John Godfrey
Headlight Tag
In shade of headstones
prolonged silence
Myself leaks in
Only two feminine hands
Tattoos the same
spot on each
Heavy linen cloth
Two bars of color
One for neck, one for waist
Words from the heart
The heart must be breaking
One dies of the thought
Getaway on foot
Game of headlight tag
A building waits no longer
Rapport if durable
Desire to be finished
The sorry survivor
A very private talk
It’s always 2 a.m.
Can’t part, can’t stay, good morning
At least to feel your hand
Uncurtained window
Push keys across table
Cool without the mask
A kind of pidgin affection
Time to go meet them
Doubles
The neat get mounted
Pasts cross, at first
evasive, then touch
Look down if you still pray
It is music to death’s ears
The lot taken away
defined by the victor
When it satisfies it is true
while I’m submerged
The coffee house tips left
when I collapse to the right
The reinvention of something
spit between teeth
when that’s forbidden
I find you three times
in the same morning
Those are doubles, sweetie
Your hand trembles slightly
Afraid of bridges
Afraid of silk
Breeze undoes itself
around your ankles
and when the light is beat
down to nothingness you really
do use black paint to describe it
If you press this button
a horn sounds
If you press that one
you don’t know what
It gladdens me
to tell you this
The Title
Volition escorts you midspan
Right wipes off left
The title is yours but
instead you pass me
the album of fires
Miscreant means well
Thunder turns into
the air I breathe
An oil absent of light
Knife on your palette
Forget replication
Maybe your skills
better suit mistakes
They soften hearts
They divide enemies
They promise a context
Excuses happen
all by themselves
On the way is
where you stay
I should throw
the word away
Without time a note
can really last
Fingers arrested
forever on your back
Hollows of darkness
along your arm
Your most flattering light
Fishbowl
Once you outlive the immortals
it’s all up to Roscoe
You can’t tell me
trafficking in air’s
an improvement over
spontaneous sacrifice
I read the label carefully
and fold the streetlight
the ecclesiastical shadow
and the parting words
at the driver’s window
together and put them in
the fishbowl with the other tips
Gray sky makes the sound
of one hundred convicts sleeping
Brush my hands off
and duck into repartee
No one knows the better
But after a while
you need the sketch
You can’t shake on it
If it’s so important
let’s remember it well
Meanwhile, back on the moon
that’s what they do, remember
what I’ll never lose again
Scandalous
All my most viable
functions on boycott
Haze a distant memory
I tell this in hopes
of one of you
Brush specks of blight off
the blank silhouette
Headlights pass on by
Now I find out
about generosity
It’s all planned for me
she says (glance upwards)
Secret is to protect
As sacred goes hers
is not so scandalous
I am ready now for that
virtual cream pie
The parlor incandesces
with isotopes of cream
It’s a fluke, I tell her
Parlor games, any
room you enter it’s
a mandate to cheat
Loosely-based pirate
Windstorm too is
segregated, follow
that car on the meter
Money in your hands
Return trip dizzy
From the bridge windows
windows windows
Missing Planet
One more link and it rains golf balls
If some thoughts are padded rooms
in a hovel, let this one be a rose
on a bed of chilled noses
The dagger you sharpen after
every use brings on this fuss
Dust sparkles on the dashboard
A certain quadrant of sky turns black
An alternative receptacle for the eye
Something to keep but not in mind
I groan a bit to reach the wall safe
I really can’t tell you much on
the subject of paradise but there
are moments when I’m out
on the unicycle and the missing
planet on the crosswalk
is my Fata Morgana
There’s an irresolute comfort in
resting my head against
the butt of a lamppost
The mess won’t clean up in fire
If you’re missing a few bobbins
If you want to repatriate
If you hate the mumbles and hiccoughs
I wonder at this desire for splendor
The look I see is not a backward look
To be expected in a parade
So many faces constitute a quiz
Last word of words is a maybe
I tremble after the defection
I run into the Maypole head on
When in dreams I misbehave
Window opens on a dazzling space
The opera, at the beginning, is infinite
Mode Upon Mode
In half light kind of posh
There might be a freak
for crystal in back
does nothing to
encompass her
Mode upon mode a woman
this graceful and arrogant
A mermaid without the flipper
Ice melts off her crib
Wake up and face remedy
Gray light’s all the annuity
Rise, eat pork sometimes
seldom skate
Oil the pulley while
you brush
Decide never do a wheelie
Decide she’s from a
wet sheath party
How come everyone else’s
so dumpy
Follow arrows with
sunshine nose
cautious of window
Soft and trans-Pacific
from the speakers
Skin-color bottle with
worm at the bottom
Look of disinterested
tenderness
Permanent Smoke
They call it a louche strip but what about the crowd
Glass over the door blank and always
it answers denigration with royalty
Just let me braze this a bit more
to cover up the scars of execution
Once I reserve the castaway’s ladder
I climb up to a hollow roof
covered with footprints, and for all to hear
the trial proceeds, to enlighten
and launch the season of nudity
I watch unseen as you waste one chance
out of just shy of five chances
There is a way you use your fingers
to snuff out the tassel before
permanent smoke turns to paste
Let’s imagine I’m a perfectly formed midget
My ear stands flush to your daydreams
I crab my way around you until
I reach the soiled and earthy smelling
bandana you put both hands in to decompose
Now, if I had just a kernel, a bit of meal
I could feed them all, but it’s tricky
First of all, one of them has a horn
and the sound of it’s so dense a shim
is inserted here and there for dynamics
What makes it intense is how you turn
and your mane of hair becomes two manes
An accent is all that’s lacking
That’s better, but not so gaudy
There, you render your question with authority
and darkness reveals how close
Headlight Tag
In shade of headstones
prolonged silence
Myself leaks in
Only two feminine hands
Tattoos the same
spot on each
Heavy linen cloth
Two bars of color
One for neck, one for waist
Words from the heart
The heart must be breaking
One dies of the thought
Getaway on foot
Game of headlight tag
A building waits no longer
Rapport if durable
Desire to be finished
The sorry survivor
A very private talk
It’s always 2 a.m.
