pagan icons

Papa

you caught her
perturbed on your river rock

smelling of Sobranie tobacco and salt

I still have a red square
of your flannel fishing vest

your pipe collection
went to firstborn son

his Tudor bride blooms
roses—silver shot with gold

but we both know, you and I,
that green is the eternal pink

icons are born; they blossom
then die.

Life

is a fish, hooked and misbegotten.

Pleonexia In Petrograd

each winter,
Princess hems gleam higher,
the luster of pearl on rose,
sheen of ever-youngening skin

snow-globe dreams
tumble, shaken by faceless
fathers and fast-forwards
to the taiga of babushkas

dolls within dolls,
lacquer smiles
the cracking of the world into two

and the opening of New Year gifts:

techno-clones—the spit of silk.

Croatia, Mon Amour

Ah, to be so
unloved

defies defiled
memory,

albeit collective
or solitary.

My skin
is pale with a tint
of ballerina pink

My weapon of choice:

infidelity.

Random Sunday Musings

(Just Because)

My hair is too long, attention span
quite the reverse

driving skills:
atrocious

grammar and syntax: decent plus

interests:

Vladimir Putin and Yushenko, Anne Boleyn, 11th sin, today and may be tomorrow

Crisp spelling appears lettuce green and bland

no contraband
no reprimand

even as I lie
dying, pale mermaid hair

I long
for your sticky betrayal.

"They" say,

Trust him not; he is a quicksilver fox.

I say,

I trust him
to kill me over and over
and over

again.

land of worms

in the land of wormy worms,
you clench all force
to be unearthed.

Dreamy Dreams Defence

In defence—
I was always and only absent,
my intent spent

upon defunct centuries
and ancestors

who never saw my negligence.

behold your bloated ghost

that bloated ghost
is a floater who boasts
the palest eyes in the kingdom of green

mine are alive and I pause

in the memory of the Boleyn-Tudor legacy

how Ann would have lost her sallow
head again to view her daughter as aged

ill-tempered harridan. I lose sight and sound

of continent: old worlds turn new then await
an alchemy.

that sweet-tart instant before
the sword descends. Friends and foes

scatter, dandelion dust, yet Marie est malade,

and one ought to invest: reams and skeins of Rumplestiltskin
gold. I admit.

There was never a Veronique at that court—no truth
to abort.