From AMERICAN GHAZALS


Seventy-Second 

Meridian Street laminates a curfew 
Held in place by history subject to amnesia.

Spring time far from any latitude condoned
By primacy despite the tilt toward recency.

One continually falls for a curmudgeon
Who remains confused as to why this stinging label.

The woman in the photograph had been a partly happy
Child until she grew into her mother's wrinkled chic.

Karate leads to flinching the receiver 
Barely knows and resists requests for explanation.

No appointment necessary, although lifetime contributions
Are recommended in exchange for an abstract form of protection. 


Seventy-Third 

What an easy daylight, only a minor sprain
On right foot, heater coming on, the shiny window.

Sacrifice has remained alive in the idea realm,
In contrast to its proponents who have passed.

Words leave peace in place until the volume is turned up.
I have so many syllables I will neglect to say to you.

My child, who held you close to her when I was galavanting
Through knowledge, through clauses twisted into hypertext.

Mantra after unsaid mantra, hurt has been alleviated
By mere shifts in focus, fraternity, equality and freedom.

Lanky lads who still drink offer large fractions of their income
To their future cleansing, to which resources will be deployed.

Capsicum as catalyst for various herbal infusions
To the aging body seeming younger by the timepiece. 


Seventy-Fourth 

On either side of me, five by seven photographs:
Each of my brothers, and their energy soft, piercing.

Blessed daylight shines through thirty-two degrees this morning.
I chaperone activity belonging just to me.

Open-holed flute keys allow the fingers to define
The level sweetness of each note's pronunciation.

All love remains accessible when I am breathing.
All love stipulates awareness or unawareness.

Configured span of pure attention reaches destinations
Quite apart from pure forgiveness, mere figure of speech.

To watch oneself convey an openness to growth confirms
The hand sketching what the hand has yet to learn. 


Seventy-Fifth 

Blue silk exposition of new morning as your grace alights.
I wink to the incessant treble clef of your blond insights.

Use of decisive force where musculature would be
Opens the figurative skylight to young birds rehearsing.

Symmetry's the fallout from dimensional break dance
From which a man named Joey worms his way across floorboards.

If I could purchase reeds, I would play saxophone 
With hundreds of percussion players wholly entranced.

Parcels, all of them selected by an individual with taste,
Arrive at once, and there are gardens expertly evolving.

Choreography amounts to a response to unanticipated 
Motion, tremors of that, silhouetting multicolored ambivalence. 


Seventy-Sixth 

For you I have been willing to hurt this much
Not in a vacuum and also porously.

Gems germane to obfuscation taunt me where I reach
Toward, to ward off, circumstance replete with nature.

Miniscule playthings mark the good and pliable 
Flat plane to which I have aspired once more alone.

"Shepherd me," I asked of no reluctant follower:
"I shall be your saint for all eternity." 

Watch silos float along the field, as though collecting
Sustenance tucked away within, informed surrender. 


Seventy-Seventh 

Snappety strip mine solace aftermath, the damned 
Fine sun splits hapless long divulgence into slips.

Minders foretell all their fears in ridges meant
To fracture ardent predisposition as though unmovable.

East of chaperones are miscreants en route to daybeds.
All the lively women in the back come toward the frontline. 

Saturation is a nicely day-fied deity come some soon
Weather mat due for a hosing chafe about to mystify some sordids.

Make your way toward delivery minced into the slow-go 
Cinch appliance of a heat pump marshaled toward unwork. 


Seventy-Eighth 

There is the stippled, only water, where to place
Inevitable commas as though lapses were aroused.

Mention whether the bullet and whether entry minus exit
Means grazed on a continuum so responses are still happening.

Avenging weed, the small walk, and the coffee, and the near-
Term darkness and the constant television, and the ability to download.

Records of the years in Ann Arbor, records of the learning,
Evidence that something other than the shrapnel took place.

That I am not, have never been, an incubator, something
About business opportunities, meaning of a single word. 


Seventy-Ninth 

Circumference of praise fits tightly to memory.
One serves dark tea stippled with awakeness.

A temperate conversation leans in on 
Accidents until the congregation is informed.

A pieced together flow amounts to preferential treatment
Of the elderly, their in-laws, even assembled neighbors.

What of the word frankincense why do we know it
When each morning, the bell tongue sounds firmly on cue.

Music occurs in my very blood, even unrecognized,
As people I have met retrace the steps I do not know. 


Eightieth 

Questions begin to form when you remember I am reading,
But I can answer nothing until I reach one paragraph.

The individual who shared with me the Alexander Method
Lived philosophy that proved one had to be from somewhere else.

Indiana stiffens the soul; alternatively, Indiana lands 
On beachways from Lake Michigan that shift resolve to walk uphill intact.

Even cement inherently dissolves if you are willing
To wait long enough, believing this inevitability.

Look at these long-stemmed tulips gifted us for luncheon
Here at home: petals stiff and beautiful red-yellow. 

If I breathe exactly as instructed my intention 
Will become contagious to the people I will always love. 


Eighty-First 

Sobriety turned sobriquet anointed him at first:
He broadcast a reconstituted innocence.

The more intake, the less even the out-take(s)
Plural as contrarian salvos mistaken for mature.

One ransacked the pleasure boat for curfew notices.
One equally limited oneself by inference.

What jealous looking roses had congealed
Into ferocious answers to neglect.

"You're on your own," said he, phonetically
Imperfectly, yet clear and to-the-point.

If an insult weighs something, how does that affect
The unwitting recipient of such injustice?

Limber, lambent suffixes seem barnacles
Affixed in permanence to vessels minus names.