Someone please break down the door.
Memory is on the floor.
How we lost this history
still remains a mystery.
Images that once were hale
now are rendered wan and pale.
It’s as if a seeping rain
has snuck in and washed the brain.
Photographs once framed and mounted
now can hardly be recounted.
All that had been once is lost.
Long life comes with quite a cost.
Sister Sidewinder just can’t take old Sister Snake.
They battle in the apses all night long.
One says "chalice," one says "malice;" it’s real hard to take.
Their dogma tells them everyone is wrong.
It would not surprise to see them battling with crosses,
en garde about the pews and sacristy.
It may be time for Saint Sublime to simply cut its losses
before one gets strung up by rosary.
It is not the world I wanted.
Claim it not as your mistake.
If at night our eyes are haunted
maybe this could be our break.
Some great star will fall upon us,
some bright moon will make us see.
It does not go on forever.
We must make it, you and me.
I cave in to all the charms fear
casts my way in depths and dreams.
Bury me deep in your arms, dear.
Life is not the way it seems.
(From "Invalids and Uncles")
If a giant crab decided
it would fight a lobster,
would there be a betting line,
created by some mobster?
Would the ring of battle
be at sea or on dry land?
What would be the rules
regarding throwing of wet sand?
Would their strategy involve
the gouging of stem eyes?
Would the crab’s quick scuttling
catch the lobster by surprise?
Would they battle to the death
or just accept submission?
I would act as referee,
but just on this condition:
winner gets to crawl away,
tentacles aflutter;
loser must come home with me,
to be served with butter.
A book falls off in fantasy, a cup collides in flight.
We are captured by the solitude of gulls.
Aged wood falls in upon our houses, bleeding seams.
We are crushed by the weight of ancient air.
It is hopeless. Splashed paint creates a wake
upon the walls of the heart. Listless nights seep
through illusions’s blotter, fade into the gaze of stars.
We should die penniless, accosted by fools.
And the cars creep.