Freight Release

Francium is rare earth

FR Leavis was a goon

F Roosevelt was svelte 

in the Family Room

Arundel

MacAdams Gravel

the thin man down

in the gravel pit

his insides moored

by ready mix 

pushing snow

up off the pile

to load the trucks

that sand the town

in olden times

his namesakes would

macadamize

the roads to Ayr

last week the doctors

kedged his guts

he won't see

next aprils flood

More Of H.H. Lime's Wisdom

"Clean white teeth come from chewing action and abrasiveness."

                                       -- Mr. H.H. Lime

The Quotable Mr. Lime

"Dikes make above ground tanks viable."

                                 -- Mr. Lime

Dat Yo Daddy

Sind

the last settlement before the desert.

a trapezoidal hill before a river where once families of fishermen lived in mud huts.

when gold washed up with the commotion of these fishermens' nets, 

the casteless out of the lower depths of Tapo Meru crossed the desert on the prospects of merchants' stories:
of stars shining in the mud, 
a constellation of gold chinks.

these were the ones who made bricks from the mud, and walls from the brick.

these were the ones who named the hill Sind and the river Ket.

These were the ones who traded gold dust, and succored the caravans halfway to Tapo Meru

the hill grew crowded with walls and smithy holes and whore stews, 
and the river a sewer.

it was this way until a year an invader army lit the river afire, and tore down the town

and by the winter had built a balustrade out of the bones of monsters, stodged up the Ket, and squatted there for one hundred years.

this exists in a library.

today the hill is what it always was.

an outcropping of limestone overlooking a lethargic brown wash south to the sea.

on the nights we rested there we shared our camp with other merchants bound for Tapo Meru.

they shared wine, and we held a contest of telling tales, the subject the ghosts just outside our fire.

(13)

Drunk Shakespeare

Tapo Meru

after days of nothing but hills of sand, the black trees appear on the horizon. 

they will always be the horizon. they are the highway of Tapo Meru.  an orchard of gargantua speared deep into the sand.

the Arboretum Infelix.

a day-traveling caravan cools in the shadows of these trees
and discovers the illusion.

they were made by men out of many smaller sycamore, 
hard as iron, that long ago had been fished from the northern dams,
and dragged to the desert by slaves.

like fingers clasped together, 
the trees were tied with the fibers of a well known river stalk 
that came with the wood from the north, 
from the rivers of the city -- retted cooked and plaited to make rope strong enough to hold the trees together.

of these trees taller than the eight towers of Tapo Meru, 
(one for each dead king),

not even the ageless inside the city can satisfactorily explain how they were stood.

French Tickle

Gilles de Rais

would

kill the pets

Germany 20 Japan 85

Historie

The pilgrims built a church.

Then they built a tavern.

The States not coincidently 

are rife with superstition.

Beer Garden

The Krauts are here

with their blonde hair

with Coca Cola

mixed in their beer

with borrowed stares

the Krauts are sour

their women fair

(13)

Chron Logy