alicubi@earthlink.net 

"Chicago, March"

Blue twilit
snow

clings mosslike to brick,
heaps atop billboards

and phone lines. Just in
off the street, my

ears burn.
Out the kitchen

window,
The Sears Tower

lights against a gradual
Lake sky,

quivers in the heat
of a church boiler stack--

though it’s no longer the tallest
building in the world.

The moon is up.
About it linger airplanes.

And a satellite comes
flickering by!

"We Began to Dance"

The parson tore
Himself a hunk of bread and slopped it in the wine and we
Began to dance

Began to dance
A lovely dance
All day and all night
In the month of June

The broken clock struck
Half past three but obvious to us it was merely a minute to one and we
Began to dance

Began to dance
A rancid dance
Our swollen feet
In sodden shoes

The storm clouds drove
On by and let loose on a county thirty miles east and we
Began to dance

Began to dance
A simple dance
On tinder grass
In quarter time

The stockings dropped
To the fire escape and she with a moley back excited us and we
Began to dance

Began to dance
An urgent dance
Beneath the stairs
In our underwears

The friendly sparrow vanished
And left us crowded at the window all thinking our own special thoughts
and we
Began to dance

Began to dance
A lonely dance
Having no home
In the world

"A Voracious, Brilliantly Colored Eel"

The stream does not purl
In my memory
But a sky of a sort
Incidentally, behind
Branches and leaves
And, chilly, fall
I kiss her eyebrow like
Nothing doing

The dive master
An Aussie, holds to his breast
The moray, lets her slip
Teeth and all from thick gray arms--
Bubbles mushroom and billows
Of white sand, the only sound
Dry, mechanical breath

For Halloween this year
I shall be an Egon
Schiele model
The tussled hair and
Accordion black stocking
I can manage
But I wonder, how
Will I rig up a
Swollen red twat?

Roses, roses, roses I dream
Of roses that bloom
In the sea

The heaving dark sea
That heaves
Upon the earth

I think of great hulls
And stop
What I'm doing

I go to the sea
And she says
Come to bed, you're drunk
Honey, are you drunk?

© All Copyright, Martin F. Downs.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.