House Visit

Translucent purple plastic:
the lens of toddlers and the bucket
for daffodils, patiently waiting to be coddled
by a the green thumb
nursed by the uv lighting and minerals
washed abay by tooting and tottering
delivery trucks, smugly blowing smog through
19th century window-panes and mauve turrets
in raspberry sorbet and chocolate fresco:

a tiramisu of colonial brick and neo-gothic dwellings
suitable for hobbits- or humans
libraries and as large and alive as some
brains, seen through the yellow lamp-lit
windows- partially obscured in in ivy and shrubs
and always instilling a kind of longing for the sweet comforts of
home and hearth.

A Newton Fair in 2008 Featuring An Popular Klezmer Band

liquid violins and wooden chocolate
trellises hang from smoked oak apples-
the black, pouting eyes of children
caked in smirking satisfaction, their
smirks washed in charred ash and
remnants of alabaster fluff as
crickets and crocodiles zag and jig,
sway and rock to to the sounds

of the klezmer bands knees
knocking clapboard laughs from
striped cats' teeth and merry-go-round's squeals,
crying, "crit-creee, crit-creeee, crit-creeee,"
to the rhythm of  the kelzmer band's knees,
slap-slapitying the shiny sueded soles of their
worn dancing shoes to old women's flit-me-free curls
and cider jug belly laughs all the way
down to split-pee crick and egglestown spires,

bending two whole
rakes in half and two whole snakes into coils
along which the carpenter ant shimmies
to the tune of two-and-ten ton jimmies
right past the garden of scientists in the courtyard washing
"O's" and 15-foot spheres in a cemetery of sculpture
long since discarded by university students
for playing cards, posterity, reality, and milk teeth

traded for bigger game: giraffes, lunging
antelopes, wiggling banana slugs and
yawning carnivorous bog plants,
teeth gently closing over themselves
to the clash bang sounds of the great brass
klezmer musicians on Fair Day

Upon Sitting Down to Write and Observing a Lemon

lemon pilatory skin
a solitary torpedo of organic flesh against
inorganic composite burnished maple table top
an elemental, prized possession
of breathing carbon primary conglomerate
reminds me of my essential, self-confirming
membership to the carbon tree

touching its undulating, grandmotherly flesh
to my nose produced memories of the
produce isle of the grocery store,
the metal handles of grocery carts
and in the gleaming, over-waxed white floors

a false sense of security in fluorescent lighting
the same that instills anxiety in new hospital patients
and order to chemical laboratories
while illuminating the post-modernist corridors
of subways and the miniature text of my
law school casebooks- still ponderously shaping
the bookshelves into magnifying glass
curves for future inspection

a reminder
of self-engendered identity and
subconscious and conscious reminders
of what is left undone- a sink full of dishes
under a full moon- the reason they don't go out
with Wednesdays trash,
and the white light splayed, evenly
over all