Canterbury

Guessing
the policeman’s sign
traffic light and sweeping along the street
tight rope sun dance.

Now she sits
knitting a conversation
from the piece of memory
she once knew.

Congenially adds a thank you
hand flat against the table, bows.
I thought I borrowed beauty only a minute ago
strands.

But the man
across and a little out of place,
casts sideward glances longingly
runs his finger along the glass.

Brimmed hat
holding stare
back and forth
he finds the broken key.

Piano out of tune
smoking cigarette on the ash tray.
Finish the song, take another sip
the condescending secrets and exhale.

But the man
listens to her explanations
leaning slightly
taken aback.

Guessing
grasps her forbidding hand
and changed the tense
walking backward along the hurried road.

Allusions

Seyton
I am lost to you now
poisoned and dying
The bitter taste of hollow words
runs over my lips and I am
thirsty.

Seyton
Why do you pierce my hands with discomfort?
And only your own
never mine
never mind
I fall
into
tomorrow.

I grasped a bough of dying wood
that was left on the heath
and Hecate smiled
Somewhere inside a lighted window
I saw her
can I enter thy court?
Oh, courteous courtier
spin sweet sin away
Three and thrice more
until the month has played out.

Faded eyes
No
Bright
deep
and lively.
I can only recall what is now
but then they were blue
deep
and inside a smile.
They curled up at the edges
black
a smile.

Hecate
Goddess and mistress
my desire papered windows
and I was left to wonder
if it were spring.
Spring has come and laid its hand across my
smile.

Angry
Disavowed
and I did declare the failure of prophets
sitting on park benches
with blankets upon their laps
completing crosswords in ink
and all of the words were wrong.

I am the mistress of the movie screen
she cried into the wall.
And I heard
somewhere between breath and sleep
the faint breaking
of her voice
Pleasure
in replicated scenes
that danced before my eyes

Seyton
No more
my friend, no more
my fiend, farewell
Departing
into the emptiness
and watching Rasputin drink.

Ambivalence

A new series of poems, though none of it is recent.

Ambivalence

“I am a dreamer of past constancy
though the floor is often ambivalent
and I am seldom sane.”

The cool whisper of vacant-eyed saviors
pray and lead on
call the tune and pray.

A hymn came through the open doorway
“The dreamer speaks and ‘tis gone.”
Sorrowful swelling of the breast

The cross-eyed lady in waiting
gazed longingly, longingly
at her Shepherd still bound to his sheep.

His hands tied in golden rosaries
the sullen buried beneath the weak
the innocent are easy to kill, though hard to forget

He lost the count long ago.
In a blatant confessional
her soul was mislaid.

“I am a dreamer,”
she sighed through the screen
a virginal veil to hide the rust,

“I linger at the window
the stained glass at dawn
and I seldom see the sun.”