artificial gardens

                           I sauntered throughout artificial gardens of our lives
                           mindless and sorrowful
                           discontented and
                           hardly taking a moment
                           to ponder the blanched daffodil
                           its aromatic toxicity lingered round
                           the electric epicenter
                           gilded hedges of protective perimeter
                           swaddled a kaleidoscopic botany
                           of putrid degradation  
    
                           Years precariously lapsed out of my arms
                           into her small pallid wrist
                           frail fingertips grazed our recollection into
                           subterranean parlor tricks
                           a bleak apartment on the west side
                           where working people went
                           reclining before evening television

                           Indignant telephone calls made
                           amid sultry morning hours
                           plaintively babbling
                           hurtful heroics at
                           the collective memory girl
                 
                           In your baby's arms tonight
                           not throughout eternity
                           we glimpsed an eclectic arrangement
                           of wireless hyacinths
                           gemstone and jewel-like
                           not down to the
                           hot shallow seed        
                           of stolid
                           center
                          
                      
                          
                           
                          

its when you are dreaming, reality hits me

                  Have you had enough yet, I'm afraid the answer is no
                    I haven't had enough yet, and what you might of said
                         when you weren't speaking
                      it must be the greater damnation of our spoiled adolescent dreaming, within
                         its subliminal context, your fervent silhouette still rolls in off the northern coast of Maine,
                            as drool dampens our physical pillow
                             along March's contemptuous Ides it all hits you
                               continues its latent deafening transfiguration
                         
                                 until there is nothing left but fictitious memories
                                   of juvenescent April,
                                    when we were fourteen
                                      arguably knowing what love is
                                          more than
                                           we will ever dream
                             both sleeping our time off together, through frostbitten Appalachian mountain ranges
                               in high December,
                                    you are not dead yet
                                to  me you are not dead
                                     yet,
                                  contrarily you haven't left me alone,
                        in earth shattering recollections of nineteen and ninety-four,
                           I wanted more and more of you, and
                             still do, recalling your mauve sweater
                               worn pain drawn drearily taut round your Autumn brow
                                   my dearest apologies, for
                                   being too far young
                                       to consider
                                      how an adult might act
                                       in your situation
   
                               

Tuesday Girl

                                                   Tuesday Girl
                               
                                     She buffed her nails below intercity pillars among
                                     marooned residential foyers of
                                     furbished crimson carpeting
                                     outside an illumined metropolis thronged in humane ordeal as
                                     couples strolled broad avenues of pensive daylight
                                     minute shards of torpid heat ascended then
                                     pounced along grave city sidewalk fissures
                                   
                                   (In filial recollection of our loose dialogue one early Summer Tuesday)
                     
                                           We sat beneath the ashen oaks of West Virginian skies, sullenly reposed upon thy servile grandmothers porch-swing, your mauve corduroy pants shimmered in naive tranquility, greening hills of pasteurized fields ran before our wide adolescent scope, off from work and intuitively woven from the inevitable fall of yore's empyrean nymphets, akin to tupperware and hand-me-down socks, sordid change fell from my county overalls, frolicking atop soiled backyard plots,
                                             Younger then and
 far from adulthood's usurious expectation, askew from worn backseat childhood safety-locks, hungover planned parenthood mornings awaited dimly on a bleak horizon,
                               Childless in the forlorn year of the stem-cell Pentecost
                                 
                                     Benevolent daydreams of our out of season Tuesday girl, grimly alone in familiar depravity, carousing Kerouac and Cassidy's lost fictional America, once thriving in falsified treasures and fortified pastimes.
                                   Caffeine boredom circumscribed a latent weekend coffee-shop, a dismal freight train howled in the remote distance while
                                        indoors a local cash register rang somewhere amidst
                                     menial clanging of porcelain mugs and glassed demitasses.
                                   
                                   Outside afterburners arrayed in nomadic village decorum, rainbow seasons of proffered infertility; contemporary vegan prostitutes non-hesitatingly indignant, deprecatingly indifferent to diversified variance, stagnantly introverted
                                     only concerning themselves with fossil fuel theatrics.
                               
