Neon poem

Throw away your mascara,
mousse and underwear.
Wear these lines for a week,
just one week, not a long time.

Let the words mold your face,
drape your shoulders,
your delicate breasts.
Let the lyric infuse your dreams,

scent your pillows,
press your thighs with invisible weight.
At the end of the week
if these Emperor’s clothes

are your neon poem,
call me. I’ll be here on hold,
won’t have eaten but won’t rewrite.
You are new ink that will not dry.

Overwhelmed
               against the current

      Nobody has ever measured,
         not even poets,
           how much the heart can hold.
                  - Zelda Fitzgerald

Just below the surface,
a salamander under a rock,
by the creek, seductive red spots,
may sun herself, or the water rises,
maybe something moves the rock.
It’s a chance it’s not safe, it’s a he, then what?

There’s a frost-bitten wall of crackled,
crystallized caramel, immense, fluorescent,
a breathing mass of stoppage,
with red leather stools in front,
deliberately picked at, bitten,
a mazed cleavage, to an inebriated calm.

Perched on the peak of a continent,
head raised to orange vaudeville clouds,
hesitating the leap, skirt thigh high,
she’s reminded of Hegel - grasps with
green swollen fingers at a crack of ego,
at the hanging light over the bar.

Perhaps, a grappling hook,
a boost from the moon, a flapper tune.
“Good heavens Sayre – I said write, not drink.”
Perhaps a muse, a tablet,
perhaps a bauble of patience,
a measure of what the heart can hold.