It’s Marching past you

March 2017  – Did you ever get back that hour we lost together once upon a time ?

Time after time…..Time to go…….No time for this…..Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ into the future…..The time is right…..This is not a good time…..The Terrible Now is the time ……No time like the present…..Take time to smell the roses…..Time will tell……If the third time is a charm, is the fourth a curse ? Time is of the essence…..Time heals all wounds……Only time can heal a broken heart…..So many [insert your own word], so little time…..Running out of time……It is just a matter of time……Passing time……Killing time…….Timing is everything….It is about time….Time of your life…..Time’s a wasting…..All in good time….Time marches on your face and all over your ass…Desperate times…….May you live in interesting times….It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…..Time is money, but your account is overdrawn…..Treading  time….Your  time has come….All the time…End of times ….One at a time….  Time ‘s up…..Time is not your friend…..Time together….time apart…..somewhere.

Daylight Stealing Time

 

So we lose a little time

in the wee hours tonight

We steal the hour here.

Conspire to hide.

 

O Please don’t wonder where.

 

C’mon…

Squirrel away an hour in secret

Pull backwards at the hands of the clock face.

Tick along with me.

 

Let’s make the red finger talk

as it passes us by again and again.

 

Tonight we turn back time

Won’t you turn back some time with me.

Like crisp clean chilly starched sheets.

Peel away the day

and slip in between.

 

Won’t you turn your back on some time with me

upon that maybe once perhaps we just might agree.

 

We might steal that time

hide in the lost hour

put it away somewhere

where they’ll never find it

never even miss it.

 

In the cool clear evening

after all the daylights busy color has faded

and all that is left is just us

clearly a jail break

a common escape

is in progress.

 

I hear sirens in the distance.

I see sirens in your eyes

They report an all points bulletin.

The authorities are baffled.

As we speak

Roadblocks are being planned.

 

Officers will produce snapshots

of our expired images

The ones we once looked like then

in the silence of the hours

we stole.

 

Our crime

is public knowledge.

The purpose of the theft

was always open

to common conjecture.

The motive attributed

to persistent desire.

 

It is after all

the only clues

we will leave them with

even if

our fingerprints

are all over each other.

After we are all over everything.

 

Won’t you turn your back

on some time with me

upon that maybe

just once perhaps we might agree.

 

To get away with

one secret perfect crime.

 

 

Spring 99/05 Attitude house

 

Recent work- & some selected March fragments from past collections

 

The thaw you never saw

 

The streets that evening

Ran loose grey gutter sluice

As the temperature rose blossoms

Definite season in neon curb pools

That first empty page in the next notebook

Used to shake you- conspire to define

That shadow you might cast if any light

Happened to find you.

 

Admit it at last

Written on note of the next singing line

It May or May not in December return to you.

Or even you to it on the end North Fork

Where you have this cameo appearance

The years taking you to task and

Re-gift in retread stuffing her stocking

with all the ghosts that you managed to out run

Briefly

as they were running just as fast from you in the other away.

 

Still- they get crossed up still thinking

Can we still steal seconds between us

3/2017

*

Fragments of the March

 

Light upon the lake

Waves frozen in mid-break

 

Broken Shafts of weak March sun

newly poured upon cracked and

shattered sheets of hyper-white

entrenched ice

a history of persistent bitter air

trapping flowing waters still born

beneath.

 

Light upon the Lake

waves frozen in mid-break

 

Barely Marching sun

arrested impressions

strange frigid contours

rivets of pressure

compacted tighter

isobars deceptive surface

unlikely to support any weight

 

Yet enough to entrap

a fool’s misstep

 

Light upon the Lake

Waves frozen in mid-break.

 

3/2011

 

Of texture and Color

 

Waiting in the door

the bartender with some

exasperation shrugged

all I heard was a spicy bloody Mary.

 

I nodded in agreement and immediately wrote down

You change the pens color in me.

 

It was the crème feel to the page

somewhere in the sheep and oil skin

 

To the touch that defines the lines content

in context calling in a fluid hue

all that two parallel paths

can carry between them

all they can contain

in the ear that listens

closely for what the eyes sees

left for you upon

the creme of the page.

 

You can’t touch color

or so they say.

 

However the request to bathe

in tone and shade is to extend

to reach out the hand and try

 

Touch were all the colors

never answer to their proper names

and refuse to simply run out and dry.

 

Perhaps then it is that desire

to request the color of the pen to change

is what so very few can do for each other

-to each other.

 

No one chooses anything here

The first glace into the others face

that rings the bell or

reverberation between

the four eyes looking into

the creme of the page

as it goes……………..ding.                                                      3/11

 

 

Mad March World

 

In this light

March simply has

no where to go

but……on.

 

The step in the day

a longer presence

of illumination into

the afternoon later now

every new year born

in this same way.

 

There is this sense of urgency

a sort of headless Madness

that ignites

brittle tree limbs to

fan fine struck fingers

in complicated silhouette

 

flung across the horizon

like a bottle of India ink

spilled and splattered

upon a pale blue sky page.

 

I send these words

mere reflection

auditory stenography

purely dependent

on perception systems

beyond my grasp or control

 

Along the prescribed channels

as the pale blue light

drains the light

from the sky’s page.

Sometimes Grief -barks up the wrong tree   2012