Feste's Lute

Kangaroo Courtesans

“Thus,”
the macabre
swabs sobbed,
“it’s just.”

Taken as written,
this plea amounts
to pence.

Mastiffs looming
o’er assail as
spies survey
the rigging.

Great gavels grovel
and bailiffs have
no sense.

But she, an orderly,
winced through
the proceeding.

Fickle

The collapse,
once done,
spun glass
across our brow.

Quicksilver cascades
caressed her cheek.

In smoke and flame
fair faces play
through pools
of recognition
and retreat.

One is just
the same.

Neither needed
northern graces.
Identities rephrased.

Arch Text

Contorted resorts,
a gabled court—
baffles sate the blaze.

Solace for stair steps,
oak grown emphatic,
chimneys for the chaise.

Winds ascend toward
dark screen doors,
flues forsake the flame.

Fame

It falls from his eyes
with the patience
of a midwife,
like the beard from his chin —
His headstone fixed
long before
it comes to rest.

Atuned

The room is let,
the strings rent.
We fret along branches,
chord rapt,
undiminished.

Tuning

When the strings are cut
they curdle in suspension.

In this way
notes are taken,
driven crying into silence.

Consumed, augmented
self-regard,
betraying fair attentions.

Page 4, Paragraph 1

“A horse, on course,”
he muttered and
split the binding,
severed the syllabus spine.
“Wide rule, wide rule
and only ink.”
A cautious way to think.
For the brink of
sadness sails
far past an asses’ braying,
assaying risks there
for the taking
and mists that fill
the bay to breaking.

Say It Back

Tell my kids
I stole a sampo
in my heady days
of youth.
Killed a beast
and beat a deadly
rhythm on its bones.
Swallowed, shipwrecked,
swept away by eagles
if we were running late…
A better fate than this,
better far than
toiling in a mist
of mediocrity.

Yggdrasil

We wrote it down,
untwisting mists
around our minds.

Across the steppes,
along the staircase,
upon the branches.

Knee deep in reeds
past sleeping jaws,
on death of silence.

In search of the brilliance
stolen ages before.

White-washed Tombs

The bleeding reached
our ceiling with a leap,
seeping up the cracks,
tracing shades on palisades.
The impact shook our racks
and left us seeming
leached of every tint,
never a hint at scheming
or anything off-color.