November 2012

From flowering gnarled trees
they come, weighing down
the branches, dropping
with a soft sound onto
the loamy ground. Falling
and fallen. That’s a pome.

Common as an apple. Or
more rare. A quince or pear.
A knife paring away soft skin
exposes tart...

No other song
                    or swoop (part
       quiver, part swivel and
             plash) with
  tour de force
stray the course note
       liquefactions
   (its new,
bawdy air an
       aria hangs in) en-
thralls,
             trills, loops, soars,
                    startles, out-warbles,
out-brawns, more
       juicily,
                    lifts up
the dawn, outlaws from
                        sackcloth,...

1. HELL

You’d have to be as crazy as Dante to get those down,
the infernal hatreds.
Shoot them. Shoot them where they live
and then skip town.

Or stay and re-engineer
the decrepit social contraption
to distill the 200-proof
elixir of fear

and...