when and where the chips fall, let ‘em
     I’ve already cashed out

sitting pretty on the bus bench outside
waiting for a spectrum busting horse to ride
into the technicolor sunset

   your diagnoses
    don’t worry
     me

from the bottom of a bottle
looking up
Lynnette says she’ll visit

   in a million years
    stuck inside this bottle rocket
   nowhere
  in a full house
good enough

in good company

My Valentine…

If not for you, how bleak my world would be
How dull my days without your easy charms
What empty hours if I did not see
Your smile, or feel the comfort of your arms.

What would I do if storms were at my door
Who would I turn to if the road grew rough
You were my hero and defender, I was sure
together, we would always be enough.

We stepped into the daylight hand in hand
a love affair that would not be denied
with challenges we could not understand
Prepared to face the future side by side.

You left me in the dust when you walked through that door You took a part of me that I may never get back I am broken throughout my entire soul My heart does not have a single love remaining for you It has all faded away  and youre responsible for that.

     I am uneven, better as an idea than a reality. I tangle
and mess up. I often split. You can’t depend on me for the job
interview or web site photograph.

If you try to hide me in scarves or hats,
     everyone knows I lurk underneath,
and we all know the power of a bad haircut.

No one believes you were just unlucky
     to get the stylist with bandaged fingers.

     As soon as people see me,
they’ll think you are homeless or disturbed.
At best, incompetent.

this house is a maw now he sits in the jaw and waits for a voice, now missing from the kitchen while for anyone who'll listen the sounds left to fill the space ring clear: passed around the back garden like a wake buffet a brick wall tennis ball bounce A sunny ricochet a sound to keep grief at bay to keep away the day we set the table in silence we pass lemonade line up stone swans in reverence leave the gate unlatched walk away hope the bricks soak up the shadows she left behind use them to shade the next kids whose laughter hits those walls and bounces off

by Bruce Boston and Robert Frazier

Years later we come back to find the fauna and flora
more alien than ever, the landscape unrecognizable,
the course of rivers altered, small opalescent lakes
springing up where before there was only underbrush,
as if the land itself has somehow changed to keep pace
with the metaprotean life forms which now inhabit it.

Here magnetism proves as variable as other phenomena.
Our compass needle shifts constantly and at random,
and we must fix direction by the stars and sun alone.

Brushfires



summer wears away at the desk in tea-glass rings

and discolored droplet craters

brushfires rage unchecked in chapter two

It must have rained
when she taught us.
There must have been
foggy mornings,
London damp and dismal
and the street lamps
fading out of sight.
But I remember only
sunlight on wooden desks;
and how I laid my head
on my arms and watched her
while she read to us,
the only time I remember
any grown-up
reading aloud to me;
and how I would have
given her a silver apple
if I had had one.


(First published in Ship of Fools)

Some are named for children,
taken by the government.

Others, after the glittering stars
who litter her magazine carpet.

A patchwork blanket in settling frost
to warm her hibernation.

If you saw them that way – cats and their lady –
you’d never guess what they’d do to survive

through all the long weeks as mail piles,
high enough for someone to notice.

I met a man, a kind man
A kind wife, a kind son,
A kind daughter of his own.
But the stars were not aligned
The stars were dust motes,
Emenations - flakes of skin.
Though words had brought me to him
Even words must one day fail.

Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down!