You hope the one you're with
is true, but
know it's just delusions.
give benefits of doubt, but
is often wrong

Rug you stand on
steps rely on
fallen ladder from roof top
leave you stranded
on dry rotted shingles

Home of hopes, dreams
cherished memorable fruits
faded love on dead stems
sit idle in stained vase
no longer haven for marriage vows

Nest is empty
birds, damaged feathers
return home, tattered
weathering the storm
of life tragic lessons

let's feed our love dripping
to the mother and watch the
soft kisses
dribble down her
chin

paint her diner napkin
as coffee silhouettes embracing on lipstick
smudges under
a coy hand
hiding

folds of paper pushing against
pulling into plying apart pressing upon
each other
sticking with their
wetness

to her lips smiling corner
lay the shadow or a sweetness
wiped away
by the imaginative
creases

Steam from an engine is rising
masking a frothy dark umber.
Cream colored foam hangs upon it.
Crusting and dripping it changes.
Muscle in movement formations
shaping on cold winter mornings.
Exercise done, I untack him.

I can think of no subject more mundane than my job. Parse this sucker please.

Above the road
caught in a gust of wind
a butterfly.

A gold front came through in the dark
and sprinkled poplar leaves behind
autumn's first mild fleeting lark
the next one will not be so kind

But on this day beneath warm sun
there's yellow scattered all around
along the road and old creek run
high in the trees and on the ground

Fall pasture's gilt with bitter weed
a carpet fringed with emerald grass
'ere long the blooms will turn to seed
when the first frost comes to pass

Let the fire in our loins tell the story
when you were the half of me that
came undone and left me for oblivion.
Let us come and go in the splendor
we once dissolved into cube-like sugar
on our horse-like tongues. Let orange
blossoms tumble into fruit while we watch
in wonder, time-lapsed candle-light flickering
slow hands and quickening spirits.

United, let our flame ascend, unknotted of our
mortal coil, breathing deep
the deepening hours.

i.

Arvind the Advaitin, who sometimes
writes poetry, writes a post about his
300K a-year-friend
who lives on acreage in California, probably
somewhere on the coast, maybe even the Bay;
he says his friend's gardener looks sickly on $25
(an hour? a day?). I ask why
he mentions it, and then send him a
picture of river-front property in Kolkata,
shanty-style.

You have seen poverty, right?
I wondered.

Begat from the loins of the damned
wrathful Sire from a nebulous and sinful grave.
Daughter of a virgin womb,
ravaged upon the funeral pyre.
Progeny of neither man nor beast.

Child of extraordinary power ,
Lithe an athlete and fighter
On the cruel streets of London town.
Dragged up and rejected ,no mercy found
A vagabond .

THE BRICK sonnet
The Wee Elf wants this mundane, "LIke a Brick".
My heart sinks, should I give my muse a rest?
Can mundane still be novel? That's some trick.
It's not just words in poems that may get stressed.
Although I'm slow, I'll try to write them down-
Those lines that flow unbidden from my gob,
I'll try to get them bouncing, metric, sound
If really good give up my daytime job.
Here in my hand I hold two common bricks,
Their purpose, to be part of someone's home.

Try buttering bread naked, and precariously clumsy.
Invite a mate, one unopposed to a little spillage,
and without the best selling brand of paper towels,
buttered bread, buttered bread, have some fun,
feed a friend.