A March without Movement

I awaken to the ground hard,

vestiges of melting winter come at me

downward from the slate stricken sky.

I awaken to the dawn

of madness bearing down.

Of b-ball bracket worship

and faux celtic drunk-fests,

of emergence from snow-swept silence

and the last gasps of ice storms fading

while the boys of summer stir to life

in grapefruit cactus play

and the alpine calcifying snow-bound zombies

recede into the mud

of fool's days to come.

I arise from my slumber

through a fog into sunshine,

floating past in a quandry,

stuck in stasis along the way.

I feel close to south of empty


yet still somewhere north of broken,

smack dab in a permafrost

of the perpetual in-between,

swept into a March without movement

toward teasing promises anew.

the frozen muddy

She is a whisper

of dawn

at midnight,

a sharp breath

of clarity

born.


I dream of nothing

but blackouts

and madness,

she is the promise

of morning

come dawn.

--

She is a figment

of my

exhausted pointless,

the last filament

of desperation's

hope

with daydreams of nothing

but delirium's

coitus,

disappearing

into shit storms

of shimmering sleet.

Damaged

down South Street's

filthy drifts devoid,

she is gone.

Leaving nothing behind

but the frozen muddy.

April Gray

It's April gray,

a morning lost;

one Sunday laced

with the duped and doped;

a Fool's Day fallen on deaf ears.

It's April gray.

Of Sal Bass and Other Concerns

I'm colder than a February

salmon out of season,

aching for her warm caress

to fold me into slumberland.

The rain runs down the periphery

of the cracks within my conscience,

a chill and wet I've known too well

without umbrella or galoshes.

April looms across the damp

of March distended and corroded;

teasing, loving, sour sarcastic,

she drains me for the springtime thaw.

Yet still distant sirens

splash curbside vendors

struggling for dominance

in city scape paintings.

The perpetual motion

of life lived elsewhere,

contrasts with the rigor

of my hardened self portrait.

The colors run

down the easel,

frightful from me

until I'm translucent gone.

Real, real gone.

Teasing Lies of the Marmota Monax

The gusting green glow

of a Spring-like mirage

lets loose a tsunami

through my tingled being,

melting the winter malaise

just a trifle.

This rush of life

wraps me in translucent

fever dreams

for a day of fire

until the beat down

frost of February

blows back into the fore,

coating me icy cream

again into hibernation,

threadbare to rigor

left to carry on the razor wind

howling at my door.

I'm bathed in the white flakes 

of supposed springtime sunshine

at temperatures frostbitten, 

wounded and bloody.

Picturing breeze blown laundry 

hanging from clothes lines drawn now darkly

long faded into the Kodachrome 

of bygone yellowing family albums.

Standing on the precipice 

of winter's ice scarred canyons, 

I reach across to the drifting tide of flowering

just out of reach.

-----

Still, it's but a March

'round the corner to

academic b-ball brackets;

to faux celtic drunk fests

by the Erin shamrock busload;

to the pineapple cactus

vampire bats striking in full swing.

It's but a shiver or three

from here to there,

but a shovel or four

of the white cold power

up my grill.

Meanwhile, chill.