Does this pen still write without me? One can hope.
There are buried stories worrying away:
On the forest edge a wolf pack chews a rank rope
that frays like rotting morays. Aspens sway.

It’s a Rocky Mountain Trinidad or conversely
a Caribbean peak beneath the sea
where fish and fauna interchange perversely
in the faux persona I imagine’s me.

Were the music other, would I order cava
and cavort with phantoms only I can see?
A Turkish ballad scars the redneck badlands
in the Smith and Wesson wasteland I call Mind:
When I mainline sugar my eyes conjure a Jesus
who drains the fountain that De Soto sought.

Norwegians drink at home from six till midnight
then go out dancing, singing, fighting Loki
for a last dance with Valkyries who will pay
for their twenty-bucks-a-bottle barroom beer.

On the 21st of December 2012, if it is still on, we’re going to an end-of-days party. Thinking of those misusing various modes of religion to profit from people’s fears, this End-of-Days archbishop’s soliloquy sprang as it were to mind then to computer.

I like the heft and sounds of ‘protoplasm’.
The fact few ken its meaning just endears
itself to us who earn food from religion.

When churches churl and minor prelates spasm
it is good we can fall back upon our rears
and public fears and take as alms a pigeon

that Cook roasts for us, giving its phantasm
to God above who loves a dove and cheers
us on, as smearing lips with grease and smidgen

of toasty bird, we chase crowds to the chasm
of the End of Days. We profit from their fears
and substitute for reasoning a pidgin

language blending piety, sarcasm
and awe for a made-up deity who repairs
to a made-up sanctuary playing chicken.

The dog remembered days
Of hunting rabbits in the dunes
His human hailing him from far behind

The man remembered runaways
And a puppy he had lost
Beneath a passing milk truck’s muddy wheels

The rabbits resurrect a multigenerational myth
Of being hunted by a yelling dog

Old man dances feeling pretty good
All the things considered he feels good
Dances for ten minutes flaps flat down

Lies on the floor considering next moves
Lies there thinking he will have next moves
Simply cause he always so far has

Call the ambulance and tell them do not come
Tell those medics don’t they bother come
Old man roll over get back up and dance

Honkytonk pianos take on new chores
Honkytonk pianos give old lady mores
None of them read much, sing old people blues

Slate the wedding for an outside afternoon
on the rolling lawn beside the cemetery.

She planned her next wedding for outside
on the lawn of the old cemetery,
thanked botox she looked like a young bride
and chewed chalk to caulk dysentery.

Her sisters donated their caldron
and assembled a boys’ choir of bats
who rehearsed a new medley of hearse songs
and looked smart in wingtips and spats.

The groom was a problem: she’d not one.
Getting knotted seemed out of her ken
though in all of her ages and aeons
she had potted and parboiled more men

than a vampire’s had dinners, and sinners
had figured in all of her tales.
Her horoscope said she’d find winners
among royals. She flew off to Wales.

The watched horsehead dissolves, not needing eels.
It is just his coffee grounds dried in the cup
and while rinsing out the mud-hued mug he feels
as if redemption were stress-free as waking up.

But it ís not, he remembers. Memory sucks
him from this morning to one years ago.
The cup breaks where he throws it. The cat ducks.
The brilliant day has many hours to go.

Outside two suns are shining, one reflected
from the lake that’s calm as glass. He wants to fill
his cup, but it is shattered, cat-deflected
from the sofa he had aimed for. The light chill

of last evening says goodbye, goes up in smoke
and the cat slips off a-birding and the suns
merge into one as old emotions choke
the man: a name not heard for decades stuns

him into seeking cover till he twigs
that the voice calling out must be his own.
While the houseboat lists alarmingly he digs
through the rotting deck boards that the suns have shown.