Amber

This misbegotten spoke of
rueful light, having been
kicked from his unclean-too
sheltering by the bully-
bruised sky, exhausts himself
repeating ungallant falls
into winter-wronging crowds.

Thick disapproval oozes
out an aural complaint
punctuated with amber
clots, ensnaring the flippant
and the shifty but to fix
their toady meanings inside
polished globules of today.

Puddle of Cryonics

I'd rather be a puddle
than a Popsicle.
Can I tell you why?

Better yet, I'll start
by asking, What should
immortality cost?

It could be mine for the low-
low price of twenty-nine,
nine-ninety-nine.

Yes, in US dollars,
no cents. I've got the latter,
not the former,

at least not in this lifetime.
I might also mention
the ugly how

to get there: First flushed,
then re-pumped blue for blood,
I'd be bagged and hung

upside down in a sparing
accommodation.
If plans hatch as laid,

science'll shell me out
from gamy non-life
to patch and catch me up.

But why would it bother,
'less to pick my pickled brain
about times ago

when men couldn't see much
beyond their vanity.
And that takes me back

where I started at:
I'd rather be a puddle,
and evaporate.

Stones

Lately, simple stones have taken on
the heft of enormous boulders.

It could be that our gravity has changed,
or that these rocks are newly made
of a matter with greater density.

I'm ever an enthusiast
for Greek myth, its stories penned far away
in fertile fields of elites bred
from the straying loins of finely flawed gods.

That's what I tell most, but I couldn't
tell you any details about twelve labors,
monsters taken, torn asunder.

Hercules must have shouldered his burdens,
I imagine, froth at the mouth,
drawing on his inner strength to support
the brunt of a weighty world's cares.

Or was that Atlas? The question may be
moot, examining my own thighs.

— Francis Scudellari

Tingling

at last...

he pours out, his coctions
conned with too-cunning smile
from these gullible tips of wilting

lips impetuously
pushed by a pouting posy.
Its bunched buds weep chartreuse then slink

off into the waited
years of welcoming swallows.
Their needle wings paired with calls pierce

the sky's purple-black bruise,
revealing light, stenciled clues
he sorely needs to fly himself

up to shivering heights.
Once shin-deep in substrata
routes flooding forth from badly zoomed

maps, his questions run
afoul. Ascot-wrapped but choked,
the relentless sinks to unhealthy

altitudes, and he falls
through stained ceiling of acid
nave where his fancy first took off.

Tingling...

— Francis Scudellari

Wen Chang

I wake monastic
to a morning of spare light,
and an itch to be
tetchy lingering from last
night's candle-lit creeps.

A quick rummage through closets
where I keep hidden
pantechnicons of surplus
garments discarded
by near houses of worship,

finds a never-worn
surplice cut to my liking,
and I slip it on
starched and musty white
atop wrinkled blue

jeans. In the hall, I perk up
primula bouquets
laid at feet of ivory
and I ignite
a joss stick, letting its curls

of fragrance implore
the deity to bring down
his leather-bound book
and nobble my stubborn mind
until its ructions

subside. But Wen Chang keeps words
clutched dear to his breast,
and I'll need another means
of making myself
a muggins with romper thoughts

new freed, ever penned
to bounce about. So I head
to the scullery
and peal yellow and red blotched
skins from twelve pippins

to bake in two tarts, bubbling
up brown: One I'll eat,
the second use finally
to coax a musing
from my still stiff friend, Wen Chang.

— Francis Scudellari

Talia lit

Talia lit
a candied wick,
her annual try
to melt away
the cherry-glazed
sadness,

but having
no taste for cake
and no fondness
for pie, she drips pink-
blue stings on her
waiting

palm, its cracks
brimming with waxy
rivers, to set
a striped and flamed
believing, where
as when

the tremors
go out, she'll wish
for tears to rise
and curled smoke to close
the black eyes of
heaven

— Francis Scudellari

Blood drunk

There wasn't any pain,
no prickle,
nor a tickled pink,
just this worldly feeling
of being pried
to a softer bed,
while twin fangs sank in
and rosy drew out
mere droplets,
planted by the shy
sun's unclotted gleam.
Its golden streams
pulled from primped-up flesh
to fill crimped-down bellows
till they bulged
bronze and round.

