Crumbs

for three-quarters price, marked

down for clearance, making room
for something more relevant

this is my love, bought on a whim:

gifts, cheaply tendered
by the drug store, chocolates

offered sheepishly in the bag
with the coupons that bought them


and this room, when I open the door

first and take lead, dropping clothes
to their piles, takes stock of me;

crumbs buried in the carpet, small
plastic pieces of garbage, soda

tabs dropped, unpopped kernels, bits
flicked and brushed, long strands

settled invisible under foot

Spitwad

this is your revelry -- Christmas light lit,

all bodies in clothing unmoving and jostled,

cupping the sound like a hand on your ear,

a hand on your heart

but a hard slap, a hot Cuban hand on the head

of the drum will unstick like an arrow, stick like

a spitwad on a chalkboard, stick and peel off

all flat and impressed

//Blackout, Out-black/Plea for a Palindrome Prayer//

//Blackout, Out-black/Plea for a Palindrome Prayer//

‘I’M NOT HERE.’
‘I was NEVER there.’

I wake up dreaming after one second of infinite rest,

My brain
is minced
behind my eyes.

My pale hands quiver to a pallor
-fingers like so many shakey spindles

The beer is flat
and smooth.

The things which I thought were forward are suddenly backward.
-----
.drawkcab ylneddus era drawrof erew thguoht hcihw sgniht ehT
I should have spoken some palindrome prayer
so that I didn’t wind up on the other side of some looking glass.

Now

light shines
in the places I least expect
it.

(-Last half should be printed in a mirror reflection so that a mirror has to be used to correct it to be read. Uncertain as to what the title ought to be. Yes, it's pretentious as hell, in fact I even half hate the thing.)