A hasty embracing
On staircases shaking.
The flush of a face in

Cake make-up is fleeting.
A short-spoken meeting:
No sequel, no greeting.

A volatile squabble
On stair-steps that wobble,
On stair-steps that bobble,

Where, at night, people need sleep aids,
There, every well of stairs cascades
To Hades…
        via leaves of cabbage!
Stairs descend only (like the adage,

‘Burn your bridges!’), stairs having more
Chances to split on them, than score.

So, in rushing to lips of rose –
We, at times, forget our: Hellos.

When from those same lips we fly –
Who’s – and when – forgotten: Goodbye.

A brief playful tweaking
On staircases squeaking,
On staircases creaking.

From Adam to Evie,
On staircases speeding,
Love’s daily-bread feeding.

Know the sermon of
Those beats?
Who works his butt off,
He eats.

Prices are soaring!
Thin brokers his way.
Sleep’s for tomorrow,
We must eat today.

Principle of princes
For dog-eat-dog living:
Tomorrow one pinches
Today’s forced giving.

It’s gas-explosion
Time. Hurray!
Who’s foreclosed on,
He’ll pay

Back!
(Nowadays gas
Pays) for our class
– Pay back! – (Bites worse than barks)
– Pay back! – From Satan, not Marx!

The stairs are a crap heap,
They’ll say; you say: Crap.
Even the back
Stairs have a wrap.

(Of mixed fabric,
Sure…) Of garlic, cat pee, –
Even the back
Stairs have their Coty.

Worms in cramped attics
Are fond of their sweets!
This one’s a classic:
Garret Garlic Treats.

Some say, it’s curative…
Sweet revenge – I think:
Backstairs depurgative,
Sticking stink in stink.

Poet, terrorist, street thief, we –
Have just one foe: the mezzanine.

A buffeting briefly
On staircases squeaky,
On staircases greasy –

A fiddle, earth rumble,
Or notes in a jumble.
The heat starts to grumble!

Contracted tackle
On stair-steps that quackle,
On stair-steps that crackle.

We beat the pants-off-‘em,
Beat to meat.
Why should we answer-‘em?
Beaten – beat.

Its proprietor clipped-on, –
Down staircases dripped-on,
Down staircases slipped-on –

There hurries a briefcase,
There hurries a thief’s cap,
There hurries a gig bag.

“Oh, I could sleep ages!”
Life’s chewed, rotted, crushed ‘em!
The coat-tails hightail it,
The coat-tails hightail it,
The skirt hems hightail it,

Paroxysm! Cataclysm!
Prize! Race!
Step on it up the down
Staircase!?

One cough per storey:
It’s tit for tat.
Even our sorry
Stairs have hacks that

Extirpate, ‘spectorate,
Or spray hee-hee’s –
Even we rate
Back stairs’ high wheeze.

“I’d have ‘em percuss that!”
“Pick’s cut my lungs through!”
Scale of pertussis
From the cellar to

Roof – hammering!
By lung shreds en masse –
Marxist clamoring
In Stravinsky’s cast.

A short-winded sing-along,
On staircases spat upon:
For basses a voice-a-thon.

Not sing-along, spit-along,
The lung-stairs long, not-a-one
Un-torn-up lung, superbly done!

A bite grabbed while speeding.
What frenzy for feeding!
Their work norms exceeding!

Any comestible –
Stuffs a snout.
Whoever’s destitute –
Pigs out.

Multi-use table:
Chow down – lay out.
Even our stairs
A table d’hote tout.

Food for all palates!
A steaming vat –
These stairs also
Have their Franzensbad.

Dream of Jacob!
Lucky men of yore!
While we have a scale of
Smells from cellar floor

Roof-ward – cookery!
Re – mi – fa – sol – si –
Scale for whiffery!
Hold your noses, please!

Seeming in Hades wound,
Red-hot the iron-bound

Spiraling newel.
What number of footfalls
Have made the stairs foot-worn?

Last clothes out for drying,
Last coal in for firing,
Last tub of wet washing.

The last of the taps of
Two – mere sticks in tatters –
Legs – off the stairs’ chatter.

The last homing briefcase,
The last homing thief’s cap,
The last homing gig bag.

Quiet. – Even – the coughing’s
Died down, dried up.
And even our
Stairs have their hour of

Peacefulness…

A last-minute jogging
Up staircases joggly.
A last caterwauling.

All’s dimmed by darkness –
Both dirt, and us.
Back stairs also
Have their hour of

Cleanliness…

Swoosh! “Where’s that from?”
Last basinful pouring –
Rhine’s rush down the Alps –
Its slops on the asphalt-

ed yard…

Above appear – patterns:
There – a cross, here – a mass…
Even back stairs have
Maps of the stars.

