Fixed

 from Parade Music
 
The dunnings of a world that claims it's owed

ducked, ignored or again postponed.

Enjoy awhile the delight

of no fixed address.

Some jam, some love, some child, some chance:

now hold the deed to your own fence

for ten Good Fridays.

There's a sink to fix.

Can you keep some lovely cunning

safe from rote for ten years running?

Make some bank on your man

though the fight is fixed?

Some spin of without to rhyme within?

With ice and limes and glass and gin

convince even the dunningman

to fix up with the free?

Yes, in the evenings fix a drink

and see how easy it is to think

of joy. Find it best

when most like careless.

Darkness Comes the Sideshow

from Parade Music 

 

Hard at a game of mumbly-peg

The monkey sat and I

Ratty hearted I

Petty thefts and petty lies

Cowardice and pride

Bold false pride.

Where in all those afternoons

Were the flutes of the circus men

the tight rope men?

To take and make this little lout

A circus man or clown

'fore luck ran down

“Is the Pacifique Sea my home? Or the Easterne riches? Is Jerusalem?”

from Parade Music

The soul is a coin.

The soul is dumb.

The soul is a word

in a line by John Donne.

Love is the Maker.

Love is a pill.

Love is the weather

inside of our skull.

Time is a pickle.

Time is a line.

Time is pocket change:

nickles and dimes.

The Plan is in chapters.

The Plan is a sham.

The Plan often hinges

on a guess or a man.

The Truth has its charms.

The Truth is a suit.

The suitor harvests

both berry and root.

The child has led us.

The child is grown.

Less taxes, the child

will get what we own.

God met us sober.

God has us drunk.

God found a bottle

of booze in the trunk.

You are my sister.

You are a lie.

You once served

my heart as a spy.

The world is a riddle.

The world is a plum.

The world is a shadetree-

some relief from the Sun.

“Whilst my Physitians

by their love are growne

Cosmographers, and I

their Map” said Donne.