or Whip-Poor-Will towering above groves of walnut, lilac.
Night air is fragrant (and lush) through a peep-hole
and gate-way to the stars.

Barns with ricks contain pitchforks
like a mis-shapen mask protruding ever
so faintly sinister in silhouette through
a visionary sky.

Remnants of ferret skin, lie interrupted,
upon entering the chicken-coop.

The soldier drinks, his tea and egg-cup abandoned.

I don't have to go anywhere.
Dark and moody, there is an
arsenal of thought with stout
marshal batons in my knapsack.

The power to be led (and lead)
stiff memory in rum kegs and wine casks.
The brooding entrance
to another world,
if not in the palm of my hand,
then very nearly
a shout and stone's throw away.

PASTICHE

These shell-queens, too,
are blithely catpaws,
shorn & musky acorns with
indexed fingers erect
at manicured attention.

II
... Showboats with green faces far as swallows fly,
a lilac in oasis ... scarlet bream
... blue ointment where the ocean is
periwinkle patches,
a robin's egg clarity pressed
between blue-nosed tavern wall
& bottles clinking.

III
See plush cords,
the suede interior
svelte & slinky
an upholstery simonized
with natural springs where
bubbles encounter founts
in apertures, the rich measure
of open ground or mezzanine curtain
slit along a riverine walk
& jungle clearing.

IV
Twilight. Golden tulip. Golden olive,
"Fool's Gold", a lithesome snake-girl
gyrates her dragon-flared, limb-length
tattoo with red-eye dots itching in
emerald waiting; footpaths overhanging
serpentine curves or laser beam
dancer legs, paddle white, under angel
tint of stage-light.

V
The cut off jeans
compete with campfire glow ...
slipping a musket-width, nostril breadth
around turbans, bonnets, bubbles. Murex.

VI
... Elegant white ibises and egrets
stand like sentinels; herons flying in
their wide wings braking and their long
legs dragging ... and the snaky-necked
anhingas flapping and sailing into
spread their big wings
to dry in the sun.

Sa nom m'etruit

Her NAME escapes me
Nomen fuit

Just the faintest hint of spring

UU

MM

MOTHER of PEARL
with ODALISQUE.

BOCA

"Nature abhors a vacuum", theorists of both philosophy and
politics assure us.

What's more, the phenomena is not con