                                   "We hung out on South St. with no Money"
                               
                                            Damn kids these days,
                                 I'll tell you Mama Pajama, got these convert cats rockin' the free-love cradle with silver spoons in their mouths being fed piecemeal the Book Of Revelation
                                 Her lips dully pursed in tawn sheets of residential afternoon increment
                                 onto sallow deadend streets our orphan children sleep, glumly disfigured and suckling, the convalescent swelling of summer mouths uncouth
                                with rotten coca-cola teeth as
                                      inevitable August ruthlessly approached
                                      these broods of  bastard stepchildren wistfully pine
                                      over their unacceptable macabre inconvenience
                         
                                         (Within Institutional Boundaries)
                               
                                           Dissolute and disorientated, her pallid skin trembled to the sight of stray mammals  piercing her livid ken with illiterate characterizations, she shorted her cigarette, cursed herself then went back inside through the broad gate
                                                 back into her parents disapproval

A Modern Covenant

                         
                       
                                                                             A Modern Covenant
                 
                          1) Once,
                           far between primordial centuries of armorial barbarity
                           soiled interments of grim puddled mud
                           lingered freshly in grave pools
                           of latent noonday sorrow
                           as
                           fragmented afternoon dooryards
                           intimated quaintly
                           a reserved panegyric
                           for
                          stray
                          fallen
                          angels whom
                          toiled wearily
                          whither
                          Cain and Lucifer
                          scour
                          menial earthen
                          perimeters
                          quavering slothfully
                          beneath
                          dull sanguine shrouds of
                          formidable medieval sacristies
                       

                              2) We,
                          (the prehistoric cobbler and I)
                          tarried slavishly
                          onto cinereous equators
                          among
                          tarn yellow trees
                          diffusing irradiate
                          shards of
                          glistening heat
                          up
                          reddened country
                          hillsides
                          whither
                          refulgent scales of
                          inferious light
                          dispelled
                          sulky shades of
                          luminous hue
                          throughout
                          moonlit sunflower meads
                          as
                          lemon
                          yellow dill petals
                          descend
                          gradually downward
                          among
                          whitened woodland
                          mountain clefts
                          of sullen Winter
                          solemnly into
                          God's inexorable
                          existence the
                          Spring and Autumn
                          the
                          autumnal springing
                          of caterpillar mayflies
                          and
                          brier-fire bumblebees
                          preeminently whirred
                          amidst
                          greened droning vineyards
                           (meticulously colored  
                           consequently congruent
                           and
                           translucently interwoven)
                           throughout
                           ageing decades of
                           thinned elderly fingertips,)
                         
                                 3) Anon,
                           her Kafkaesque laughter
                           castrated an oblique mouth-reed
                           or two, or how 'bout
                           3?
                           1.) Ms Beatrice: the opaque convalescent
                               2.) Frederic: an after-hour confectioner
                                 and
                                    3.) me,
                                  promptly defunct in bleak arthroscopic retrospect
                                 scoffed up against tiled mid-afternoon porcelain
                                 then residentially reposed upon a
                                 worn furbished divan
                               (burnished in licentious reinterpretations
                                      of a solely apocalyptic inertia,
                                      where
                                      leftover rubble's been
                                      sententiously swept
                                       under a nineteenth century
                                       whatnot of illustrious veneer
                         
                       
                                      4) Mrs. Henriette Ivanhoe
                               erected a paper machete pinata at a quarter past three,
                               momentarily slithered by the boudoir,
                               her men departed
                                              and dowry padded
                                             remote church-bells pealed in an adjacent foyer
                                             below marmoreal pillars    
                                          aloof sallow evening portraits
                                             seethed as flickering shadows
                                                     dispelled grey vestiges of
                                                          sullen city alleyways
                                 
                                         (Algerian framed window emasculate)

                             
                                       5)      Was,
                                              it the undulating woodwind era
                                                  or was it
                                                              the
                                                (lackadaisical aerodynamic epoch)
                                                    between silken bed-sheets
                                                    her and
                                    I spoke in sourly tongues of her late brother's deviation,
                                    of Mother Pitcairn's back-toothed haunches
                                                          her dissolute
                                          Portuguese candelabra hung luridly in decorative crimson casement
                                                  silhouetted kitchen shawls swaddled  
                                                        loose urban faucets                                                                                                                
                                               embossing a warm southern atmosphere
                                                            as coiled screen door awnings
                                                                        reverberated
                                                                           whilst
                                               somewhere along a craggy western peninsula
                                                            transient autumn courtyards
                                                                              of
                         yore's implacable nostalgia
                         and
                         yesteryear's awed asphyxiated bohemian children
                         mercilessly pleaded in Friday's fiery strongroom
                         to an inevitable apex
                         of acquiescent disposal
                         surmising
                         veteran Vietnam
                         purgatories
                         of ashen
                         vestibules leaden
                         with diminutive dusk filled water-holes
                         allotting
                         dastardly barroom decadence
                         along
                         dingy dust-filled cupboard upholstery
                         melding
                         deadened dead-end soil,
                        (a concrete fuselage of consecrated inertness)
             