There isn't any pain,
no struggle,
nor a muddled shout,
just this bleary-eyed dream
of being led
to a slate-gray patch,
where blood-drunks dodder
and bloated belch forth
queer seedlings
that root at the stray
day's rolled-up edges.
Their crimson creeps
stopped by simple smacks
to spill pimpled oozings
till they sag,
flat and black.

Sunday blew in

Sunday blew in
breezily
popping pinstriped
cuff to bare
a cunning and
ill-cutting
hand,
manicured tips
of rounded
pink extending
to un-shake
my seldom firm,
oft clammy
faith.

Night Street

Blue lights follow ridges

in aluminum siding,

trace brick, befuddle

lettering, and cast

down on brown air—

yellow reflectors

stand and wait as if

at a reunion, tar patches

lay themselves out

under the headlights

and the tree shadows

hold a seance with the sky,

their webwork of branches

netting ghosts.

Suspended Animation

Dear Santa

Seeing how
I haven't seen you now
in more than many while's quite,
I thought I'd write
this letter laden wish,
not big enough to be a list,
as it's just one thing,
and that thing is else no thing,
but a pod. Yes, I wrote pod, but not

any pod
you'd find hanging green
on a bush. I mean those lean
bits of oblong
and white that best belong
in the movies where one's out knocked
and then inside tucked
cozy, waiting for long trips,
or patches too rough, to easy slip

by. I'll glow
in my pod, yellow
digits the ticks down-counting
till zeros sing
alarming doors to whir
and pop, dropping a discovered
when both safely sound
and reanimated found
on the far side of neither's going.

But knowing
you, Santa, to be
a bastard red and jolly,
if I know you
at all, then here's my due:
one ragged blanket from Good Will,
some pretty pink pills,
and an unassembled cough
instructing me to "go sleep it off."

dissolving

When I'm invited out,
no doubt, to that place
we each must go,
I'll step blithe not grim, trimmed in
pretty-
patterned suits.

Plaid-scented tears atop
herringbone-stretched smiles,
layered over
paisley-flavored sighs, I'll spin
pinwheel-
peopled years

to gargle my garb fresh
in bathing. And bathe
I will, striding
toward the bric-a-brac bridge
that spans
forgetting.

I may waver before
my wavelengths dive,
but then I'll jump
to swirl in the bobbing chill
and feel
a measured

dissolving.

If I could wish

If I could wish,
I would wish upon
petals not yet plucked
from yellowed guessing

If I could wish,
I would wish upon
furry seeds white-tucked
in breathy nesting

If I could wish,
I would wish upon
stony time's rolled back,
concave-gray jumbling

If I could wish,
I would wish upon
yawning star's stretch, black
tales awkward mumbling

And when I did,
each counted could-be
would be a wished lie
down from undoing

I meet Ingi

I meet Ingi,
stumbling down
from the opposite blend
of a tumbled path
paved with impatient falling
matters.

Nearer,
our split-bottom steps tingle
from the crumbling glass,
as slivered gum-ball ends
spike bronze gowns
of brittle leaves.

We swear to sea,
and shake frowns
till our best parts do bend,
toppling humble hats
where waves diverge, to grow then
flatter.

Bauble Brothers

Bauble brothers hang red,
one rotund, one spouted,
both made a magenta
melancholy by fog.
Its white whispers nightly,
slipping their bloody seeds
down paper-funnel tales
of supple branches stripped,
and the skin-cracking eyes
coming too soon to cull.

This is not an elephant

"This is not an elephant,"
he confides to the child
as they oval round
captive creatures foreign
and featured in glassy habitats.

"See those four stout stumps
with their loose-pebble bottoms,
rooting him to the dust-bound earth
where his great girth grows?"
"Do you mean its legs?"

"Then pay attention to the gray
veined fans that swat and sway
to push away midges nibbling
heat into his giant's skull."
"Aren't those just ears?"

"There are twin ivory tines
he uses to stab and dine on
tightly packaged meals
the forest's cunning seals for him."
"I thought they were tusks?"

"Last, note his accordion's
appendage that dangles down
to fleet wrestle and greet
with a snicker or a shout."
"Grandpa, the sign says,

'Elephant'! What do you call it?"
"That's a little tidbit
he's never shared with me,
but I do know him to be
much more than his name."

Thought experiment

I may or may not be:
a posited feline absurdity
curled up on comma paws
inside Herr Schrödinger's booby-trapped box.

