Weigh odds. Pray. Pay bills.
Tell truth. Love well. Serve real gods.
Meanwhile, daffodils.

*

Gainesville, Florida

An empire of moss,
dead yellow, and carapace:
that was the season
of gnats, amyl nitrate, and goddamn
rain; of the gator in the fake lake rolling

his silverish eyes;
of vice; of Erotica,
give it up and let
me have my way. And the gin-soaked dread
that an acronym was festering inside.

Love was a doorknob
statement, a breakneck goodbye —
and the walk of shame
without shame, the hair disheveled, curl

In a lightning bolt
of memory,
I see our statue of Buddha
(a wedding gift from Uncle Gene
which always sat
on top of the speaker cabinet.
When a visitor asked,
"So, does Buddha like jazz?"
you said, "I hope so.
He's been getting it up the ass
for a long time."

It was your idea
to park and watch the elephants
swaying among the trees
like royalty
at that make-believe safari
near Laguna.
I didn"t know anything that big
could be so quiet.

And once, you stopped
on a dark desert road
to show me the stars
climbing over each other
riotously
like insects
like an orchestra
thrashing its way
through time itself
I never saw light that way
again.

I am in love, hence free to live
by heart, to ad lib as I caress.
A soul is light when full,
heavy when vacuous.
My soul is light. She is not afraid
to dance the agony alone,
for I was born wearing your shirt,
will come from the dead with that shirt on.

The angels I love
bicker over cod guts and snapper spines.
They joust for flounder skulls and pick the bones clean,
screaming. Their harsh, fine voices
break across my town
in a language lost to my kind,
thoughtless in the clear now of now
without death. Christ, walk down streets paved
with rain to me and you drown in my choir,
my angels beating prayer under wing
which is the want I have not loved
well. Where did my weather go? Meet me
where my hidden weather went,
where praise and rain
are never spent.

I must up and do, the bells are ringing;
And oh! I have lost my senses quite!
The spring and a pair of lovely eyes
Have leagued them against my heart for spite.

The spring and a pair of lovely eyes
Tempt me to folly, and folly's ruing!
I think that the roses and nightingales
Are deep in the plot for my undoing.

So sweet with spring the night and warm,
That flowers are peeping through;
My heart must guard it well from harm,
Or it will love anew.

But which of all the flowers dear
Is like to be the snarer?
The nightingales are singing clear,
" The lily; so beware her! "

In my heart there's music low,
Lovely bells are chiming;
Little song, swell out and go
Springward with your rhyming.

To the bowers that house the flowers
Hasten for the meeting.
If you chance upon a rose,
Say, I send her greeting.

The lovely eyes of the spring-sweet night
Look down and heal my pain:
" Has Love abased thee with his might,
O Love will raise again. "

And Philomela on the lime
Now sweetly sings her sadness;
The music's goal is in my soul,
That hears, and swells for gladness.