                         ii.  (your ass as my refuge )

             
                      What is the
                      deal with
                      those loose Russian roulette hips
                      and russet coquette lips
                      of rite and repertoire
                      a demonic pendant
                      thrives at corporeal depth
                      of
                      ye continental nave
                      yea, my ken was off
                      your ass to thine
                      yea, one,
                          two
                             many
                                 enough!
                       as you dry-heaved in placid climax
                       onto our irreproachable timeline
                     dispensing diminutive orbs of fluorescent heat
                          as infernal daytime shadows
                                   circumambulated
                                 pale seductive wrists
                      yea, ingratiatingly sober,
                             her despondent dialogue fluctuated
                              somewhere between eastern dreams
                                   of Jersey's coastal tideland
                                    and morning's sinuous seas
                                            where
                             bayou buoys swayed lifelessly askew
                                  under the scope of bleak Massachusettes
                             
                                       
                                                (a reckless cohesiveness)
                                         
                                  iii    (those empyrean evenings and I)

     as grave celestial clouds rolled anon
       immense azure waves of coastal Atlantic
            heaving, reflected
                  ethereal moonbeams
                        brimmed in twilit translucency
                             of
                                oceanic brine
                                    and blue delint brilliancy
                                           your beatific eyne to me
                                              as two hygroscopic jewels
                                                  twain in
                                                      dazzling emerald phosphor
                                                          our wayward children rest
                                                                ill at ease tonight
                                                                  recklessly latched onto an reluctant yoke of
                                                                         last Saturday's bludgeoned goat
                                                                                       
                              when you're                                              bleeding in decrepit intervals
                         asleep you're
                        irresistible when you dream you're
                               angelical, coquettish as
                              the ashen oak of penitence,
                               how blissfully fed I am!
                                     in our terrestrial lair
                         your bedroom sill curtain shook
                         as frost-bitten weed in downy morning fields
                              dissembled
                           on fervently seeing
                                 your pallid face
                                       peer askance
                                           a distant pier
                                                 to
                               iv   ( water-stallion pavilion)
                           
                      the sky wept softly in spectral intermediacy
                         we had coffee and talked for a while
                             picked up a bar tab before work
                              then asked if a local train still ran
                                           to city hall
                                   
                                   v   (an indistinct conduit)
        
           
                   months passed seasonally
                            as her flossy negligee
                                      and I  
                            zealously convulsed
                           to obscure notions of
                               you in braided
                              camisole delicately
                                   clutching
                              wily furs of
                              soon extincted
                                  coyotes
                   
                     

a natural showcase/ at home with machinery

                     
                                             ( A NATURAL SHOWCASE)
                     
