Daydreamers
Prisoners in love.
Addicts of hope.
A tightrope walker
balanced between
sleep and night,
between
despair and ecstasy.
Scribblers of poems,
pressed by images,
fettered to words,
smooth-talking so and so’s,
their grimy hearts
like captured songbirds.
They who sing sweetly
for the unlikely chance
they won’t be eaten.
Does Your Dog Bite?
A fine judge of character,
he’s simply smiling,
he’s airing his grievances,
of which there are many.
That bark is a talking dog’s way
of conferring the inexpressible.
My dog isn’t growling,
he’s singing Elizabethan ballads.
It’s a dogged bedtime story.
It’s a lyric poem about love and loss.
Dear deliverer of parcels—
you’re part of the plot
in my hound’s libretto.
O howl. O lamentation.
My dog hasn’t bitten anyone
who doesn’t deserve to be bitten.
A Strained Affair
Another noteworthy scenario,
the circus ringmaster enamoured
with a trapeze artist’s eldest daughter,
the big top on the city outskirts
in flames, the crowd all in a panic
and scrambling for the exits,
the animals in cages frenzied,
the known world coming down
around their heads, people screaming,
smoke and chaos and fire rising,
the ringmaster stooping to retrieve
a scented glove of the one beloved,
clutching it closely, breathing in deeply
love’s violent aroma.