where’s the money shot

sunny with a real feel of 5
degrees Fahrenheit

another cruel moment in April
gets trapped under ice

no algae
nothing’s blooming

good or bad
here where the climate trickster

of our own making
never sleeps

Frankenstein’s monster drinks
from the fetid future

has not yet learned
how to lie

he won’t open his eyes underwater
he won’t tell us what he hears

in all that muffled blue
his silence is damaged

if he would declare his damage
it would spill then bleed

into the fibers
of a wrongly-folded map

someone has abandoned
on the frozen ground

remember those

pockets of jamais vu
dot the landscape

with crimson-tinted notes
in the minor key

no one asks to be
the hero image

that spans an iridescent bridge
to nowhere

Singles

Hubs and nests and courses
and old men fishing
in the Mississippi
too close to the urban fray

to be anything but
what they are. I’m the fringe
life centrally located. City hermits
will not unite. But on anonymous

jaunts down avenues
going north/south, we nod
as we pass one another
in steady streams.

From West 15th

In rain and close
air, the empty park haunts
her view of what could
have been. More solitude
than romance, determination
not despair, yet this damp
quietude distorts all patterns. Subdued
till a lone man trots along
the southern path. A leather jacket
will need peeling
in sudden heat. And still
she can’t see where ghosts go
to sweat it out.

Efflux

A sharp ripeness that finally surfaces
in the thaw is not yours. You are solitude
well-spun. Shoes collect beneath
your feet to remind you
how slowly things change—till suddenly long
boots make no sense. Rarely do you exit high
lonesome. And to admit it—never.

Gets Away with It

This exquisite solitude
is my ambrosia, soma, cool
breeze coaxing a hammock
on a crest overlooking
a breaking ocean.

Acquired over years
of painful resistance,
even more gruesome
dependence
on a man—any man—this pleasure

dome is equipped with a retractable roof,
an observatory
for observing the hems

of gods. Some of them slightly torn.

Vitamin E

My thighs have turned
a bloodless white. A dry
heaving wind Marilyn
Monroes my dress. A tiny
globe exposed, I walk inside 

city limits—checking,
checking, checking
those boundaries I installed
with bare feet
and the promise of late 

July rain. A voice
bellows and gusts
from the bottom
of my back
pack.  I won’t 

reach it
in time. Solitude has sprung
loose again.

Guardian Angel with a Blues Harp

—not a lute. Storms
have passed. Acoustic mass
wraps black
and tangles up inside 

the brick wall. Some of it will seep
through. More will remain the ivy
of darkness outside 

my window. Alone, I risk 

the walk outside at night
toward a museum, fuzzed-out
guitar and drums loop
around a gallery 

on an upper floor. Alone, I imagine 

I will peer over
a cliff, will listen
for human voices amidst the ocean 

roar in Big Sur,
will hope to see an otter,
will hope to hear some small sign
that you’re out there watching 

over me without knowing
that’s what you do. I keep
my distance—solitude
is my drug 

of choice. There’s nothing left to fear.