Sits heavy around us
Taking oxygen we need
Without caring it must be ours.
Gliding in on tulle-draped gowns,
Prussian Blue in hue,
It transmutes,
Multiplies its powers to the nth degree,
Smothering us quickly
As we reach out to grasp
At least one breath.

Its guise changes
With the seasons.
Hapless months go by
And bring new names
To nothing times.
In each age, we are alone,
Defying poets.
Captured periwinkle tries
To break the spell.
While vines deny its effort.

Delicate flowers,
Bridesmaids dresses,
And the Moon, twice full
In the month’s rotation
Could have kept us
Living.
Instead
Stealing the tides,
It sealed our fate
With a gasp.

Where did it come from and where was it going?
This nibbling sensation, tingling through her selfness
Each time a star went shooting or a snowflake fell.

The Gordian knotted, knowing
She had something to be freed.
Tumble, juggle, or dance, which should she choose as the sword?

Thinking blue or better yet the blur of blue,
A purple more regal than a
Monarch’s robes.
Imagining the images of her artful self
Compressed, suppressed for decades.

Yearning to emerge like Venus with a
Preternatural sigh
From a look posed before
That step out of the shell.

She chases created angels
Through orchided jungles and Nordic seas.
Her desire known only in the finest, quiet moment.
To see the grandeur of a line,
Or a space between,
That captures more than the shape can tell.

Demanding now a place of her own,
Her solace, brilliant, unnamed colors,
Celtic perfection, fineness of symmetry,
Wild tropical birds feasting on welcoming flowers,
Splattered in her brain, ready to burst forth,
In full-throated sound, “Today, I began!”

He could have ignored that little old lady,
Waxing poetic and cackling like a hen,
Over an ergonomic chair about to go at auction.

He could have triggered his superior
Financial wherewithal to get it from her
On an easy outbid, profiting in the bargain.

He could have put his smile away, reserving it
For some waitress, gaining points at a cafe
Where free coffee flowed like nectar.

He thought twice, though, smiled again,
And left his hand at his side,
Calmed without a bid.

The chair in all its glory would be hers,
As he smiled shyly, thinking to himself:
What the heck,
It’s Valentine’s day.

Admit it.
Probably a grandmother said it to you,
Or a cousin that you called aunt
Because she hadn’t married and was
As old as your mother.

“Absolutely never go out of the house
With a safety pin holding up your slip.”

Admit it.
It struck fear in your heart
And still does
Even though modern women
Rarely wear slips anymore.

Unless you wear things out of sleazy catalogues
Like bras that wouldn’t fit a mouse.

Admit it.
They do come in your mail.
They come in everyone’s
Without request, but you don’t stop them
Do you?

You see yourself in a Merry Widow
That sets you in the Tenderloin or a brocade brothel.

Admit it.
There’s a little touch of the prurient
In everyone, the titillation
Your grandmother
Or spinster aunt suspected.

They tried to save you from it,
In case the coroner was called in.

Now passing
Too quickly
The earth’s sphere.

Nearing the moon
With its
Companion star.

I’d like to fly between the two
Separate
Them
For 
A
Moment

So when rejoined
They’d know their love again.

If Jung could tape my head,
Live in my dreams,
The drama
Of myths
Would seem mundane,
Unredeemable
In dullness.

If only in these dreams
Jung could peer,
At the corner of my images
Held for photostat.
I’d give more proof,
Send him a moment’s
Vision,
Colored,
Framed,
Shiny,
Transparent.

In every way,
Hold him fixed
Within the glory
Of my smattered thoughts.
Out of danger,
Out of want.

A fine rendition,
In standard times,
Of how my dreams are truly made.