SCENIC
Yesterday I was an open field,
cosmos-filled.
Distant horizons misted in all directions.
The face of the early-summer sun wore its smiling-every-day forecast.
(You said the sight of my noontime sundial made you giggle and blush.)
And the wind combed through my hair and through the chickadees’ pinions.
I had many solstices ahead.
Today I am a closed room. It is airless.
(You claimed you got bored winding my grandfather’s clock.)
The vases are empty, the dark curtains drawn against winter’s albino glare,
and the parakeets and hair molted long ago.
I’ve left many solstices behind.
Tomorrow soon I’ll be an ocean.
30 YEARS’ WAR
I mistook silence for license.
Thus began our war of attrition.
I multiplied my divisions,
you withdrew and withdrew
behind towers and minefields
(addictions, subtractions).
The assault against inaction
saw stalemate not ceasefire.
RULE UNDER LAW
Riding my circuit in the bayou
I wondered what made the mama-san
tout your assets and value so much.
But I understood why when I saw you,
O, titular Queen of Amazons!
And then you dubbed me the Hanging Judge
after we retired to our chamber.
The unthroned queen and the disrobed judge
weighed majesty and jurisprudence
and ruled that no appeal from danger
and no loss of honor or of blood
would overrule our love’s innocence.
In the regular session to come,
accepting only the guilty pleas,
we presided over the night court.
The scale of justice under our thumbs,
we sentenced love’s arsonists and thieves
to life at hard labor, no parole.
LOVE AND SCIENCE
Wasn’t it Einstein
who gave precision
to relativity?
They say a life without love is a cataclysm.
Why didn’t Einstein
make love
less variable?
Wasn’t it Newton
who took force
from an apple?
The first discovery of love is like baptism.
Why couldn’t Newton
delineate
passion’s energy?
Wasn’t it Fleming
who wrested the cure
from the mold?
The loss of ardor is psychic catastrophe.
Did Fleming know
there is no relief
from lust?
Didn’t Einstein
define love as
space, time, and power?
The persistence of such love is a masterpiece.
Didn’t he actually posit Eros
as mutual carnality squared?
Dumpster Fire Press 