ballroom's shadowed recesses,
where covenants dull and wine piques,
where tawdry loiterers insist and
revile,
perhaps did not extend a hand so
much as
raise it before her, as perch it
on the air,
to say I can twirl in my badges,
to say
what respite's in regret, what
seethes with the dawn.
WITH PYRRHIC INSISTENCE
to anchor the receding
in all delicate hours
dusk through the blinds
and warbling
maintenant le perjure
envied dissipation
even as a renewed disciple
in the gris-gris' succor
DIVINING FOR STARTERS
While ache eclipses
the opened roses
or slights sentience
so grossly claimed & heralded
the edgy singe, the broken stem
Awake while unkept
encroached upon even now
the neck & spine relent
recline into cushions
whose softness frustrates
So attended is not so sought
divining for starters decay
however transitory
the creeping stain
the light on the stairs
EYE
Who saw with his own and so unwarranted
by any promise he could depend
upon: a pugnacious insistence on
what he might verify. Unaided by night to
repeat nevertheless, A blue
hanger swings on the lowest branch. Light waves
reach the retina, and only particular
wavelengths. Hue, shape, height, depth.
So much seeming is certainty.