Tunnel of Love

Where ferries travel in earnest
People run sweating
Cars and trucks overshoot the red light
A tonnage of brick and glass weights down
The river's edge
Five years ago it was landfill
Approximating human recreation
There is no darkness only light
Spring is unrelenting in its optimism
I will carry full pockets
Like a willing slave to the pyramids
Your love
And see you with mirrors in the angles
Of indirect sunlight
Bounced off corridors into ever smaller pin dots
Camera obscura
Viscera elucida
Lead weight love
The ha ha of adhering images
Tearing pinholes in my heart
A pleasantly disturbing atonal scale
Banished from earth orchestras
But the river knows the symmetry of cycles
The size and proportion of this modern affliction
Egg beaters in the sky monitor the weather
And our daily chant
To be given happiness in a lifetime of sporadic peace
Your voice
Listening to music beyond comprehension
You are beyond my comprehension
And I am so Kleenex

Adverbs Deluxe Edition

I cannot remember the day you 
Took romance languages from the planets
Rosy adjectives woke without you
And left before dawn
Rolling downhill without engines 
So as not to wake you


From the alveolar ridge 
Your thinning dictionary 
Opened on internal rhymes
Dangling parts of speech


I lay down
On the banks of definition 
Twirled favorite verbs around my fingers
So I would not forget you


But you are lost 
And destinations abound
In the text and subtext that rush to fill 
Idle conversation


You hold your breath
But won’t dance to the symphony
Of torn perforations you requested 


Is there a melody? you ask
Yes, it is created by
Unaccented syllables 


Not likely, you said
Adverbs deluxe edition


The final answer
Is that I can’t remember
The swarm of Hellenic letters
That distracted me


When I can open my eyes 
To the night’s syllables
I only lose when I’m on the ground

Next - Fred Johnston

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