Pirate Treasure Map

From sun-bleached McAllister
where agapanthus sprouts purple
globes from jade-leafed settings
nestled among granite blocks
(the only shade under maple trees)
walk seventeen blocks.
Thirty-three paces South, one for each year,
up and down three hillocks,
"X" marks the spot
where God has arrayed
in gutter sludge and plastic fragments
an ant-scaled scape of odd
cigarette butts and crumpled pale
eucalyptus leaves, forming
notations -- a proof
of the unified theory of everything.
If Arthur looked, he'd likely see
the Virgin Mary, with the same face
she made when warning him
of psychic vampires and mafia.
Move quick, for it will shift and change
with a breeze and a few
minutes'
time, and after high fog rolls in;
sunlight will have made
all the difference.

Ruminant Cynosure

Honey, I'm in the middle
of something. You trouble me
for eschewing the thimble
as I thread a button
on a thrift store-bought jacket,
trouble me because the jacket's not worth it.
I assure you, because it came
with the replacement sewn
on the breast pocket tag,
God must want me to fix it.
You scoff at any notion of God,
but I admonish you that I found Him,
on shelves lined with half-burned
candles faced with nuestra señora,
in a tiny plastic dashboard Jesus.
How else could I find peace
with our tacky golden Buddha?
なもきえほう is hardly enough.
God is everywhere -- even where he's not.
I do without the thimble
because I cannot do without
the several pinprick agonies its absence affords,
or the satisfaction of a job half-assedly done.
Black thread, tortoiseshell button,
fine, black and white herringbone cotton,
H&M by way of Goodwill.
Comfort in the void --
the thrill of the inability to know
whether the snooty coat-check boy
will see the hairy helter-skelter,
the black widow leg tangle
in my repair. Beware
the knots -- I am Gordian
and cannot be untied.
What a maddening world this must be
for the righteous and bloodthirsty:
no one a pure victim,
none purely perpetrator.
It's enough to make my judges
kill the jury and prosecution's
witnesses before turning their blades
on themselves. They never get around to me.
Dogs stop in their tracks
and greet me as an old friend,
tongue on the nose
and gleaming eyes.
A million minds trail down the sidewalk
in my wake, burbling like a stream
iridescent as a grease-slick
in the rain; they trail
in a geometric progression:
first two, then four, then eight,
a coruscant wedding train.
I shall descend now the staricase,
bovine, dull, wet and heavy
In this span, the bread has done baking.
A piece of tobacco alights on my palm
and crawls. I blow it off,
lest I interrupt the life
of a midge blessed with so little to begin with.
I have found tenacity
in the letting-go bag,
burlap and frayed, it sags with jargon:
"Green thumbs lack white knuckles."
Enduring as lead, porous as a volcanic island,
I am eternal, as solid
and unprepossessing as Everest, yet I've
outpaced you. And you cannot fathom
why I refuse to don a thimble.
I cannot reflect you right now, my darling:
I am and always will be
in the middle of something.

Rainbow Brite at the Four Horsemen Café

Pour a glass for him, our guest,
the harbinger of doom.

"I am the tender of weeds.
I coaxed each one to bloom."

(We are served at a rough-hewn pine table
under the summer-heavy wisteria bower.)

Our salads are of the finest
dandelion and nasturtium,

served topped by a lavender
hibiscus flower and sprinkled

with a mysterious rosehip vinaigrette.
Let us sit here for an hour

and talk of apocalypse
and April showers.

Off The Cuff

Shoots of clover and grass
fumble upwards through the cracks
in the sidewalk --
weeds always grow back.

Lickety-split: remember the girls,
the tattooed girls
bearing parcels in their shoulder sacks?
Godspeed through the intersection

Running red lights, now black
as our eyes rise to Dutch-angled
bits of skyline -- Corinthian columns
on edifices mouldered and stained

By time. It is mine and yours.
They will never define us, those men
in boardrooms and slick, gray suits.
An alarm, a love of life, croons.

Eros in Abeyance

A shadow graduates to black
among the slack folds rippling
at the hem of her dusty rose gown.

The gown falls open mid-thigh
as a dimpled knee bends, folding
over his naked left leg.

His calloused hand, burrs on the thumb,
scratches gently down skin -- cocoa butter
and cinnamon. The smell is genuine.

And warm. The old television glows blue.
Later, she will dust its wooden cabinet.
For now, a tense rest -- gods in lust.

Recovery

Somewhere off the Maine coast
may there be a lighthouse for me
to live in -- for two years,
maybe three.

There I will write letters and the sea
will rush in and crash halfway
up the red and white spiral-striped
masonry.

The skies above will pall and darken
and when I've finished my essay
on the beauty of solitude someone will
come. Or three

To carry me off in a shower
of sparks to otherworlds
and elsewhens. I will see stars then
when I from Diana flee.

"Inform Elizabeth That..."

...I would live on this little island,
flat from North to South
and from West to East.
It bears only an orchard
of apples and a statue
of nymphs of the Hesperides --
perhaps a relief
carved in a grotto
near a garden-bound hut.
Butterflies, small and yellow
will rise up from knee-high grass
and flutter above the white-capped sea.