Stormtrooper

He demands spurs.
Their clanging spares
no one creation.
His coming
trumpets
forest’s spread
across volcanic rock.
Order adorns
with ash and steel.

Wasteland

Green stalks press
through sienna clay,
stretching to yellow light.
Khaos flowers bloom blue.
Their pistils
dust copper pollen
on gunmetal.
Silver spurs jingle
as he rides north
through shadowed valleys.
His iron-capped rod
comforts him
as he finds beauty
here.

Spear Point

At the rugged red waste,
the Knight of Swords
dismounts progress’ horse.
Salamanders slither
beneath iron shavings.
Volcanic ash falls
on armor,
as the armies
of order
march forward
like machines.

Le Revenant Deux

Before she bled to death
in an old porcelain tub
with claw feet
and a multitude
of scratches,
in student housing,
like a Roman matron
in disgrace,
she published
precious poems
about carnivals
and clowns
in little magazines,
flung about
by smaller presses.

He lived sixty years
longer than she,
singing dark songs
about shamans
cloaked in parrot feathers.

Each day,
dancing on one foot
before a jaundiced flame,
he swallows
her sword of madness
and digests the darkness
her bright brogue disguised.

Irony

The law-abiding crave
the spoken crudeness
of the Magians.
They sneak away
to the towers
or seek in shadows
the secret shops
and chambers
of the poets,
who wear crow feathers
and dance on one foot
or the other
to the beat of the drum.
The ones who speak
the magic words
enjamb the emphasis
at the most inopportune time
and place secrets
in sleeping ears,
awakening the sibilance
of the silence
in their shadowed stance.