The scent of incense smothers the air while the promise of miracle glistens on her lips.

She reminds him that there is no sin so grievous that the right prayer and the price of penance cannot wipe clean.

He straps his sordid soul to the roof of his Dodge and spends every last penny at the self-service car wash.

Why risk the chance of hell when there is heaven right here on earth?

Copyright 2010

Scarf.

It is such a horribly perfect word,

sharp in looks, staccato in speech.

Scarf. Scarf.

Somewhere in the tundra wasteland,

a voodoo juju mama coughs up this sound,

catches it like a spiky iceball

in ancient frozen fingers,

watches as it melts

into the slush of possibility.

Scarf.

She knits the word with icicle needles,

spins it into sleet and snow,

fashions it into a barren icon.

Scarf. Scarf.

The arctic blast answers her call,

grabs her creation,

holds it aloft, a glacial banner.

Winter screams its battle cry,

terrorizing autumn,

intimidating spring,

waving scarf as its flag of dominion

as I kiss you goodbye,

tying a red woolen scarf

around your naked neck.

The Medici have headed to the south of France for a family reunion.

It will be a week-long Renaissance picnic of ribald merriment, volleyball, group photos, and intrigue.

All the thieving aunts, murderous uncles, despot grandfathers, and illegitimate cousins will swing down from the family tree to pitch tents in the countryside, roast infidels around the campfire, and jockey for supremacy under the stars.

If you are a Christian, yet alone a Medici, in the 16th Century, the world is your proverbial stained-glass oyster.

And while the Medici frolic, plot, and cavort, the reigning Pope adjusts his rocket-shaped mitre and passes his golden shepherd’s staff rhythmically from hand to hand like a ballroom dandy.

It is good to be pope, especially in the Renaissance:   artists are ripe for the plucking, money is no object, and God calls all the shots.

Being the pipeline to eternal salvation carries its perks.

The Pope is off for a week-long tour of mausoleums, basilicas, and gelato.

Building monuments to oneself on behalf of the All-Mighty is such an awesome mission statement.

The Pope whistles “Salve Regina” as he locks the door to the Vatican.

Michelangelo holds his breath.

Can it be?

Have the dual handcuffs of politics and religion slipped off his wrists, if only for a week?

He lets out a hoarse whisper of “Hallelujah” and begins to run.

He jets down the stairs, sails down the streets, beehives to his studio.

The musk of creativity spews off his body and fills the darkened room to every cobwebbed corner.

Time stands still as he strips the Madonna of her beatific smile, hurls the apple out the garden of Eden, and wildly massacres form and function into color and passion.

He has one week to truly live.  

He has waited and prayed for this moment every day of his life.

Throwing open the wooden shutters, he comes face to face with his soul for the very first time.

Copyright 2010

Baby Buddha sits on my dashboard in an infinite state of contemplation.

Don’t think that I don’t see him out of my peripheral vision as a single acceleration begins my long day’s journey into work.

Whether I drive five meandering miles per hour or a psychotic eighty makes no difference to the Buddha.

He is The Teacher, stable in serenity, unmoved in meditation.

Even when I am cut off in traffic and explosions of expletives detonate all over Mount Honda, the Baby Buddha sits safely encased in his protective zone of zen.

His integrity and grace annoy and unnerve me.

That is why I slam on the brakes for no good reason, sending the Baby Buddha flying out of his lotus position, sprawling out onto the floor.

I cannot help but smirk as I hear the irritated whisper of a tiny:  “What the hell?!”

Copyright 2010

He was once her personal chef, handpicking only the sweetest unripened words, drizzling them with lover’s honey until his fingers became as sticky as the succulent phrases he fed her.

Her appetite for the cuisine of amor was whetted by his experimentation and experience.

She could have cared less about the calories. 

It was the fact that he cooked up such delicious poetry just for her that made her hungry.

Each morsel of endearment he fed her was marinated in metaphor, each flute of passion he poured was aged in imagery.

Their life together was a feast of infinite preparation and consumption.

But, as with fine wine and food, it is possible to become sated on epircurean love sonnets.

It wasn’t long before the exotic spices he pinched over his nouns upset her delicate system.

It was just a question of when before his intricate, intimate sauces became bland and mundane to an overstimulated palate.

And that is the moment when she started sneaking out at midnight for greasy slang and polyunsaturated cliches.

The heartburn made her feel alive.

She left one day for a busboy who constantly cleared away her half-eaten sentences and kept her spirit immaculately empty.

And the chef?

He sits alone in his gourmet studio now, concocting linguistic linguine and other entrees of gastronomical grammar.

There are still so many figures of speech to be baked, puree’d, and served on a bed of passionate verbs.

But there is no lover to feed anymore, no significant other to marvel at his magic.

The studio steams with the savory smell of tonight’s spicy syntax…all that delicious language just going to waste.

He sighs as he turns on the garbage disposal and forces his unwanted poetry deep down the drain.

