Dewdrops

Dewdrops on grass like crystal disco balls

strewn by a careless gardener

left there to glister on green grass blades

greet the first rays of daylight

like diamonds scattered on the ground

or sparkling water beautifully spilled

by the God of Small Things.

Fragile II

Fragile as a glass statue on a busy intersection

Fragile as a shade’s protection

Fragile as an idea in its inception

Fragile as a promise built upon deception

Fragile as a woman hiding in perfection

Fragile as this poem’s last section:

Fragile as a heart

After it has known rejection 

Sonnet for Artesians

She yares for his pelf prad, her fleerest kine

To thew her pintles intagliated with his.

Abrades that penster, he is firthed with hircine;

She jounces off his couths and he depones her ploces

Crinited bedizing into virga

Only to agnate and agnate agon

Tope unto both remoras and the lamia,

Thewing from the attar of escutcheon

Connipted they trow and connipted they thirl

Until their plashy is avast dewclawed

In each other’s limbates, into osmic birl

Labroses in entelechy exurbed

            As one, axillaring at each other’s oxteral

            Reduxing one another, connipted vernal

Fragile

Fragile as a dry leaf

Fragile as a spider’s web

Fragile as a strand of rain

Fragile as a newborn’s health

A teenager’s dreams

An unhappy marriage

An old man’s bones

Fragile as you in all your strength

Pepe Portero

Rough leather skin

Firm handshake

Sometimes as painful as that rusty gate screaming in its hinges

With a nod or a grin

Wide as mothers open arms

You’d call us over

Telling silly stories and jokes

But all I’d recall was cleaning agent, damp autumn leaves

The assuring weight of your hand on my shoulder

The cologne you’d wear on Sundays

That friendly, shriveled face

Like a raisin

And the raspy voice

Like iron grinding iron

Never showed, never said

What you used to do with our house in our absence

Never dreamed we were wrong to trust you