To Nicole

Our petals fall like our sunsets
yet we, like fall Mums, still
dawn, still glow, still toughen,
still love.

Days brassy as rifle bullets,
days sweet as chocolate--
days like tomorrow, my birthday.

Whose jokes tell lovers,
in the middle of the night,
to reach for doorknobs?
Only the man in the moon's
that God with all the face scars

Bumper Sticker

Grok after groin
is better than
crotchet after crotch

Saturday night in the building washroom,
need 8 quarters have 7.Tough night but it's early.
Kids is the burbs will soon be buying 6 packs,
their elders will soon be buying the Sunday Times.
I'm not much for either of those. The moon, tho, is
full and ,my bed, for tonight, single. But there are
other Saturdays...and other moons...and other nights

Birthday
The collector of bones
(whose wife snores)
has his eyes on me.
The moon, that big graveyard,
has eyes on me too.
The stars just twinkle.
They can't change their birthday either.

Square Manhattan shadows
isolate our dreams
fears like blinking yellow lights

With each passing ship
the ocean wrinkles again
laugh lines on an old,old, face

My blue
laughing like
the sea laughs
so blue,
so hungry,
so lonely,
fingers in her pie..

White caps like tight fists
bow and spread upon the beach
leaving weedy gifts