"master plan" (Later Revised) (Original Version)

You make me want to plan and execute
Some spectacular crime together with you
that will craze, amaze and shock the world
and make the toes of newscasters curl
and the pundits will say: we're so devious
and dangerous, and deviant
that the only way how to deal with it
is construct a new kind of prison,
fit to the crime and designed to isolate:
and with only you and me in it.

"We could flourish"

We could flourish with feathers,
but the toasted blooms of summer
marigolds, you will continue to confuse
and call daffodils, which, injured, indignant,
radiant, will turn from you. In the wind,
all we are made equal. The heat
shall be stripped from our skins
and limbs, and we could wish
for differences to come in, set us
apart, get our coats like gentlemen
courting ladies
in ancient copper-plate etchings,
like badges of distinction, like bugs,
pinned to cork and long since bored
to death at educating the ten-year old sadist
whose eye was caught, whose hands gently,
lovingly, carefully, caught and who
has long since grown full of himself
and left, while you stand here
out of the sun, chilled to the skin
and wishing for wings - not to fly,
but to fold you in.

"Your Grim Stevedores"

well all these people in my heart
who I fell in love with, but never out
they linger never paying rent, and keeping up
the management, they're bad for business
there's no doubt - put them out
put them out right now

there's no room in my heart
no vacancy at all
you have booked the whole hotel
and your grim stevedores
are dragging in your steamer trunks
and I am trying my best to help

and I will help you settle in
and I have turned down every room
nothing but the personal touch
I'm most hands-on solicitous
for such a precious guest as you

there's no room in my heart
no vacancy at all
you have booked the whole hotel
and your grim stevedores
are dragging in your steamer trunks
and they don't seem to want my help

you'll settle into cleanest sheets
your pillow mint, melting in your pillow mouth
down my office, I turn in
and flip the vacant light to out

and out my window, cross the courtyard
I see the flicker in your room
and you'll be blasting your tv
but there'll be no complaint, you see
all the help is gone but me
and all the guests are gone but you

there's no room in my heart
no vacancy at all
you have booked the whole hotel
and your grim stevedores
are dragging in your steamer trunks
and they might kick me out as well 

and there's no room in my heart
no vacancy at all
you have booked the whole hotel
and your grim stevedores
have all gone back to their long shores
and they have left you in my charge
and you have put me in your spell

there's no room in my heart
no vacancy at all
you have booked the whole hotel
all your grim stevedores
have all gone back to their long shores

and I will keep you very well.

"current events"

Buddy, I don't want to hear bad news from you,
unless one: I can come to you rescue, or two:
ain't a thing anyone can do, in which case
I will come and sit by you and take any and all
of your current events. The truth hurts,
but at least it's true. Bad news makes no sense,
but at least we're informed. I will sit by you,
we can shake our heads, in wonder at this world
which is wonderful to me: since you were born.

staring dark

You made your bed, now lie awake and see how long
the daydreams take to summon up the sun, a stark
and staring contest with the dark. And now,
the bells! You win. Hit snooze, and hope
that some night, soon, you lose

step zero

sick of the whining,
sometimes? I am,
but at least no one
hears it and it keeps one
amused, with nothing better
to do and really, it's good
exercise working out the same
complaints, complaint really, over
and over. Like twelve steps,
except I never get past
one. You


Whenever I think
I have nothing left,
I think of you

assignment

So
I'm finally feeling fine about the closure
round my neck,
and I can breathe
a little freer, now I no longer expect -
and I can see
wide open futures, where before
it was just one.
I could just paint in anything,
except for what I want
because that's done.
I know - it wasn't we
who ruined us again.
Just me.

If only I had seen what I could easily
have fixed,
so easy now it would have been
to keep your mind on this.

The fault's in the receiver - your telepathy was plain.

It's amazing what we'll do to keep the one we love
from blame.

"The Post"

Thanks for the post you stand,
unawares or otherwise.
Somewhere at the reaches, there is a wall
upon which all my defense relies,
and there you are - always
on hand, and with arms
shouldered, vigilant for signs
of the enemy, of woe or dismay,
which may (or may not) be the same thing
but anyway, you level your sights
and cry out "Hey! Buddy, anything I can do?"
You are a friend. And I know I can count on you
for anything, even if certainly one
tends to wonder, well,
what is that, what might that be?
What can anyone do,
after all, in a life like this?
Just stand one's post and stick to one's gun,
I guess. It's the price of having once begun
in so militaristic an analogy

not with a bang

At the very end
stage of the universe...just
after that, long after
all has been said,
and in the moment after all
is done, in the breathless
interval that extends
and shall extend
permanently after
the last thing ever
to happen has happened...somewhere
out there,
in all of the vast
expanse of distance
through which the thinning, dimmed
vestiges of matter and energy
have finally worked themselves out,
and out, and through the final throes
of thermodynamic entropy, I hope

somebody comes along

and hangs up a sign
a sign that says,
"out of order."