To the rough misunderstanding

To the rough misunderstanding
and those who believe it,
that romantic love
should hold out
constant for a lifetime:

A psychology textbook
estimates six to thirty months
until one must rely
on compassion or empathy.

Thus requiring a man of seventy
about thirty-seven
women worth of romance.
(With even a fourteen year
allowance for youth)

Not that the sum
is unreasonable in itself
but the finding and acquiring
of such numbers is impractical.

What a person really means
is to spend a few years
in mystery and passion
and the rest in bright reenactment.

No Harvest

In dark three-buttoned suits,

sober men of import
romanticize the farmer
as an image of Napoleon
standing over fresh dirt,
hand held deep in flannel plaid.

These officing men
avoid the unbearable:
the farmer pawns used cars
and chips the white paint
off his own porch columns.

With dramatic flaunt,
the farmer sows cooked rice
on dry and unplowed ground
to fulfill the duties
of his semi-rural position.

Yet inside his unaffected children
dine with no reserve
on income from the sale
of a red side-dented Ford.
This he knows is necessity
to sustain his agriculture.

Inattentive

While a student,
days consider themselves
in classroom terms.

Not the dotted-line orbits
of planets on elliptical wheels.
(A sermon of the now bald
and wire-glassed)

Instead the whiteboard traces
of faint black and blue and red
that were once planned
but grow permanent and disorderly.

Blood Steward

My liquid red life
Taken by wounds and surgeons
Streams from His syringe.

An organic tomb

So unceremoniously
I tore through
the green cabbage
shell--
too deep
and into the
catacomb
of a curled
brown spider
encased
in its final
dusty web;
legs doubled back
upon
themselves.

Egg

An egg lies
exhausted and broken open
like a geode.

Its crystal is ruby,
the color of a dying sun
or of life's yolk
remainder.

The bottom curve,
blossoming with hair fractures
spreads out flat and taut:
a climber on sheer
rock.

Fiction

Fiction authors are my proof
of a reality, definite and tangible.
I can question man's existence
until that dubious animation
can itself breathe life into page.
Upon this I base my certainty
that creation evidences creator.

Subsistence

I am the son of gluttony
And the child of subsistence
A cross-bred evolution
That is future's foolishness

The throbbing of my back
And red stripes across my arms
Amass a surplus never reached
A safety from the slums

The black under my fingernails
Is my proof of revenue
An excess for a poorer man
That I alone consume

Firetruck's Sonnet

How does the fiery engine sleep at night?
No person can restrain its spinning wheels
Or even try to dim its whirling light
How will it rest with dogs still on its heels?
And when the siren bell once more shall ring
And hasty firemen slide on silver poles
It has to be alert and functioning
In times of stress and speed it knows its roles
It must refuse the urge to race on streets
And put on hold the terror of the day
Then place its coiled hose between red sheets
In this position the engine must stay
Until the sliding door and sun comes up
It sleeps on guard with coffee in its cup