Copyright 2010

I ride my poems like a bicycle, legs pumping through lines in acceleration, hands gripping the bars to navigate around obstacles.

Discarded phrases are clothespinned to the spokes, making a noise more formidable than my own.

Sometimes I ride a tricycle when I am immature, knees at my ears, plodding along and balanced.

Sometimes I go retro with a banana seat, apehanger handlebars, and a transistor radio taped to the frame.  It’s all about the image.

You prefer my lightweight racer, the one with elaborate gears that smooth over reality, while I am drawn to the sturdy urban bike, with its large fendered tires and comfortable seat.

This is the one I ride without a helmet, legs straight out sideways off  the pedals, screaming aloud as I fly down a hill, watching ideas shoot out the basket.

Copyright 2010

She has postcards from false prophets lining a shoebox under her bed and awakens every morning with lips slicked in slogans.

The scent of insurgency surrounds her like a skin, attracting bees and tender revolutionaries not yet ready to shave.

Will they really follow her blindly into the awaiting crosshairs of history’s firing squad?

Will she brazenly skewer their hearts on the bayonette of rhetoric until her coup is complete?

Ghosts of guerilla grafitti appear in the dust of her windowsills, the drapery rods hung with silken kimonos to hide her guilt from the confessional of the sun.

How did such a dedicated Catholic girl slip so easily into the holster of an outlaw?

How did the world implode so quickly on the detonation of mere words?

Copyright 2010

Late at night, when all others are asleep, he wanders the neglected hallways of his psyche, stepping over trash, peeling wallpaper off his soul, squinting up at shadows under the bare bulb of what might have been.

There is no cure for spiritual insomnia.

He can only wear each tragic emotion like a penitent’s hairshirt, sensing each scratch, each irritation, allowing the pain to act as an escort throughout the night.

And in the morning, the glorious morning, when life holds out the promise of yet another chance, he will round up all the demons of the dark and weld them into a structure of iconic anguish.

People happily pay what he asks for each tortured sculpture, never understanding the intangible price.

Copyrigh 2010

I don’t know what made me do it.

Maybe it was the wine, or it could have been the challenge of the dare, maybe even the strange pull of a voodoo moon led me here.

In any event, it is two o’clock in the morning and I am in the grungy backroom of some insignificant dive bar playing cards with Death.

I should never have agreed to drink with him. 

Only bad karma will come of this.

But the deck is shuffled, the cards are dealt, and a game of Man Or Mouse is on.

Death plays for the prize of a kiss while I play for the life of a friend.

And so here we sit, in a silent stalemate, each of us aware of what destiny has dealt the other, wondering silently which one of us fate loves better.

Death has the deuce of spades held up against his skull, the blackened shamrock alarmingly dark on his calcified forehead.

He appears even more unsettling now that I am just feet away from him in a room full of stagnant air and bad music.

My heart beats in anxious anticipation.  What are the odds that I, too, have a deuce up against my forehead?

The laws of percentages are screaming at me to man up and ante my friend into the pot.

My friend.  He is dying of leukemia and I know Death is really at the bar looking for something to do until he has to clock in and snuff someone, maybe even my friend.

I close my eyes and concentrate.

The stakes are incredibly high, for the both of us.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, I can feel the Queen of Hearts brush her matronly fingertips across my brow. 

Women have always liked me and this time it is paying off because I have trumped Death in a wickedly evil game of chance, an endeavor I should never have agreed to in the first place.

But instead of gloating triumphantly, I sit horrified by the knowledge that I have just beaten Death in a game of his own choice.

If I ante my friend into the pot, I can call Death’s bluff and waltz my friend back home to his grateful wife and fortunate sons. 

It is such a tantalizing temptation.  How can I resist the chance to wear the hero’s cape and extend the most amazing gift of all?

As I push his life into the pot, I realize what is really at stake here in this bizarre and accidental game.

There is no room for fleeting hesitation, unspeakable regrets, or horrid guilt.

But I know if I looked into a mirror right now there would be no reflection based on what I am about to do.

Death raps his bony fingers against the table.  He is impatient for me to man up or mouse down.

His agenda can be so annoying, but he is right.  The time has come for the winner to take all.

My breath is hung up, refusing to move in or out, as I fold my Queen of Hearts upside down over the pot and concede the hand, the game, and the life.

Death would grin if he had the lips, but instead he leans eeriely over the table and claims his kiss.

Five years of breath escape from my mouth as the frozen touch of this passionless gesture rivets the scene forever in my soul…or what is left of it.

Death picks up his scythe to saunter victoriously out into what’s left of the night.

I know immediately where he is headed.

A renegade tear drops onto the unturned Queen of Hearts and burns a hole through her compassion.

There was never a way to win this hand.

Copyright 2010

Van Gogh’s severed ear plops onto the plank floor of his studio.

It generates the same sound as a newborn pierogi hitting the pan.

Too bad Vincent’s ability to hear this extraordinary simile has now been rendered useless.

Copyright 2009