Elegy for Living

Professor of crackling life,
Spokesman of camaraderie and trade
You barter stability for solidarity.
You pace, driven, wiping your beak
On greasy feathers, soldiering on.
You scale twisting, white-washed bark,
And upon your arrival, you are free.

You juggle eggs, and allow
Each one to sink,
A lipid mess on the sidewalk.
Leave the multitasking to me.
You take the stairs in leaps
And trip, springing to
The summit, overexerted.

Your tenet of simplicity
A freeze-dried excuse
For equal and opposite gluttony.
The symptoms have been diagrammed,
Medically suffocated and immersed.
You love, practice duplicity,
Deface and devour me.
You prick lacy corners of me
Long-lain bandaged, for fear.

Your nape is cold and wet, sonorous,
Lips and eyes seal wet as petals
I read your couplet,
Erased but for the semicolon
That is dusk, a wrought-iron outpost.

You are but a madman,
A tightrope walker,
You trade the common need for love
For self-deprecation and sedation.
You have been coddled, roots-up.
Stop off in the lot and come to dinner.
I will feed you that which I cherish.

We are both scaffold and buttress,
Springing at the sky, made of stone
Avoiding jet-engines with lungs of turpentine
I am in rapid pursuit, taking this on.
Please, wind me and set me rolling.
Our brains are novels, battered textbooks.
For now, we suckle at the garden hose,
Cultivating green and waxen fancy.

We will curl underfoot, brittle, by day's end.

Life on the Wave

Through tilted universe aquamarine
Wing on by my sweet, sweet child
Traversing lands blistering static
Swaddled in bitter hues-
Claws in her flesh and beak full of sand
He plunges toward the pulsing tundra.

We save the world, we eradicate falsehoods
Charred and stained glass divine
God is the capacity to create
Frothily dancing in a fertile brain
Tomorrow's child and coordinated demise
Simple shadow-invisible plate glass barriers

Gumming on slivers of atmospheric ambition
You are heat and boiling euphoria
Electric breeze in your hair and justice on your brow-
Kiss me with the fullness of your mouth
Carry me into the boundless surf that faints at your fingertips
And restore earth's waning faith in love.