The Tabernacle Syndrome

The tabernacle syndrome
tackles me linebacker like,
smashes my face with fists,
fights like a Boeing
ripping into my face.

The tabernacle syndrome
breeds guilt like lice,
claws outside my mind daily,
itches my scalp
like suppressed memory.

The tabernacle syndrome
slits family bonds wrist like,
down-the-street designs carving,
dividing and conquering
and placing in place.

The tabernacle syndrome
eats at you buffet like,
gouging and gorging and picking,
calling for seconds
holding a full plate.

She Sells Sea Shells (The Shell Seller)

I haven't updated in a while. I'm sorry. Here's something I wrote last summer and revised slightly before internet publication. We all know that writing is never done. It's only due. Well, the due date has come and gone for this one. Rocket.

She sells sea shells, but the market's bad,
so now she rents race cars down by the shore.
Business is listless, but the hours are rad;
the salary is barely enough to get by.
But those sea shells, now, she no longer needs;
she shipped them all back to the shell factories.

This poem has no moral and it doesn't speak about the human condition. It has nothing to do with me or anyone I know. It's nonsense of the highest order and I hereby disown it from my vast body of poetry. Anyone who identifies with the speaker in this poem is a frustrated academic and should be shot.

PREFACE: This poem is a part of a longer work: "The Slilence," which will never be finished because it is impossible to define the undefinable sound of no sound.

"The Void Left Is..."

The morning is adjar, close the shades
with a click, lock the car
and send the kids to school.
The sizzle of sausage on the cast iron griddle
bubbles and steams at the silence of sleep,
the quiet and still of the empty street.
There's me, there I am, window watching
and TV shopping for rhinestone rings
at six thirty in the morning,
coffee forcing sleep from me.
I read the news without seeing,
drink orange juice without thinking,
think about leaving
dream about dreaming
speak without seeming
leak without peeing
full without feeling.
There's the sound of my footfall,
the sock on carpet crunch:
'Here I am, I am here.'
But the street is still empty
the sleet is still falling
the kids are still sleeping
the sky is still heaving
the rooms are all muted
the walls are still standing
the land is expanding
the silence is retracting,
but the void left is...
the void left is...