Name

My restless feather-picking cockatoo,
Can you tell why denial veils my ire
(In turn cloaking my fears; and those my shame)
And shame's shrouding my rusting grief? But you,
Confined inside a mesh—of metal wire—
Just raise your crest, that sulphur-yellow flame,

Lift up your wings, then start to pace your cell,
And squawk in bursts, as though your bill’s on fire;
My pet, enough! I care for you the same….
Perhaps beneath my grief some geysers spell
Love’s name!

Bygone Flames

Bigger than The Big Bang
its glib tongue still garbled
through history and sense
That cryptic cry of clang

So seemed to me their flame
Parents who bore us first
Was it of love or lust
Designless or with aim?

Four Haiku

#1
Seeking the famed sun,
fell off a fifty-foot cliff.
Rain-scented sandstone.

#2
My eyes turn cloudy
Our aging tree in the sun
A sour apple drops


#3
Rats chase each other
One stops and looks back at me
Black eyes in the snow


#4
Crunch of gold and flame.
Do not walk on dying leaves!
Autumn wind circles.

American Crow

So near a starved/sick American crow,
And spastic flaps of both her frosty wings— 
Perhaps a sign of life-force in passing—   
Beneath shade, of huddled slouching willows,
(that seemed concerned as if the young bird's folks),  
I stood, my back against the gnarled barks.
Unread are rimes God Almighty's composed.

Awash in flurry here was I at once 
In spry bodiless feathers, iced, rainbowed—
Perhaps those of a violet-green swallow—   
Tender as tulip petals, dewed berry; 
Or voiceless flame long sapped, and sewed long slow 
Into the seam of dark, the graceful corpse; 
by glacial gusts anatomized, unmourned. 

The Little Mermaid

The dripping black descends her back.
The blue lips (painted onyx black)
against her battered knees they rub—
But who is babbling in the tub? 
I don't recall the drowning but 
the ocean raging flaming red.

I hovered high above the flesh. 
The sirens; flash; then silence 'gain.  
That scent of skin, dissected fresh.   
The little mermaid...living dead.