Book 13

Jessilynn,

Perhaps it is only that

you excel at customer relations

or possess an innate patron sense

which, by lulling customary sensibilities,

urges the purchase of your kind attention

with nothing save these froward abilities

and this impecunious verse as recompense

for time you may not have chosen to waste

having proven, perversely, too forward for your taste

Thus, though ignorant of your preferred situation,

fearing only Love's Labors misplaced,

hopeful hand is put to self-deceptive poet's pen

on the chance you may choose to lend,

from your cloistered library, to this librarian

an opinion, ex-libris, on the oystered mystery

referenced by those comely

blue nuanced glances

which seemly spark

smiling invitations

to imagined dances

A pox put to Cyrano's unrequited epistles

No Dante's folly to Beatrice this

nor sop to Moliere's Misanthrope

Is it not better to have than merely hope

for a belated awakening

between early Winter

and late elating Spring?

So on with this playful ode I go

to my own ego's imbroglio

Cross-starred or cross-gartered

either loathed Malvolio

or Romeo self-martyred

Your Giaconda code

creates this dilemma:

Are you an austere Jane

or an ebullient Emma?

But plainly the point mulled is moot

for you may follow neither suit

and only a moue engender

at the inept intentions of the sender

So hence no rose red

card heart sent

only a putti's dart to prick and quicken

your curiosity with Cupidic question:

Should you pursue

or decline

an anonymous valentine?

Those who walk

above the waterline

by default decline

to get

feet so securely shod

wet

those who wade

undergo

unsettling horizontal vertigo

and with the white wave noise

beard

the word gods with

unebbing

soothed surf

unwrapping hooded

ear budded heads

to hear more tranquilly

under sun, sand and sea

than in horoscopes

and ratio'd philosophies

The living sea unsettled

waving

ever ebbing

from birth

to youth's salted froth

undertoned in trough marred

wounds of blue blood

and dark denizened desires

of mermen and maids

besprayed, swallowed whole

by leviathan life

Dolphins

purposefully dip

moon twinned

crescent fins

to mar the

plumb tinned

surface of the

florescent sea

Unable

detained in a

desiccating parody

dryly mocking youth

awaiting the unavoidable

sense cessation

memories unheard

falling on the

world's deaf ears

unseen by the

blind sided eye

longing for release

from the comfort of

once reliable routines

ignominiously waiting

for well meant caring

to cease

praying for when

all children of men

become children again

My father

woke me

in passing

his spirit expressing

with its last

gathered breath

his unspoken wish

not to be or

to be unburdened

of his distressed

disobedient body

which in the end

pronounced

his death sentence

Earl's urn

cannot be unearthed

he earned his eternal rest

a true tree house

beneath his refuge beech

While his ashes

may trespass

under a stranger's grass

Earl's essence

his laughing last epitaph

will ever spice the

cinnamon hills of

his kingdom come

Each nights'

a mare's nest

restless disarranged

a sleepless sea change

clinging to the

bounding mane

drowsing on the djinn's divan

carpeted with dark magic's counterpane

penumbra'd in a winding

souk of sheets to and

fro flying now drowning

a deranged gamut

of tragic to insane

foibles exposed

again and again

naked, on parade

no repose for the wicked

in the bed you made

An ink fingered low literate

of smudged aspect

my soul

ill favored in inspiration

earnest in aspiration

unflatteringly relies

on imitation for creation

envious of other's vision

and lilting limitless verse

a cramped writer

of a life in letters

upstaged by long dead betters

unhearsed to rehearse

I f Shakespeare

were a sculptor

if la Giaconda

were an opera

If Buonarotti

were a barber

and Van Gogh and Gaugin

were wrestlers

would all their

wits and wrists

be restless

Ceasing the eons of silence

the anti-climatic, in absentia

comedic click

of the Pop gun's

silent signed BANG

reverberates

to this day

stopping our ears

defying us

to divine

the obscured rouletiere

The glee of

evil conning evil

in seeing the sins

of fathered sons

while the blood form

stones runs

does no good deed

go unpunished

the wicked seem so

well rested from milking

human kindness

and the just for fun

mothers munch their young

as we suicidal scorpions unsung

let no heroes go unstung

The fairies frothy aire

kobolds basso profundo

goblins torture tubas

vampires violently saw

on one string violins

Valkyrie hiss

a top note kiss

tin eared trolls

punish the tympani

witch and wight sinfonie

Withy wands

reenchanting

spelling fronds

bewitching

summoning the

eerie, green fire

to shoot from root

to tapped tips

Caved in

engraved with

the birth promise

of returned earth

treading water

an iceberg of

submerged intent

a malcontent

subrogated continent