Author: Michael

The birds think it’s spring
With their mad chattering
OM winter is yet to dip his bowels
In the cowl of snows

With time a detriment
Drill a safe hole beneath the lobe
Using included instrument
Insert the plug
And be drugged by the kaleidoscope
Of imagery
Free fall into a place of roiling image-o creation
Remove the middle(man) of screen and Sound
For the direct line
Into corpus callosum

This is Gertrude, 77
She shoplifts all her Christmas gifts
For her daughter’s growing brood
Though wrinkled benign
With gentle lively eyes
And soft knit cap
She’s sneaky sly and done the time
Using her shopping cart like a walker
She slows near a big talker
And whisks under her folds
Whatever his cart holds
Blindfolded at home she manages to wrap it
And signs it to herself, Gertrude from her mysterious Santa
This is what it’s come to each Xmas eve
Her colorful lights and booming merry corny tunes meant to deceive
And this year Sheila and all will get nothing
In the new year she’ll go straight, pay full price
From a job at Nickels N Dice

The drifters were always coming up
As suspects in local crimes
Patchy bearded, bleary eyed
We’d always scratch our chins “possibly”
Before they weren’t exactly cleared
But slipped off on obscure trails
Or the rails
To reappear in someone else’s mystery.

Does she really want to know
Her senses overwhelmed
By such vitriol and blather
She can’t really bear
The kind words
Where do you go
Covered in jewelry
And a sparkly shawl
Faced with the fury of it all
A worn, gentle face
But beneath
A desire for her to boil to a nub in her bathtub
Outside her half open window
A red hat blows

Sure enough
There’s a hole in the donut
Through which
The world sprinkled and glazed
Wavers at teeth and lips.

Across the universe
With no mailing address
Looking upon you
Through vastness
And strewn stars
Past the directing hand
Filigree
Connecting
The eyes, the eyes
Extra-stretchy limbs
Absolved by time
And dimension
To appear
At the end of a bed
And pull
A forgot
To mention.

Ruff he would say
From the frayed poster
And humble brown eyes behind the shag
What would it take
For your tail to wag

From yester-night
Woozy with light
Knocking about
The fathoms of dark
It was
Full-buzz
Now slumping
Weary
Of mad underlings
Scattered
Sparking

Give me the phone
He didn’t squeal yet
It has the feel of a set up
The Pink Pig
Where the deal’s goin’ down

Gimme might talk
Or he might have flown the coop
He ain’t dim He might be transparent
Have him run a little errand
A Loop de loop

Gimme might talk
Stick an apple in his mouth
He gonna roast