Our Soft Focus Life

I'm looking into the future,
ten years or so,
into our cottage
outside the city,
with a study for me
and a room for your hobbies;

our endless present's
edges become feathered.
The colors run together.
We are impressionistic.
Golden light seeps from the corners.

Suburban Gloaming

Your ash-brown soles on the dashboard,
seat reclined to the napping point
as we coasted through nowhere and stopped
to eat out of a basket in the cul-de-sac
where I first felt the pull of the moon.
There is no scorched earth, only scorching
pavement, yet lions squeeze through the cracks
and ants pool around any dropped morsel.
When I said this you threw the salt shaker
out the window. It shattered into a glinting
constellation and as each piece was carried off
underground we drove away.

Allen Ginsberg Aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln

Let the President execute his own desire--
I claim my birthright!
I call all Powers of imagination
in every direction.
I lift my voice aloud,
reborn after the vast sadness of War Gods,
published to my own senses,
approved with pleasure by my sensations.

Let Congress legislate its own delight
and pronounce words beginning my own millennium;
blissfully received by my own form:
destroyer of battlefield illusions,
of human kingdoms to come.
Let the States tremble
when our trembling bodies hold each other
on the bridge over the Republican River-
The feeling from our faces
burst into animal beauty
15 years ago--

Let the Nation weep,
O but how many in their solitude weep aloud like me--
the bodylove emanating in a glow of beloved skin,
visible on the horizon
reborn forever as long as Man
who loosed the bomb that's slaved all human consciousness.
Manifestation of my very thought,
this Act done by my own voice,
I here declare the end of the War!

Beach House

You make me nostalgic for somewhere I have never known:
Miles of grey shore stretching out past a gloaming ocean;
the sun ripples the skyline; an aching wave catches me
with its spray. Once, I was in the swell, felt an upwelling
motion overtake the locks in my throat and spill out
till I was a river with my own coast
by the moon, its invisible arms embracing my limp form.

Heroes and Villains

Oliver fiddled with his cape as the school nurse prodded his swollen eye with her gloved finger. Across from them, occasionally releasing a small sigh, was the principal, "Having trouble at home, son?" said the principal. The boy turned away defiantly, closing his eyes, "Nothing I can't handle," he replied cooly.Now smoothing out the wrinkles in his tights, Oliver requested the old bra he had been using as a mask. The principal declined, saying Oliver's father was on his way. No sooner had the principal finished talking when a man burst through the door. He had on a metallic black leotard, studded leather gloves, and a headdress of poorly-glued felt. His mouth contracted into a cruel sneer, "It's just like you to ask for outside help." At that Oliver's hands transformed into rocks and a river ran between them.