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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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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WINCING
You can't go back,
to Love, a home.
memories of Pearl Bailey
even a scatterbrained job
curled like a Morning Glory
about the ribs of day.
Everyone repeats not going back.
A sly ripple on the cape of wind,
peaking with
absentminded glee,
into that bulge from within
your past, beyond your left arm,
called "before".
Dismissing angels, refusing to
court hardship, not to mention
wincing that comes from attaching
the mouth too fiercely on privale parts
and all flasks with firm memory;
wheeling drunkenly on her thought.
her sayings, sculling backwaters of your mind
with little fingers each repeating
sane warnings.
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