Joe Pagano

How corrupt are the planets in their orbit Rotating in strange ellipses Gossiping amongst themselves Celestial washwomen about The earth's unrequited love for its moon Sunrise and sunset A parlor trick performed by Titans #poem #poetry #POEMS t

There is a place in my heart where the ships come in the sailors return home Duffle bag flung over left shoulder And extinguish one last cigarette Before they pas through the sheltering Doorway and kiss their sleeping children A place in the fog Where nothing happens and We wait

Groucho Marx pushes a red wheel barrow wet with rain and boasting the end of days. Ferrel cats assemble at the feet of a violinist playing for the pennies thrown in his upturned hat. He longs for home but denied that he settles for the affections of his brown jug: oblivion #poem

What is it to rub two stones together? Stars mumble as an infant’s hands clutching light I saw you naked in the darkened hallway declaiming Dante in perfect Latin Your barometer predicted hurricanes While the arms of the condemned awaited the needle for crimes not yet committed

clouds crowd the lightning like supplicants queued  up to have their photo taken with a hanged man; dawn grass harbors the night’s dew still vaguely alight with the constellations timbre: something like reverence. #POEMS #poetry #poem

That night you plucked the red words from my mouth like berries in the wild and found a place for them in your breast I moved in you like great rivers did once on the moon we tramped trains west and watched the godmelt sundown horizon burn like the bell of a hobo stove #poem

For reasons which May never become clear I have lived from regret to regret Burning blue occupants of yet Unnamed and uncharted constellations That speak in the voices of the dead And of the yet unborn In them something beckons and I am left Stargazing with ghosts #poem #poetry

A faded plastic statue of the Virgin Mary taped to the dashboard of his green El Dorado Alligator presses his oil soaked boot against the pedal And progresses against all measure Wandering outside the realm "Of Saturn Devouring His Son" By Goya #poem #poetry

In the hallway of a broken house She finds herself Out of desire for what With an abundance of caution Perhaps She could know this thing If nothing else There is peace on the other side A pool of rain As deep and wide as the ocean Scarcity everywhere in volumes #poem #POEMS

Night is a thief pitiless in his regard  For what you call yours Who peoples the dreams of Your lover asleep beneath  bedcovers when the wind Waltzes in through open windows Cadaverous and ravening Get on your knees Before the migrating birds above And all they know of loneliness

The child Who only moments before Had suckled candy given him By a loved one Now floated A last bubble Like mercury Floating from his blue lips drowned The voice with which He once spoke Consigned to the echo Of an abandoned seashell against  The ear of a far distant child #poem

If @nbc doesn’t purchase the rights for my series “Chicago Pope” it’s an unforced error on their part

In the rainmaker's wagon float The heads of men of genius Suspended in formaldehyde Stars and their contrails he Crushes in mortar and pestle Night comes Frogs and  owls beckon him hence A witches teeth make Impressions upon his breast Thunder spectacle American Carthage #poem

I no longer have any confidence in the sky. The night remains nothing more than The gouged-out eye socket Of a medieval peasant woman. There is a vacancy in the body But not a void. Fireflies like Chinese lanterns articulate An archipelago of longing Across the night hillock.

The hawks return I hear their prehistoric scree Against the arterial spatter of dawn The past tense consumes more letters Then the present We're up against it now Bonnie & Clyde in a Ford Model 40B A Pleiades of Tommy Gun shells Calling us home  From the bottom of the well #poem

Not yet a saint John the Baptist hides In the hedge with a tommy gun Water pistol while heretics slam their wash on stones as bare-chested women Squat by the bawdy house Passing wind that sounds like An inverted trombone and The unborn circle perdition In a cloud of sighs #poem

You there  In the clairvoyant's parlor Were dealt a card The drowned Phoenician sailor But Spring arrived For all of us And without distinction Did bloom #poem #poetry #April #spring #micropoem #micropoetry

I will eat a handful of locusts And linger in the garden Willows whistle The Velvet Underground and Schubert Owls come alive Vomiting the remains of voles And mice I shriek back Eyes in the palms of my Upturned hands Wanting, wanting from My loins to my dreams #poem #poetry

Before falling The tightrope walker Had never left the wire There is an instant When even the fall Looks like flight Something Eve and  Adam must have felt Before being removed From the Garden #poem

Heralds proceed with lanterns in the gloaming A mule does differential calculus ruminating hay In the mudded pasture Maids arrange teacups A fanged calamity awaits the penitent's ankle The Ouija board is full of answers But we continue to ask the wrong questions #poem #poetry