Against the screen of halogen light
extremities beset by photons tingle.
All things delight the maker, all night
we sync the humming to the quaver
of unseen life behind the unseen ring.
A dumbshow of appreciation follows
when the kids in paisley pajamas
constitute the continuity of the line.
What clumsy accounting, fellows.
What a show for the rancid mind
overwrought from vapid scrolls
through which the mind grows cornrows
and blue-edged Swiss cheese holes.
Commandeer the armies of your ego
to pledge no allegiance to the rotting tangerine
recently made the deity-designate
of the mad and the nearly sane alike.
Matters nothing, in this code form,
the words read as words and not
as directives or slurs against what
may bring an end to the soothsaying art.
Whatever may be a fitting response
from a mouth full of cankers and cold sores.
Choose your poison with care in the night
as the blood points of your spires gleam.
Souls of Little Men
The imagination strains to see them flicker
when a microscope might do the trick.
For real, the sickest weasels rise,
take your pick, it will not matter.
Why we rest on sticky hands while
being slapped about the face
is a question our dream-selves
may answer when we corner them.
Pull the rope now and see what
tumbles from the ceiling. Surely
an angel or two is tied to an end.
Or when we begin seeing hope
as the end of a tunnel, will we
run to it or hide behind our scruples?
There is nothing to be had beyond
the blackout flannel curtains.
Humans with vendettas
and grim agendas rage.
All you need to do is relax,
relax and rest your mind
while they complete the heartless
masterpieces of their madness.
Nurse & Priest
If not by design then by color scheme,
an echo of the muted past,
a collision of black and white
in a black-and-white snapshot.
One wore wings and smiled
of heaven while sponging
your sizzled flesh, the other
nodded to your confessions.
A dream begins and ends
with no rhyme or reason.
A hospital serves a purpose,
so too a confessional booth.
She smells of soap and mercy,
his breath recalls a whisky
and Marlboro breakfast.
This is what it boils down to.
This is what comes of the past
when I reach inside my head
and squeeze the mass like
a ripened fruit for juice.
It splashes into this container.
Let the foam collapse before
you tongue the zesty cocktail.
But down it all before it spoils.
Hairy Sprindges
We go there when there is nowhere else.
I never looked it up before the staring gun went off.
A found term from the seventeenth century
makes the mind work double-time.
Still, I want to be dark-suited for a change.
My success is your fork tenderness.
That’s not expressly true, but with some
nudging we can achieve our chicken.
We can venture places where our fitness
is not harpooned, where pull-ups
represent the whimsy of an autocrat
too fat to tie his golden shoes.
Today we depart from our signature
leanings and ravings and eschew
restrictions of expression. For sure
we mean what we say, for sure.
Then it all goes south when the knock
on the door is louder than normal.
Who goes there doesn’t matter as
a greeting to men strapped and masked.
Look how far we can reach when
the lubricant applied earlier finally
loosens up the fingers. Then
it’s all systems go and cherry Kool-Aid.
Sal Difalco writes from Toronto, Canada.