*****

Night – is this expressible?
Night is thing’s confessional.
Night seeks sincerity,
Things, expressivity –

All! All are mortified
Wholly, the immovables
Too. Fits of floridity:
Things want rigidity.

You think the staircase is
Curved by its wall-casing?
Night: time of prayerfulnesses.
Curves want elongating.

Height’s – something reliable.
Things’ honor is viable.
I see a lie as a
Bro-o-ken straight line.

Yard – pitted pot-holery,
Yard – year’s rot-holdery –
With flowers, with berry bushes –
Yard raves suburbanesses.

Things in defiance cry:
“I’m chalk!” or “Iron am I!”
Converts no way are we,
Yids, side-locks waving free.

Nail, tile, newel post –
Things feel their innermost.
With craft-wrought parodies
Vie aboriginalities.

Glass, shelved regardfully,
Shouts “I’m sand!” shatt’ringly!
A slap from the essences!
Glass to sand vanishes!

Bye, lie and broken lines!
Mat-tress: “I’m water vines!”
Straw pallet: “Straw am I!”
All, each: “In the raw am I!”

Time of bombs redolent.
Clo-othesline: “I was hemp!”
Fire, coal-heap’s prisoner:
“I was god, and will be he!”

What’s with the faucets, then?
“God fell, and I’ll rise as he!”
To put things pointedly:
Things want recovery.

*****

We with our trades, we with our factories,
What did we do with the Eden He fashioned for
Us? Original knife and original spade,
What did we do with the first day?

Like a woman the thing put her trust in us!
Wood and iron were not enough for us
Evidently – assay, assail! –
We got the urge for wall-boards, nails,

Chips! Over-refined trivialities!
What, after these first prodigalities,
Ensued? The planet where all is He –
Didn’t we trade for jimcrackery?

We with our crafts, arts and artisans!
We’ve stretched the thing on a Procrustean
Bed… Held fast on the lathe’s Hadean
Bed, the thing waits for its death.

Glory did the rivers celebrate,
Glory did the cliff-sides sing.
What – to a world all animate –
Did the human species bring?

Nice, no? That he, the manifest
Spirit, the god who dies,
Dreamed up the object inanimate!
Most calumnious of lies!

You with your objects, with your theorems,
You with your pig iron (cheaper than platinum),
You with your diamonds (than flint more chi-chi),
(With the soap-boiler you need more than me!)

You with “propriety,” you with “property,”
More low-level than low-priority,
Into crassness, into closeness
You impounded both thought and poetry –

(This is why we, the buried, detonate!)
How did you treat the thing’s inchoate
Parity – each place it may be –
With itself an identity?

Trusting the sound of the brazen axes
And droning saws, the tree bent to the ground,
“With this limb I give you an apple.”
Man – chopped it right down.

Mountains, revealing out from under
Hidden ores (called “metal” by and by),
Resolutely exclaimed: “A wonder!”
Man – blew them sky high.

Learning something from this reception,
For deceit the thing gives deception.
It was a trunk, the desk used to say.
That chair broke? No, a branch gave way.

In your high-gloss lacquered cages,
Now think you’re hearing ghosts of the ages?
Rather, the walnut through window bars
Saw, and stretched its joints to the stars.

You wake in the night like you’ve heard a shooting.
Has the cupboard cracked? No, the thing is tooting
Its horn. A dance for domestic help!
Has the gas exploded? No, an imp’s stirred up!

Banisters break just as someone’s descending.
No, not a “happened-to-shoot-himself” ending.
Weaponry’s will is on the qui vive.
He was purposely made dead meat

By the thing, in disgust unyielding.
Stones don’t just fly into air from a building
Site – this is their métier instead:
Every stone lays claim to a head!

The cliff’s revenge. The woods’ – from scaffoldry!
That’s this spectacle’s background scenery!
What’s it fashioned from? Oak and stuff?
Sure your head insurance is enough?!

You, insurers of – even tinny
Colanders. Is this you – the thinking
Reed? You’re more like a billiard cue!
Wanting insurance against the dew!

Against Hephaestus – for what’s inside the
House; the yacht’s insured against Poseidon.
Do appraise both the thought and odds:
Holding insurance against the gods!

Against Hephaestus? A roof-top spire –
Against Hephaestus? Pick one higher!
But more quiet! In a “one package” swoop:
People insure their whole house from Zeus.

Yet you whimper: ‘The gods don’t save me!’
Makes one wonder, can the gods be crazy?
Since each roof – this sticks in my craw –
Roof-top’s got – an off-the-god rod!

Boat-bays, yachts, stock options, jackets –
They lack but one insurance package:
Contra-property with no strings:
Fire, insuring one from things.

*****

Paupers’ things. A bast mat? That’s a phony
Thing. Like a plain plank of wood.
Paupers’ things – they’re all skin-and-bony,
Wholly – meatless, solely soul-food.

