Geryon
Pay a few bitcoins
and climb on top of this
Monster of Fraud
to circle a few laps
above it all,
making you feel like you are
flying high,
his honest man’s face
as deceptive as
cryptocurrency itself.
Despite however many
blockchains
he is tethered to,
he will buck you when he
gets the chance,
dumping you headfirst into
a river aboil with
financial bubbles
and frothy fraudulence;
a serpentine cauldron
stewing overlong.
What are you shouting
from up there?
Market growth potential?
Yes, he grows larger everyday,
feeding well from his
investments
in liquidated soup stock.

Democratic Primary Debates
You may think you are now
radiant,
but you’re just hitting the atmosphere,
burning out as you come back down
to earth
after twinkling complacently
among the flashing-camera stars.
You are the type that
smacks a man in the face
with a chocolate pie
and then tactlessly accuses him of wearing
black face.
But blood is in the water
after everyone has thrown
chum-miness
overboard,
and there is a media frenzy.
How can any of you
hope to defeat the trumped-up Jester
and would-be King
when you all play the Fool?
Cartwheel round as much as you please—
in the meantime
Lady Pax is walking the gallows
one clown-shoe step at a time.

Shady Lane
At night the lamppost leans
toward the lane,
angling its sullen spotlight
as if glaring at its own
black post
and wondering how it came to be
rooted there.
There is a
“Flood Area Flood” sign
and
a fog rolling around it
from off the distended river
while the silent railroad tracks
lurk, ready to
rattle
to life at any moment.
A muskrat hobbles by,
humpbacked and snout raised,
its long black tail dragging
wetly
behind it; it sniffs at discarded
fast food trash
and moves on,
an amphibious pilgrim in the night.
The black wolf-dog
runs restlessly in and out of the
spotlight,
to and fro,
too excited by the
countless deer in the glimmering
moon-washed fields
to choose any one doe to chase,
sprinting toward every pair
of luminous eyes.
Frogs gurgle in the
flooded yards,
making homes of new swampland,
and black crawdads mosy down the road,
lost from the river,
yet carrying it with them
as a pungent, fishy fragrance.
A roar and a screech
and a Mustang races
out of the darkness,
splitting the quiet lamppost corner
apart,
bursting the pensive, gloomy silence
with a squealing proclamation of
being
before blaring down the road
and disappearing beyond the
shuddering railroad tracks,
the swollen river,
the cowled knobs,
and letting the lamppost glare
solitarily once more,
undiluted by headlights,
carving out its own silent
space
in the sleeping world
just before Dawn awakens the
neighborhood
with cars and trucks
and hurries and worries;
with all things that threaten
the outpost of peace
it resentfully keeps.