                         Shall greening summer spare a splintered sprig of seasonal imagery
                         and
                         would furrowed daytime bare a
                         withered bough of
                         late afternoon dogwood we
                         hibernated in secluded sepulchers
                         along daunting riversides                      
                         of perpetual Autumn where
                         transient moss shadows and shrives
                         in burrowed shoals of dry arboreal depravity
                         weathered along moist vegetated foothills
                         adorned in columned rows of
                         orchard berry breezes
                         winnowed and blossomed maple leaves
                         in through
                         orchid wreathed valleys
                         of undulating auburn
                         summer gusts heaved heavily
                         between dry August thunderstorms and
                         buzzing swarms of
                         seething mayflies
                         curtly swayed along
                         soft lemon husked hills of yellow barberry
                         unwinding behind an
                         oaken curtained greenery where
                         supple cedar branched vestiges
                         melodiously metastasized into
                         writhing woodland spirits
                         (wondrously weaving,
                         silvered and silhouetted,
                         daintily dazzling and
                         whiling hauntingly through)
                         paternal patches of peppermint parsley where
                         majestically whitened groves
                         of twigging cypress
                         flourished into
                         back country interstates
                         unraveling sinuous highways throughout
                         under-the-table waged taverns
                         where I can and will drink you
                         and not
                         where shrouded fern-trees sprout and ferment
                         once whence
                         in a backwoods barnyard by Jove as
                         his olde brit-teatime colony demeanor dialect
                         tired, feigned, and malingered as
                         sticky molasses rain-drops fell from gunpowder laden skies
                         below where rust and ashen moth destroys
                         atheistic infidels and
                         Philistine thieves
                         thrived and conspired amongst
                         lackadaisical sun-yellow daffodils
                         spread out beyond
                         paisley pasteurized horizons of
                         water-colored orchids, cicadas and crickets
                         plateauing in placid evening through
                         forthcoming night when
                        calm adjacent meadows glistened in flickering premonition
                        of crescent moons illumining up a lunar cycle,
                        tranquil fall and curtailed rise of semi-northern constellations
                        bright and vibrant in sparkling eccentricity
                        sonically cuspid as
                        a sparkling childlike spoon gouges out Orion's eyes in
                        iridescent arrays of polished kitchen utensils hung
                        blithely behind
                        luminous foreshadowing of a
                        a natural showcase
                           
                                    (AT HOME WITH MACHINERY)
\                    
                             Homely Navajo fingertips maternally rendered
                             hygroscopic jewels in primordial caves
                             then
                             delicately fingered
                             deadened flower-petals
                             sultrily in ethereal fervency
                             reposed in Indian-styled huts
                             along the
                             dingily contoured quays where
                             dampened sapphire and
                             earthen onyx
                             menially kept
                             knitted the terrestrial silence of
                             oblique hieroglyphics
                             onto darkened
                             shallow cleft sedimentary walls
                            interwoven anon into dusk-filled centuries
                            of drunken parlor deities
                       
                       
                                       (ascetic in variance    
                           frivolous in futile familiarity
                           bleak in unnecessary infancy and
                           drably discouraging in
                           sheer unadulterated blackness)
                                   
                           Abortive frequencies and decade old propagandists
                           recklessly transpired our senescent society
                           into turbid telecommunication networks
                           of electronically wired hygiene-specialists
                           unfolding umpteen years of county chairmen
                           into an illiterate neighborhood readership of
                            local convenience store clerks laboring
                           through grave-yard shifts in an authoritarian demeanor
                            outside Midwestern parking-lots
                            a.m. auto amalgamations roared in mid-afternoon complacency
                            pulling grandfather clock plugs into living room portrait purgatory
                            back home in an uptown studio
                            an upperclassman laboratory attendant
                            took a nasty nosedive from
                            a suburban swimming pool diving board
                            into
                            an intercity cemetery burial plot brimmed to
                            its fertile summit with
                            nostalgic childhood teddy-bears revealing
                            nothing through
                            the ruptured tombstone soil
                            except
                            golden years melted away
                            into an never-ending  naive conclusion of convalescence
                                  

A serious of of premonitions/ or "Advice from Jim"

                                                        i)  (a callous introduction)
                     
                               She has been revealed to me
                                         cold and metaphysically
                                               pressed into
                                  white fallen drifts of soft winter snow
                                             frozen
                                               Iced       then
                                                 thawed    out
                                      into sullen dooryards of Sunday architecture
                                        how darkened shadows mount a Thursday manor staircase
                                              into February's late afternoon insipidity
                                           aloof in remote hidden caves of a west Albanian peninsula
                                            tenuously wrought in cavernous lime-stoned canals
                                                     aligned in a granite wreathed vortex        
                                                         of boring rock manifestation

1.                                            optically stolen sedimentary where                 

                                                  obscured primates gradually hibernated into
                                                      prehensile graduation from the
                                                         bedrock academy school
                                                                for retard atheists
                                                       into a futile millennium of prehistoric deity
                                                                      the hunt        was
                                                                      the hunted      on
                                                                                                     
                                                                                    quail
                            
                                   ii)  (we have been known to get residential and not specific enough)
                            
