Sing to me of the woman, plaintive Muse,

the one with chalkdust in her shoes

Let her spin Medusa’s curly premises

and weave a syllogism of stone

Give me words not my own but the steel

and dust, and bone. Let her smile her moorish smile,

and fall over when she wears stiletto heels

And the music she plays is endless and brave.

May a thousand men fall away from her

in the squares of the city, eyeless in Gaza

wanting her embrace in their terror of her face

Make my song yours, with your faraway sorrow

she is silent about the one who matters most

whose name is the beginning and the end

of company-denying, housework-defying poetry

she unveils sorrow, weaving braids of pain from hollow words

bandaging the soul

	a moored heart unhinged terrors

	a new day today

perhaps the new day

	would bring with it a

	promise of good

instead it brought snow –

trees covered with winter’s white tears

of ancient rainbows

timbered low in sleep embraced

in enormous whisper of worship

Who smoked me out of adolescent bliss.

take the white one…the pill…the big one, tom budge

the muse intoned high

brow arched her bow finger laced

spittal dry I chose

stripped naked, upon my head the wreath of words I wove

forsaken or consumed, she’s an entity ripe with promises to be entered

samleterol, albuterol, beclomethsone

and other useful substances like

		the slow metered drip

of sheep-milk scarlet cloth green revolution

mashed apricots and an infusion of bougainvillaea

blood stream clogged by petals and grand expectations

calliope, the headless torso of your son dances within the wild rapids,

     his dead fingers waving like memory wings

of unpublished poetry