A shaving of curled blonde wood
                                          Blew to rest
On my black shoe.

It came from the pseudo-Victorian house being restored.
It was shaved away
So a board would
Be a precise fix to another board that ran across the entire front porch.

I thought of my old depression-day neighborhood where a man
No one understood
Would sit under a mulberry tree and carve from old broom sticks
The shape of cowled monks reading books.

After the monk was carved, the old man, often called a warlock,
Would dip
The monk
Into brown stained until the wood was stained dark brown.

He would then put the monk into a monastery
He had built in the corner of the shack behind
A two-story, pseudo-Victorian boarding house.
I was fascinated watching old hands whittling
The wood,
But more fascinating were the curls of the carved-off wood.

It was the same color as he hair of two girls
Who stayed inside all day, and only came out Of the house to reach up into the mail box And find the mail box empty. I had not thought of the curled, carved wood, Or the two hidden white-gold haired girls in years. I wonder if they ever received any letters.

RESURRECTION OF TIME NOW DEAD 2

The Florida summer sun turned the rationalistic
Metal tape measure
Into a dark pool reflecting a blue chateau
Where someone named Mignon or Aurelia
Must have slept in a silk-canopied bed and watched
The wings of gargoyles flap atop each twisted bedpost.

There were anchored boats quivering on the dark waters
That reflected white clouds,
The boats longing for a voyage the boats would never take.

So the metal tape measure was transformed
By a blaze of light from the artistic imagination of a noon sun.
Its numbers were gone,
And their whiteness now white butterflies fluttering
Over the reflection of a blue chateau
That some one named Aurelia or Mignon
Lived and was never seen.

The sun said in a loud voice, although the voice being so
Distant
Sounded low when it was heard
On this earth this summer in Florida.
The sun voice said, “Amor vincit omnia.”

RESURRECTION OF TIME NOW DEAD 3

We could be anaphoric
On this Ash Wednesday,
                               Repeat sentences
After sentences
Beginning with the same phrase, the phrase
We discovered by change
In this contingent world, but why
On this ash Wednesday should we be anaphoric
When
The Greeks seeking to outwit the Persians
Brought with their fleet
Cargo of grain that brought in a plague
To kill one third of Athens

Let us face the fact I am standing here alone
Holding Windex
To spray away the accumulation time
Has put on the mirror
So I stare onto it surface, what I see
Is vague.

Let us face the fact,
When I spray and have a clear surface
What I see
Is just as vague
As when the surface was smeared
With the accumulations of time.

She had ash smears in the middle of her forehead,
I had none.
What did it mean.
It meant a plague will kill one third of our love.

RESURRECTION OF TIME NOW DEAD 4

The phalluses that were marble in front
Of ancient Grecian doors
Are invisible, in front of doors, in my neighborhood.

This is why there was no love in my neighborhood.
This is why men loved the shape of car hoods,
And the women
Loved the shape of the swallowed pain killer.

No one in my neighborhood wears a Grecian toga,
Just a Grecian attitude.

Aphrodite is the indifferent, obtuse goddess that pours
Green tea
With antioxidants
Into a cup and drinks it herself.
The men do hand stands before lap dancers
Trying to get a dollar stuck in the top of their sock,
But the lap dancer
Has learned from Aphrodite
This fool is only at this bar to the pickpocked
And brag about is empty pockets.
So as the man stands upside down on his hands,
The lap dancer
Removes his wallet from is backpocket,
And he goes home to his wife smiling
And crowing like a rooster.
She tells him his timing is off,
For rooster crow at dawn, not at two AM.

Outside in front of the house, the invisible,
Erect phallus falls limp
And cries for its mother.

RESURRECTION OF TIME NOW DEAD 5

The morning dawn wore a nightgown,
Sung the mad songs of Lucia,
Threw the bloody knife to the audience
So someone could have a souvenir.

A bulky man pushed a skinny girl away,
Gripped the knife
And cut his throat.
His blood mingled with the blood
Of the man her brother forced Lucia to marry.
And the mingled bloods fused,
Dropped
Happily to the floor
And assumed the shape of a dinosaur.

Children ran over to gaze at the mingled blood
In shape of a dinosaur,
Classified the extinct animal, gave the shape
A name,
But each child gave the shape a different name.

All the children held hands, danced around
The dinosaur shape as if it were a May pole.

But the Children realized it was not May,
That it was July.

All the Children became fireworks,
Exploded into the sky.