                     Saturday angel and I reposed alone together
                            on sofa afternoons as
                              guiltless hours transpired shamefully
                                    into gilded snow-scenes of neighborhood weekends by
                                      the old local precinct house
                                            our siblings set a dining room table tapestry demurely           
                                                  through draped household windows imbibing
                                                     golden heat on lustrous summer evenings
                                                          alive in renovated renaissance of
                                                              yesterdays heartless corridors in
                                                                  tranquil dreams of golden hours yet to dwindle
                                                                    onto our predestined timeline
                                     
                                  anxiety came restlessly in enervate waves
                                                   from a framed feminine portrait in  a
                                                       non-existent intercity dining-room
                                                             decadent decades ago
                                                                   when it was okay to bleed
                                                                                 now
                                                                                    not only is it not
                                                                                      okay now
                                                                                          its too late
                                                                                             to lay-out seasonal clothes
                                                                                                   in windy spaces along
                                                                                                       backyard playgrounds of
                                                                                                           raw county-line bigotry 
                             
                           
                                         (as a brilliant azure skyline resides in blue atmospheric resilience)                                                                                   
                                                      
                                        iii)      (April is the cruelest avenue to passe euphemisms) 
                                                 
                                                           above grit city alleyways
                                       pigeons fluttered and wavered atop telephone wired streetlamps
                                            spread out against an urban landfill horizon
                                                            of inbred infidelity in
                                                     backdoor garden glimpses
                                          artificial and omniscient lilac-stalks thrived vibrantly
                                                    sweltering in summer's fiery hearth
                                 complacently indignant daytime curtains
                                       of springtime's poignant senescence
                                         similes from heaven of
                                          cloudless celestial chambers
                                     questioning ourselves thoughtlessly as
                                       hours trickled beyond submission my
                                         vindicated bloodline wavered your
                                            pale narrow wrist attempted clutching a
                                                 kilned porcelain mud-hut antique
                                                     Navajo and Autumn, turquoise
                                                  auburn-caked and august-tanned
                                                          syndicated, thwarted
                                            ultraviolet, cancerous, fattened
                                                           then bludgeoned  
                     
                                        iv) (her bullshit is uptown now)
                         
                                     She makes herself present at holiday intervals with
                                          shrunken Broadway bones that shackle themselves
                                              to manly uptown radiators 
                                               in filthy tenements such as these
                                         she remains reckless and insubordinate at best
                                           her thin russet summer gown of elegance
                                retrospectively nauseates me in putrid morning air
                                    her company is limited and embarrassing
                                           if I was told to kill her
                                                        by god
                                        I would violently and not by choice
                                            with blood-red claws
                                                hacking fleshy sinews
                                                    to decapitation
                                              her decomposing entrails
                                          spoiled labor-day weekend that year
                                                       and what's more
                                            bothered me in the short-term
                                            to marry a woman like this is
                                         to commit a crime beyond compensation
                                                        to one's self
                                          strenuously gathering effort to exist 
                                          her daffodil footwear is grotesque and innocent
                                 please don't lead me to an August hospital room
                                              holding back birdlike regurgitation
                                                 dainty at best
                                                   her slim shoulders separate
                                                   a naive demeanor along brittle April winds
                                       March came in angry determination
                                                  and departed fervently
                                                   in moss-like delirium
                                           these sullen riversides of arbitrary climate
                                    unravel sinuous trails of canal-thronged Appalachians
                        
                                    
                                            v) dawn's highway or/ a gentle conclusion
                  
                              We passed through dreamlike stages parallel 
                                  on flickering nighttime interstates
                               enduring variant years of reproachable ministries
                             our actions went unrewarded along these tiresome pilgrimages
                                    through uncharted seaboard counties
                                     a traveler from the west, a rugged male type of about forty years
                                     his Americanized ken at times went from east to west
                                        telling me in his Pontiac pick-up one home-style morning
                           fatigue and heartburn circumscribed my twentieth century chest
                             "chemicals don't lie, we do"
                              Jim and I dallied through these tangerine outlined dawns
                        as radiant sunbeams made their way from a sawdust horizon
                            "we all want the same things at different times, or sometimes different things at the same time, there comes a time in every man's life when he needs to put down the liquor and drink more coffee, start indulging in things that kill you slower than faster,"
                             "now would be the best time for me to quit drinking"
                                 said I, strung-out and beaten, I let him have it
                                 
                             the springtime
                                     is now
                                  if you're alive