System Restore
(free verse with incidental rhyme,
Last week, not thinking,
I punched a strange computer key
and spawned unceasing lunatic para

Electrocutions show our love of ri
We give the favored one a kingly f
As well as pen and ink so he can w
The thoughts we all will prize whe
We see his every need is now addre

A soft, vulnerable thumb of flesh,
used to make verbal the finest tho
is rooted in the floor of a fetid
edged from ingress by crescents of
rocklike cubes clashing together,

The Minister Speaks:
“Our chastened knees and pressed p
Father and Son, you said, were co
the water to wine, the stinking co
mere legerdemain, you claimed,

A Dumb Waiter in a Heavenly res
(Lou’s Cafe: Fontvielle, France)
Our voices hushed, we slip into
the narrow, gloomy room,
a taper on the back-wall bar

Autumn in Florida
Smug live oaks drop a leaf or two,
Acknowledging the time of year;
Droll cypress take from this their
Turn rust as if their end is near.

Domesticity
The jelly cleaned off the worn lin
the laundry folded and put away,
three children washed and bedded,
Thelma kicks off her floppies,

Leda Lays an Egg
One morning Leda, sitting on the
Saw Zeus appear transmogrified to
She heard too late the honks and w
And so with godly force he conquer

The plank is narrow,
more narrow than when he started;
he could slip off at any time.
The wood is slick, too,
threatening again a premature plun

My First Pot Boiler
(George Meredith advised Thomas
Dear Publisher:
I’ve joined a fiction writing grou
Techniques that writing experts ha