I should have never gotten involved in such a huge lie. I was a poet, for God's sake, not a novelist. I wasn't used to lying.

I. Europa How else to begin but with Gustave Holst's Mars--the gods waging war in romantic twilight as drumbeats and cannons blast swathes in the gloaming and glory awaits in the halls of black smoke. A visual perhaps:…

Behind the bellicose façade lay a soft, compassionate soul. He sat within a swirl of rosy twilight hues, buoyed by the gently creeping tide. A dark wall approached and he mechanically spun and began stroking into the glassy canvas of light and ocean that lay between him…

I’m not / going to change you I /promise

The Tea Party member was married but cuter. He worked as a caulker, a tub and basin man.

My grandfather rode with the Czar’s army. He was abducted from a village in Austria, trained to pillage and drink, plunder and rape, and ride the best horses that could be had. They were given the best vodka and the sharpest swords. They were all just b

Eighteen-year-old Svetlana Kabalevsky was now the widow of the poet Dmetri Kabalevsky, soon to be another widow-whore on the Moscow highway.

I'd had a long, hard fall from the pinnacle of the profession. I made the mistake of accepting a mouse pad, coffee mug and a fleece pullover with the logo of Upchux, an anti-reflux drug, on the left breast where you'd get heartburn.

His mother hated blue jays, hated them with a passion she usually reserved for no-count trash who drank beer on their front steps and worked on their cars in the street.

Before the paint spikes Coney Island to the wind, I walk home through the strum of a shield, colder than the one he left behind. For the hour I sprawl along the sidewalk in her laugh, crater's shadows for Wonder Wheel, he is midnight sun in The Last Waltz. Where the glow…

His touch, even now, seemed to set off tremors inside her.

(no one need fear timidity in our tastes― / we like trying new things, no matter our hastes!)

Because we cannot know, we keep walking, keep getting up each morning, feeding the cat, drinking coffee. Because we cannot know I'm drinking coffee that morning in Thailand, not on the beach but just off, because there is only one spot where you can get real coffee,…

A rock group named Stuck Gas Pedal. Another named Tweezer. A group of young punk-rockers wearing neckerchiefs named Mein Kampfire. But wait, there’s more. A song called “We Were Being Facetious,” co-written by them all. Lost Flyswatter. That

I never meant to shipwreck you, I didn't even know I was singing out loud. I just stood on my rock a little too boldly, and hummed a tune you wanted to hear.