Scylla and Charybdis

Insomnia_____blue-gray
nimbus of dawn
__________filter in.
Coffee stench_____anchorman's
voice down the hall.
Do not stall
_____for more time.
What the gods allot
_____is all.
Idiotic_____to want more.
_____What?  Would you share it
with those who don't want you there?
_____Clockwork and springs
tick-tock in the wall.
_____A rush of blood from the head.
__________The ebbing stare.
A glimpse, dutch-angled
_____of a departing Florsheim heel.
It follows a gloating smirk
_____and makes a hellish deal.

Conspiracy

We steal each moment in life
from the trickster who killed
his mother.  He strangled her
with the apron strings

he never untied from himself.
Delft crockery in the hutch,
a school picture on the shelf.
We dine at a formica and chrome

table saved from the fire
that claimed his Grandmother's house.
"Why?" I asked him on our behalf.
He simply smiled, flat surety in his eyes.

"Surprises are in store for all of you,"
he said.  He led me out the front
door.  The yard looked forlorn; it lacked
flower, grass, tree.  Nothing

had ever grown there.  As for him,
Fate had been neither cruel nor kind.
He always got away with it,
the man who meddled with our minds.

Laugh Shack

Red velvet
_____blue haze
curtain raised --
_____stage veiled:
cloud of smoke.
_____A cough.
glass clinks.

_____"No sir, tell us
what you really think.
See folks, that's why we have
a two drink minimum:
because we care.  It helps you cope
with dickheads like these.
_____"Everybody's a comedian."

A gouge
_____catches my
eye, betraying

the tabletop as
cheap particle board,
not pine.

The next act's
the best of the night.
The only two who laugh:
me and a bottle-blonde whore.
Her date's an off-duty cop.
They sit two tables to the right.
He has a crestfallen look,
as though he'd expected more.

Potala

Rustle_____saffron.
_____Gossip:
whispers_____between
_____brothers
cousins_____former
_____neighbors.

_____Himalayan air
cold_____thin_____pure.

Spinning_____prayer
_____wheels.  Hum
sutras_____sung from
_____throats warmed
by tea_____by sun.
_____Millions

_____scaled Sumeru
grain_____by_____grain

white, cobalt, umber, gray

grain_____by_____grain
painstakingly

______draw a mandala,
then breathe it away.

Mizu

Comfort_____money spent.
"Give me."

By the stopped watch
__________hairline fracture in crystal
a silhouette burnt into brick
vague shape hunched
_____arms raised.

Black steel bent against gray
__________rain on ribs, rivets.

Parching thirst, a curse
_____on the men who dealt death
_____on those to whom they dealt it.

In the language babies speak to mothers.

______Vermillion, gold
pink, white
______sway in the breeze:
chain of paper cranes.

Alms begged over the squeal
and rumble of intercounty trains.

Phlegethon

Round rafts drift, onyx.
From above, sunspots.

Passengers on each
cloaked in fuligin.

Invisible, ghosts.
Though they stomp their feet

the craft do not rock.
How they bleat in pain --

the heat.  The raspy
voice of a choir boy

extinguished too soon
inks in wisps:  grace notes

fluttering above
red rippled magma.

Interminable
when one considers

__________the Styx.

Echo and Narcissus

She shrank to a fragment
of what I had said.
My sweet turtledove:
I struck her meat
from out her shell,
I spoke in her head.
In retaliation
she gave me hell.
I am a corpse for years
crying tears that run
into a cobblestone well
from which Jack and Jill,
toothless and grim, draw
as they hum Dixieland jazz
to themselves.  A voice
inspected me to death.
It found the hole in my head
we've looked through since '09.
She threaded a clothesline
through it and wheeled me
out to the middle of the alley
where I dry under a farther sun.
I twist in the wind.
I dream I speak to her
through the empty can
at my end of the string.
When the real telephone
really rings, the voice
who answers will sing
God's word in a golem's mouth.
Hear the crowd shout!
It's the amazing Mr. Inside-Out!
See how he doubts
this reality where everyone
is smarter than he.