Privilege

it makes me laugh sardonically.

you lose the privilege to condescend me
when I'm driving you the long way
to your car in the eight a.m. air.
(Don't you see the fog?)

you lose the privilege of authority
because you're just as drunk as me,
too inebriated for ordinary reprimand.
(Can't you hear your slur?- it's not just mine)

you lose the power of desperation
as soon as you leave, and then
my sighs are the exorcism of our callow.
(If only you could see the exhale)

it makes me laugh compulsively.

Growing

Sleepless sultry sunless times
Spent wandering darkened streets with you
Constructions noises dwarfed by a pounding thought
Still you stood and fought.

The dusty taste of tar and asphalt swirling in our mouths
A kayak ride across a raging ideal
While waters’ lapping lulls the senses
Your gift: An Annapolis superficial feel.

In Praise of Cadence

Some words form the songs of saints,
in their geometry lovely blurs of ambrosial chants
that arise, as if the softest sea,
beside a tune of ecstasy.

Still more are the discord sequences
of awkward construct, many narrative joys,
provoking the clever auspices
of reason- please, oh dear, the colloquial
reaching through the prison precedent of the mind.

In the speech of thought these two polars combine
with harmony and a sudden flash
that erases the plain, evokes the divine.

Real words to me belong
joined together so as to heal the void
whose empty silence demands in sheer lust
to hear the world's exulting siren song.

Untitled so far...

I live in bends, in curves, within curves,
Straight is a path with an edge,
But funny is the beautiful valleys
Made- more
Mountains and thighs shook for less, I says
To waste curves, the truest sin.
AH! And OH!
Truer worship than alabaster starch.

I live in bends, in curves, within curves,
Time pricks my limbs as
In a small box,
Prurient priests, a-leers wide,
Poppin’ cherries, proselytize me
But time’s tune is truer.
Dark horse footsteps echo,
But buried me be in rolling hills and roiling valleys.
Amen.

Improvisation 3

the empire

Lines From the Brink of Illness

the looks of multiplicity in disease
glare back at me from the
distant corners...
I shrink away.
I am beneath protective coverings,
in every possible way.

I hope those looks don't peel away my blanket,
a soft, soft ocean eclipsing sight.

I hope they don't steal and dispose
of this sweet narcotic joy,
the excess robitussin that gave it to me,
or the clouds that in formal flashes
spastically melt before my eyes.

I hope they don't pry open my brain,
and play tauntingly, recklessly with my precious thoughts-
I so love to feel those thoughts dance in there,
majestically the electricity sways.

I hope they don't steal my pen,
or with swift gestures render me unable to write,
I can feel thousands of such ifs
crush me small with just potential.

I hope they just leave me be,
where I'm inches from remembering
what it felt like to scream with joy
in daily juvenile bursts,
all in efforts to voice the exhilaration
of jumping off a moving swing.

I hope for ten more seconds of this
I can stay.