Its flask of uncertain
whether smashed to poison my mighty mews
and spew a gray-mouthed cloud
that inky clots neither's sharpening pen.

Entangled buts become
stranded as knots of fuzzy pink yarn send
either-or careening
arm and arm down imperfect pictured paths,

where Epimetheus
stands, ready to wed Pandora anew,
and doom-birth our many
worlds with the lifting of my thousand lids.

— Francis Scudellari

Am meal at

With a worded trap I'm asked
to verify my human
being by typing
A-M-M-E-A-L-A-T.

I misinterpret that
as, "Am meal at."
Putting down the plastic fork
to key it in,

I wonder out loud,
"Who's about to be
eaten, and where?"
It tells me I passed.

— Francis Scudellari

Straying's Wish

Disenchanted, this slanted floor
whispers to me
through its tightly clenched slats.
Cranky tales of failed

first steps, I tip-toe past,

unflappable. End tables mock
my walk-by dare,
mouthing weak-coffee moans
from wood-grained circlets. Stains

surface, I sidle on,

as their knots fade. A lean-to shade,
the lamp tilts up
shadows with blunted beaks.
Clipped wings flapping deep-toned

airs, my unsettling makes

falsetto. Vents hiss librettos
to dissuade me
with their combed-over notes.
Forced-upon causes, pause

to caress fleeing ought,

envied. Wood shutters crack mutters
to trick a gaze
from pictured window's bliss.
Vagrant clouds cross crowds

of stars, my straying's wish.

— Francis Scudellari

East of the Sun

I often try to sing of penciled landscapes
where we two might meet.
My clumsy words hatching crumpled rocks
to top a barren line,
and in between their gaps, thick trunks I sketch,
to sprout bouquets
of vibrant green. But I give these trees too much
life, too much choice,
missing you, they pull up their roots and escape
the page to run

East of the sun,

And west of the moon,

We'll build a dream house

Of love, dear;

down mirrored corridors.
The future and familiar trade steely gaze,
as wooden crowds lead
in fruitful chase, pointing my not-belonging
eyes toward stainless pods;
squat glowing bellies lined with leather laps
where I could slip, nestle
and pillowed watch digits whirl backward,
dialing a piped-in lilt,
my lullaby to a past that trips its way

Near to the sun in the day,

Near to the moon at night;

We'll live in a lovely way dear,

Living on love and pale moonlight.

across black-and-white tiles. Instead I dodge
as I skip-dance through
dozens of mechanical players, lounging
above carved pieces,
hand-painted with perplexing stares. These
salt-and-pepper pawns
I grab and toss shoulder-ward, unsettling
over-recked games not fit
for the fancied fix I place on distant cracked
pedestal. Then, a stray

Just you and I, forever and a day;

Love will not die, we'll keep it that way.

among banqueted queues
of chattering guests, who ivory arrayed
wait beneath vaulted glass,
I see your finery's smile beyond them,
with pen poised atop
my hard-bound tale of tender leaves. The ink
on cream, once-written
you tear, so that together we can fold
papyrus sail boats
homeward pushed by a shared breath's slow unwind

Up among the stars we'll find

A harmony of life, too lovely, too.

East of the sun and west of the moon, dear,

East of the sun and west of the moon.

— Francis Scudellari

This is a poetic mashup with lyrics to the jazz standard "East of the Sun" as performed by Billie Holiday and written by Brooks Bowman (in italics)

I'll robot

As my illogic breaks, I'll robot make
to be this soul's chamber,
robbing a piecemeal joy from misfit toys
tossed out for fine tuning

by toddlers cheery mad to gorge on fads.
I'll take their T-Rex head,
with droopy lids that wink as if to drink
the world's wide-shallow stares,

plug its plastic prongs in torso of tin
while twin squeeze-box arms splay
to tie magnetic bows round pads below
gold, plush lion cub's legs.

This moppet of mixed breeds I'll learned feed
with animate cunning
to be ruled by charmed laws that give it pause
when whole-sum circumstance

tangles fuzzy circuits. Then a circus-
wire's unbalancing act
I'll paste from templed flesh to doll enmeshed
by transfuse rigging,

and as coil comes to slough, just as I'm off,
I'll flip that gilded switch,
implanting my spirit into a bit
of copper-hued country.

© Francis Scudellari