et
-- all too visible rending of
fleshy corners bulbed
to puffiness.

Red-handed,
I caught time
his knife in Youth once more
still-water decay,
brackish trouble-maker
with tint of rouge and gray.

This school-yard tough
still picking on the corner weakling.
braggadocio and upstart
spoiling for a fight
first elbow up,
each foot in a fray.

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Page 22
CUBITS

A woman is a trough
hardly that -- a river,
a pond to sail a small boat thru,
rapids to manoeuvre.

A woman commandingly tall
receptive as water,
quicksilver to the light
yet mirages all.

Two cubits to an arm's length
a bridge to span,
virgin territory with
the compass needle jumping --
a plane dusting crops.

A woman once, parchment twice
warm treacle to the core --
a marshmellow for a heart.

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Page23
BUZZ PHRASE

Down on your luck
or, as they say, "financially embarrassed" ...
with little in the way of hope,
less palaver --
drifting in & out of theme parks not unlike
El Paso, Prairie Junction
between jobs, causes and wives...

letting "it all hang out", in the jumble of the moranese
letting despair and the pig iron law of economics
have their say --
shouting "moral support" in the face of the rocky
"well-wisher".

I read all the plots and each ends up as a grave...
once in a single afternoon I even gave up on
golddiggers
who, though just passing through meant dress rehearsal
for the bigger jive, "long_term"
and since when should "patching up and catching up"
make starry-eyed even that slip of a girl, commitment.

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Page 24
AMBERGRIS CITY

Felt no pain against the water,
the tea-cup sky was a turquoise colour in its wrath
illuminating ambergris city in spot checks below.

The sperm whale population was in decline.
Little or nothing remained of former commitments.
A bitter legacy consumed itself in half-truths
against the sound of upturned lies.

Winding alleys come as the conscience of well plaid cities.
are open zippers revealing the indecent poor.
The fire hydrant lives of cellar inhabitants strain
these urinals
for wretches sniffing out the edge of completed walls.

Gray nuisances, the men in asbestos overalls finding
their way
through the apricot fire of dark, eclipse Park Plazas
with the
stately elegance of empty dinner dishes or red trash
cans
against indentured snow.

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