Storm Front [Free Verse]

Rain is coming.
I can smell its sweet whiff on the breeze.

A storm prowls out there
beyond my eyes power to see.

But dark clouds hunker in the fore:
the storm's vanguard.

The birds know it's coming.
They've vacated the skies
to...
I know not where. 

Many Worlds [Free Verse]

Fictional cities pile upon each other,

spreading like blood puddles 
until they spill into yet others
at their amorphous edges.

And distinction is lost --
homogeneity wins --

but that lysergic sadness remains.

Westward Run [Free Verse]

Put the sun at your back
and
run headlong toward the darkness.

Killing days at record speed,
leaning into the terminus,

and you wake up in the light
and 
prepare for another westward run.

Possibilities [Free Verse]

Possibility.

That which is not,
but could be:

in the future, or
in a world as feasible as our own.
(perhaps more so?)

When is a possibility a reality?

It may not be a reality
unless - and until - it comes to be,

and, yet, might be a basis of reality,
decisions are made on assumptions
that a possibility
has high probability 
of becoming reality. 

I see kids playing 
and feel the expanding field
of possibility, 

and wonder when it starts to shrink,
to collapse?

When & why
does possibility die?

Elephantine Baobab [Free Verse]

It's called 
Hatiyan-ka-Jhad
because it looks like 
a huddled herd of elephants --
not only in its corpulence
but also with its rough, gray skin.

So rotund at its base
that it's hard to figure
how its slowly slimming upward taper 
can come to twiggy ends,
and not be a mile tall.

The branches are overly muscular, 
like a bodybuilder who got carried away,
moving from strong and vigorous 
into the domain of science fiction mishap.

It has its own mythology -- 
multiple creation tales about 
how its seed got from Madagascar
to the middle of India half a millennium ago:
tales of fakirs and royal envoys.

It's even been said that the Forty Thieves,
the ones who tormented Ali Baba,
used its hollow as their cache cave.

But it refuses to respond to "Open Sesame" --
so I guess we'll never know.

Tree of a Thousand Twigs [Free Verse]

When monsoon rains soaked the soil,
that old tree toppled.

They cut it out of the roadway,
&
I went out to count its rings,
but found it not with hundreds of rings,
but hundreds of trunks --
many no more than twigs.

What a mighty tree 
a pile of twigs pressed together 
can make,
& 
now it's gone.

Into the Light [Free Verse]

crawling from the cave,
like Plato's untethered shadow man

a portal to perfection,
as perfect as anyplace can be:
meaning, it has depth
&
credibility

the day is cloudy,
and yet it's blinding,
blinding to eyes attuned to 
the light of dancing orange flames,
flames seen secondhand --
bounced off a wall,
a dark, dank wall

what amazing sights
must there be -
out there

don't disappoint me
now

Deep in the Forest [Free Verse]

What happens in the
strange, nearsighted
isolation of the forest? --

sounds dulled by 
thick, soft moss
and masked 
by burbling water,
and insect buzz,
and bird song

What happens to the
rude mechanicals
who venture too deep
into those soft but terminal
lands? --

where the last stand
of life plays out

Mythic Love [Free Verse]

Myths cheapen love
with potions &
pointy passion projectiles,

pansies squeezed over 
the eyes of cold souls
[when paired with a proper
incantation] 
can make love from naught
or turn love on its head,

but that which can be
turned on its head
is not love --
& never was love.

The Axeman [Free Verse]

Hangman...
Axeman... 
Guillotine art-eest...
Stool-kicker...
Lever-yanker...
Elongator of necks...

His motto:
"Making them deader
than your average beheader."

Sharpening his blade,
Split hair-testing

Precise as the 
Taoist butcher --
blade between bone,
no nicks allowed

Killer of killers,
an audience thriller

Step right up...

Any last words?

Masked & shirtless
+
pudgy & sweaty

He's the hangman,
the axeman,
a killer of killers.