gears and upping

the ante

so bet your better parts, sew buttons onto the traffic standstill
and for what comes back to bite your ass
there's a mirror to look behind you set up just in front of your face
and the aces are all buried in the deck
some swift handled-barmaid may come along to watch your dealing
or guess how much to lose and sidebar gambling
is a product of illy wrought children

i'm trying here to not notice what the season will be up to when it closes
or how the better pitchers always end up
full of the wrong type of beer
or in the wrong league entirely

come april and the spittoon of fakery
come all you burned ghost factories, spitting new clouds
and bird-shadows into the sky
some sun work is backwards and the retinal cues
a photograph captures will mark each pupil bloodstained.

this i learned from my future
father-in-law
while waiting to fill my jowls with cake

seagulls chased a crow until it landed in home base
and everything went quiet.
trees storing up the sun
had begun to spit up green parts and flowers

my tenses kept catching--