Where’d they come from? Seems – from a distance,
From long ago. Don’t strain your eyes!
Paupers’ things – have no pre-existence:
They are cut from people’s insides!

A shelf? Haphazard. A coat-hanger? Ditto.
Accidental too that ghost of a
Chair. Possessions? Dry twigs and hisses, –
All the woods on an October day!

Poverty’s fractioned furnishings!
All are – what? – A quarter, a third.
Clearly they long since interred these things.
Just to look at you makes me hurt!

It’s hard to take one’s sinful eyes off
You, as off ulcerous sores.
Viennese chair – where’s the Vienna –
Whose? When? It’s a thing to deplore!

The best things – here – would have slighted
Your house, right? Sorry! – your store-
Room. Here alone are such blighted
Things – things. Your brow arches ov-

er thus? – How else when seeing dull, widow’s
Rags? – Raise a brow! (In lieu of lorgnette –
A brow!) The eye’s no mean asker with those
Brows. At times an eye’s an ob-ject.

So dry at times is it and vacant –
An immense, gorgeous woman’s eye,
That – compare them – it seems a basin’s
Spirit, the soul – a tub of lye.

Same as with tub and sieve I’d own it
– To the tsar! On Judgment Day! –
Each one called here as a poet
On himself has known that gaze!

Poverty’s modest utensils!
Each knife is personly known.
Like a creature, day commencing,
Partly here, wholly – you roam –

Out the windows, bare or facing
Suburbs – you‘ve read the crime news?
How to gauge chasteness, grace in
A thing: as baggage it’s refused.

Since it’s wobbly and could pulverize
Right before one’s very eyes,
Since almost nothing that frail survives
Constant shifts…
            She cries –
Since it’s not: a desk, but a spouse,
Or son. Not a, but our
Chest.
Since nobody for hearts and souls
Gives out baggage checks.

Paupers’ things are drier and thinner:
Drier than snags, thinner than bast.
Paupers’ things are – put simply – spirits,
That is why they burn up so fast.

*****

Soars, soars
Smoky tarnish!
Pure, pure,
Elbow varnish!

Where’s the dross?
All in ash.
Gloss, gloss,
Elbow’s stash!

Rises straight,
Smoke from lanes.
Ham’s trade,
Not Cain’s.

Shirt cuff –
Sweeps desk.
Our buff,
Tar’s, best.

Desk is bare – of bagatelles,
Desk is elbow-buffered well,
Wax is clean, elbow’s whet.
Wax is congealed sweat.

It, it has waxed your foyers
(We’re toilers, not soilers!).
It, it makes floors bright
White – at least tonite!

*****

Words. That match threatens to burst!
Things and poor – a palpable scandal.
Yet the tongue will pair the absurd.

Do words mean something to sextons?
Things and poor. Linked? In dispute.
Nakedness searches for vestments,
That’s why fires are often acute

In attics – often and sweeping –
‘Our time is come, red-cloaked and capped!’
Crowdedness is elbow-room seeking.
(The author’s, too, in a crab-claw trap).

Shattered, the ceiling has reached its
Height – from creeping it had a hump.
Righteousness seeks in the breach its
Dais to speak! A bonfire stump!

One more thing – there are seats: planking.
No sun-light. A torch-splinter stinks.
Palenesses search for some sun-tanning.
All of this fire re-thinks.

*****

Link means sounding off in pairs:
Service stairs and fire stairs.

With the fire on salary,
Life lives conflagration’ly.

In your always jacked-up dress –
Stop your scrubbing, janitress!

Residue of ruralness –
Stop your sweeping, sweeperess!

Beauty not around in batches,
What can kiddies play with? Matches.

Mom went to a neighbor’s house,
Clean forgot the open box
Of matches…
        How licked clean the

Floor, a glass is less impeccable!
In exchange for living
Death, a post-death livable!

Dirt is phosphoresced vividly!
The house – a crimson elder-tree!

Honor is saved imperiously!
The house – bush burning crimsonly!

Your enslavements and your ascendancies –
Look and see, see them fall incendiously!

All paradise for a moment’s choking!
Look and see, see them imploding!

Stove of the trustiest style!
Heat throughout our domicile!

All the clouds dispelled sky high!
Laundry on the line will dry!

Site of a fire at night? No, a water-meadow!
You’ll save us?! ‘We’re saved from you' – our credo!

Don’t defile these golden pasture-lands!
Us? Do the saved really need deliverance?

All agog at the morning crimsoning,
Aspen stands, her dry limbs limbering!

Ripe rye blooms from an old crust of bread!
Laundry line of linen blossoms flax ahead!..

While with the people – sleeping ardently –
Going up the stairs – coming down the stairs –

Rainbows run…

*****

            ‘Morning

Mixed up the quills: is
This a bird’s? Mine? Unkno-own.’
Earliest morning – a first door shutting
Thuddingly…
            The poem
Sleeps.