The onlookers

gawked at him as he set up 

the tattered display (the one

with the frayed posters)

and began in earnest.

Words flooded from him in

Mississippian volume, lapping up

the sandbags that guarded his

bemused audience.

He then flung buckets 

of explosively colored paint 

in all directions, like a canine

dadaist shaking off 

the wet remains

of the Louvre. 

The Pollockized watchers  blinked 

in unanimous bafflement.

He paced and ranted, reciting

every line he could remember,

punctuating his thespian odds and ends

with St. Vitus dances of abandonment.

He sent up acrid smoke signals;

he bashed log drums with mad delight;

he fired multiple flares 

into the puzzled sky,

ululating all the while,

and for the big finish, he stylishly

severed a non-essential toe.

Drenched and gasping, lying in

spent prostration, he said,

"well?"

A voice replied,

"could we see that again?"

Three Haikus (Shichi)

Motionless I sit

contemplating unreal dreams;

the wan future shrugs.

Swirling ghosts grimace;

I laugh at their countenance.

Their faces dissolve.

Blessings fall quickly,

the waiting land shares their joy;

verdant smiles respond.

It is now merely

a shadow imprint,
a blind-sided image fixed indelibly

on a ruined wall.

Was it ever more

than two absurd dimensions,

and two absurd people,

proclaiming endless fealty

and devotion

while all the while

Fat Man

was getting ready

to party?

She waits for the world

to pass away from her patient

endurance, and sets her eyes

to a time beyond time,

and a place beyond self,

where the wearying

ordinary trials

of entangled lives

can no longer hold imperium

over her.

She yearns for the

Presence which speaks to her

in a soundless voice,

engulfing her in the ecstasy

of solitary Oneness,

and freeing her at last

from the tyranny of hours

and the stale trivia

of tomorrow.

She will be dissolved in its

ineffable Truth,

and her coarse body

will have no more import

than a cottony 

seedling 

cast away

on an anonymous

midsummer afternoon.

Soft specters

visit him at night,

curling up next to him

in unutterably tender,

yielding love,

needing nothing

but his warmly proffered

nearness, 

and never failing to

speak to him

in voiceless words,

expressing all with

an easy sigh of

contentment,

happy to let him have

dominion over

the tiny kingdom

of the welcoming bed.

It stood before him

both invisible

and impervious.

He had bloodied himself

countless times

in mad

rushes up its quietly murderous

slopes. 

On every occasion

he had ended up 

dazed and shredded

at its indifferent foot,

a spent, dejected knot

of confused, helpless

bewilderment.

The dried remains of his 

tiny assaults had begun to

reveal tantalizing hints

about its true dimensions,

but he no longer had the

ability to rouse himself

for another Banzai charge;

it was easier just to make camp

and play dark music in the

waning light, opening

weary scars

once again.

They moved through the frigid

landscape where they had slain

the life-giving ones

for more seasons than their

sacred tales could account.

Father North lashed them

more mercilessly than they had

ever had known;

huge offerings

were left at the side of

the trail in tiny, heart-drenched

bundles.

The lead men could see

the herd receding in the

distance, barely visible in the

dancing white sea that engulfed

them.

The elders quickly gathered,

and pointed eastward,

toward the future.

They would venture out onto the

endless ice, and follow

the prey

to the ends of an earth

they were sure

lay just past the farthest ridge

in the faceless

distance.

It wends its way

through the labyrinthine forest

and sings of its lost origins deep

in the cool remnants

of hot-blooded sensation.

Ruled by the giddy dictatorship

of sheer caprice, it bursts

through helpless walls of

accumulated yesterdays

like a tank round splintering

a log, waiting for its chance

to take its place

among the strange creatures

that have made their hurried debuts

on the wet stage

of the eternally receding 

now.

He could feel himself

unclenching, like a fist relaxing

after someone pulls the plug

on a simmering brawl.

He unfolded from his defensive

crouch,

and as he did the deflated demons

slid off his back in helpless

confusion, protesting feebly

in the morning light.

Breath filled his being once again

and the ossified seals on his

heart were sundered.

He stood, relieved,

silently contemplating a future

that once again seemed to him

filled with possibility, 

rather than the

grim decay of lost hope

and trembling dread.

And as he looked at the

youngest one, her toddler face

filled with pirate-like mischief,

his smile

became an easy laugh.