The Business of a Clean Sweep

Her address is the hollow house, innards

stacked unsteady against the far wall.

The white truck stops. Port opens. A tentacle

snakes its giant octopus arm across the lawn

humming,

up three steps into the living room It’s off to work...

to steam below the puddle of sunshine that washes

through the open door highlighting carpet

like a Sir Walter Raleigh cloak-of-light.

Revealing underfoot an Achilles’ Heel: yesterday

tromping tear stains of spilt milk.

She scans the house’s bones too late

to repair

even with this broom of moist breath.

Flicked off the tentacle crawls down three steps

across the lawn

humming a penny earned is ...

The port inhales the arm.

She closes her door

lock latch snaps

...a silk purse out of a sows ear.

The truck packs it up, cleans empty rooms

all across the city

every day. hi-ho hi-ho...

The Night House

A neighborhood mother was murdered

last month. Now it’s an issue of light.

A night light locates the budding and dying

potted plants on the kitchen bay window,

just enough illumination to assure no ogre

from my leftover childhood imagination

smolders in the corners or behind the door.

All night streetlamps glow from outside.

Drab light outside and dim inside press like page

against a page to create creepy shapes.

But sometimes the dark goes velvet. I come downstairs

barefoot and slowly, familiar but not familiar.

My nerve fumbles and I swallow.

Nothing in the dark except what is there

when it’s day. Damn dark! Hides behind,

over and under itself to twist what I believe

into half truths. Simply an issue of light.

Hands tied behind her back, murdered

in her house in the middle

of a sun saturated morning and the police

still in the dark look for clues.

University Weather

for Sage

Thursday, the seventeenth of May.

A black and gray discomforter of clouds

and a sharp south wind threaten

raindrops hefty enough

to stomp the sweet-pea sprouts.

The storm like bursts of engine backfire

doesn’t alarm our freshman grand-

daughter until a dozen sirens shriek

below her dorm window. The window

between rock-red & roll posters,

the window of the room where

her stuffed bear, last survivor

of childhood sleeps

on a down-heaped bed.

Below the window

her music professor, crumples,

murdered, blood steaming the grass.

The shooter then shoots

himself. Rain

won’t revive them.

The weather-man explains it’s a random

storm, the temperature’s

not so hot this May.

Clinic Wait

Eight thirty the start of the day after

Thanksgiving in the Polyclinic. Silence

without canned music

soothes the room

with no patients. Five sets

of chair arms’ cold gray plastic

embrace mauve cushions that could be

rosy tongues in famished

open mouths.

By the computer behind the desk

a receptionist is crying whispers

and wiping tears into the receiver.

Magazines sport covers,

Gourmet, Money, Life,

stacked from May to November their

advice waits while purple carpet mutes

an occasional whish of white

coat bustling by.

The doctor’s door is closed. Viktor

from Vladivostok, the visiting actor

whose voice animates audiences,

is in an exam.

He’s hearing

how long he has to wait

till his tissue

deteriorates, how soon

his sojourn will expire.

The Baroness of Ballard

Gentle Brian, at the hospice,

lets light in and gathers-up

the Baroness of Ballard’s hand.

Her frail palm in his big paw

the way his, nested long ago

in hers. He says

everyone around here

is dying but she is hanging-on.

Christine said, John’s mom

waited hours to consummate

her penultimate goodbye. Slipped off

only after Johnny’s business day

was done. Jessie says her dad

has two days or so to go.

Kay writes that Hugh is hanging

by a thread, and Jan’s mother’s

blood carries clots

slowly toward her heart.

Shoko’s rushing back to Tokyo.

Tell them buds are swelling

on plum trees, softening

thorns turning pink.

Tell them February days

are getting brighter, it’s

the month dark

begins to dissipate.

What Song of Songs?

Did you sing to your baby boy from the Bible you borrowed

as his life throbbed into the dining room rug,

a soft mass of matter? Did you sing psalms not rhymes

nor Vedic chants-- your angelic voice

a cushion to quiet him until he was perfectly quiet?

When you pierced did you cut slowly or slash, the blade

dull or keen, left wrist not right? Did you sing

your own overture before you resumed

bloodletting humming making yourself

not matter, a sticky red sea?