CactUs

Do you need me to explain how I've
Discovered seeing you in this?
If I tilt my head to forty-five
Degrees it's hard to miss
The eye: unblinking, pink and
Sharp, shot-through with sleeplessness;
But that's only the surface,
What anyone (who doesn't know you)
Might make for obvious.

You know how to last the drought
I've cast across your skies,
And you know how to keep out
Hands that cavalierly try
To pry inside and pour your prize
Across lips stained by dripping lies;
So I am learning not to squeeze
Too tightly with my arguments and pleas.

Hallucinating, stranded,
Half-drowned in dust
I stagger through this backhanded
Apology for my chronic lust,
And hope as my dagger cleaves
Your flesh and yields what it must
That I might last another season
Dry as the bones
Scattered in the wash
From which you've grown.

Orchid in Winter

Orchid
Originally uploaded by BlueSkyDrive

Orchid in winter
You have naught to sweat about
I march into March

Dear

To Whom it may concern (or not):

We've recently become aware
Of circumstances currently
Confronting our unusual
Suburban domesticity,
And felt it prudent to inform
Your office expeditiously.

We understand that overbuilt
And overvalued housing stock
Has turned the whole economy
Back several "hours" on the growth "clock"
And left homeowners desperate
To shake upside-down mortgage shock.

Perhaps a local viewpoint will
Provide perspective overdue,
Suggestions may include: the till
You eat be that which grows near you,
And living spaces redesigned
To honor your communal glue;

Proximity you've written in
Genetic and computer codes
Might offer insight if transposed
To legal, health, and building modes;
Restore the green to parkways paved
And repedestriate the roads.

You've proven all this excess space
You've claimed has failed to meet the needs
Of population's swelling base
So...write it off! Restore the weeds,
The undergrowth, the slower pace;
Follow where un-developed leads.

You may discover arts you've lost,
Rekindle friendships long-thought past,
And bear (through sharing) lower costs
For love and labors you've amassed.
You wizened stone, now slowed and mossed,
Need roll no more, iconoclast.

In closing, we suggest you seek
A life less "owned," and truly freer:
Give back these woods, and find your wills
Less burdened with their ancient fear
Of scarcity. [Please meet us here
In compromise, and we, sincere,
Will "mete" your prize most willingly.]
Release all you no longer need;
Discover thus, all you hold...dear.

The Obliquity of the Ecliptic

(or, Circular Love and Logic in the Arctic)

*Degrees:
There is a ring around the north pole,
At six-six point five-six*,
Where at noon and thirty minutes
On this longest day,
The air might swoon at forty.*
If you could lay your head
Upon this line in winter--
You might tilt your gaze
One hundred forty-four*
To see the star that all the universe
Grooves around (if you view it from the ground)--
It is not this day.

Radiance:
This day,
There is only one star, and only one celebrity.
For this single set of twenty-four hours
The sun apologetic circles me:

As if at once he could atone
For the last six months
That I've been left in the dark,
To reflect alone
Without reflecting.

Playing the polar ingénue, I pirouette
My jagged arctic bodyscape,
To the proscenium edge of perpetual day.

I exude exactly sixty-six degrees
(And thirty-three minutes) of indifference
To his revolving spotlight.

Like every other dancer on a pole,
I am only as strong as I can make him
Want to look but not let him touch.

I refuse to let his gaze melt me
(Though we both know everything within
Lives for its attraction)

I dance a ring of endless light,
Proud in my denial
That in six months time
This principal of cold, glittering crystal
Will languish again, ignored,
In absolute daylessness.



(image reused courtesy of the Wikimedia Foundation)