All sorrow is perpendicular occurring
at right angles of tragedy encircling
the grief-stricken with straight edges
only once intersecting across infinite planes—

Don't dare draw the lines between points
or shade the region with limits or curves
because the trajectories of bullets are plotted
on branes intolerant of slightest triangulation

Woe unto the seekers of sine waves
sobbing thinking of filling every trough
believing surely by now we've offered enough
to sate these bloodthirsty Euclidean demons

Cresting won't ever arrive in this course
filled to the brim with asymptotes, cold corollaries
but never spilling over under our sacred
pledge of allegiance to the 2nd Parallel Postulate

No intersections can be admitted with thoughts
& prayers extending outward barely co-planar
serious public policy proposals axiomatic
insistence on the Nirvana Theorem or nothing

A set of all points remains, mutually exclusive
motionless and always incongruent clueless
about their own particular geometries
awaiting radical Pythagorean salvation

Some paradigm we’ve built here though!
Two hundred years of living polygonal hand
to elliptical mouth without tangential reflection
on the unproven flatness of humanspace.

Even with 218 miles between us,
I still feel your lips on mine
And your hand
On the small of my back.
Your whisper travels highways
To flutter softly in my ears
And I can see your eyes twinkle,
The two brightest stars in my sky.
Even with 218 miles between us
I still feel your heart beat,
In perfect time with mine.

not good enough to bear your ring
not well enough to birth your child
not good enough seasoning
to taste i see
sweet baby stay awhile

you see that sun is rising again
and setting on the mountain tops
it rained last night and the dew drops
are stuck like glue on the windowsill
where your pie is warm and waiting still
but the crust is too soft to make you smile

so i throw my apron back on to sift my fingers in old flour trying to make anew
what's left from the recipe before
an uneaten slice or two
satisfied my buds to center core
but you always hold up your hand;
no more

i stare out the window at all these pies lined up one after the other and wonder what kind of baker do i need to be
to make you eat all the efforts that reach for your belly
though they never reach for me

it's a love i'll never get but i won't fret
sweet baby stay away ahile
i'm not ready for you to go just yet
not good enough for your garden
not good enough for your life
but i must be good enough for something

we watched it rain another night.

Let this be an elegy
While he lies there
You know what I mean
Bury his body
Down by the side
Of a crooked highway
His spirit will soon flag
A Greyhound bus
And someday will ride
Right on out of our lives
Back to the dark tower
Where past power and fame
Will be hung like a black flag
Tattered and limp in his shame.

Memories,
  diecast in their emotion,
  —catalysts of the soul

(High Point North Carolina: October, 1977)