Can’t part, can’t stay, good morning
At least to feel your hand
Uncurtained window
Push keys across table
Cool without the mask
A kind of pidgin affection
Time to go meet them
Doubles
The neat get mounted
Pasts cross, at first
evasive, then touch
Look down if you still pray
It is music to death’s ears
The lot taken away
defined by the victor
When it satisfies it is true
while I’m submerged
The coffee house tips left
when I collapse to the right
The reinvention of something
spit between teeth
when that’s forbidden
I find you three times
in the same morning
Those are doubles, sweetie
Your hand trembles slightly
Afraid of bridges
Afraid of silk
Breeze undoes itself
around your ankles
and when the light is beat
down to nothingness you really
do use black paint to describe it
If you press this button
a horn sounds
If you press that one
you don’t know what
It gladdens me
to tell you this
The Title
Volition escorts you midspan
Right wipes off left
The title is yours but
instead you pass me
the album of fires
Miscreant means well
Thunder turns into
the air I breathe
An oil absent of light
Knife on your palette
Forget replication
Maybe your skills
better suit mistakes
They soften hearts
They divide enemies
They promise a context
Excuses happen
all by themselves
On the way is
where you stay
I should throw
the word away
Without time a note
can really last
Fingers arrested
forever on your back
Hollows of darkness
along your arm
Your most flattering light
Fishbowl
Once you outlive the immortals
it’s all up to Roscoe
You can’t tell me
trafficking in air’s
an improvement over
spontaneous sacrifice
I read the label carefully
and fold the streetlight
the ecclesiastical shadow
and the parting words
at the driver’s window
together and put them in
the fishbowl with the other tips
Gray sky makes the sound
of one hundred convicts sleeping
Brush my hands off
and duck into repartee
No one knows the better
But after a while
you need the sketch
You can’t shake on it
If it’s so important
let’s remember it well
Meanwhile, back on the moon
that’s what they do, remember
what I’ll never lose again
Scandalous
All my most viable
functions on boycott
Haze a distant memory
I tell this in hopes
of one of you
Brush specks of blight off
the blank silhouette
Headlights pass on by
Now I find out
about generosity
It’s all planned for me
she says (glance upwards)
Secret is to protect
As sacred goes hers
is not so scandalous
I am ready now for that
virtual cream pie
The parlor incandesces
with isotopes of cream
It’s a fluke, I tell her
Parlor games, any
room you enter it’s
a mandate to cheat
Loosely-based pirate
Windstorm too is
segregated, follow
that car on the meter
Money in your hands
Return trip dizzy
From the bridge windows
windows windows
Missing Planet
One more link and it rains golf balls
If some thoughts are padded rooms
in a hovel, let this one be a rose
on a bed of chilled noses
The dagger you sharpen after
every use brings on this fuss
Dust sparkles on the dashboard
A certain quadrant of sky turns black
An alternative receptacle for the eye
Something to keep but not in mind
I groan a bit to reach the wall safe
I really can’t tell you much on
the subject of paradise but there
are moments when I’m out
on the unicycle and the missing
planet on the crosswalk
is my Fata Morgana
There’s an irresolute comfort in
resting my head against
the butt of a lamppost
The mess won’t clean up in fire
If you’re missing a few bobbins
If you want to repatriate
If you hate the mumbles and hiccoughs
I wonder at this desire for splendor
The look I see is not a backward look
To be expected in a parade
So many faces constitute a quiz
Last word of words is a maybe
I tremble after the defection
I run into the Maypole head on
When in dreams I misbehave
Window opens on a dazzling space
The opera, at the beginning, is infinite
Mode Upon Mode
In half light kind of posh
There might be a freak
for crystal in back
does nothing to
encompass her
Mode upon mode a woman
this graceful and arrogant
A mermaid without the flipper
Ice melts off her crib
Wake up and face remedy
Gray light’s all the annuity
Rise, eat pork sometimes
seldom skate
Oil the pulley while
you brush
Decide never do a wheelie
Decide she’s from a
wet sheath party
How come everyone else’s
so dumpy
Follow arrows with
sunshine nose
cautious of window
Soft and trans-Pacific
from the speakers
Skin-color bottle with
worm at the bottom
Look of disinterested
tenderness
Permanent Smoke
They call it a louche strip but what about the crowd
Glass over the door blank and always
it answers denigration with royalty
Just let me braze this a bit more
to cover up the scars of execution
Once I reserve the castaway’s ladder
I climb up to a hollow roof
covered with footprints, and for all to hear
the trial proceeds, to enlighten
and launch the season of nudity
I watch unseen as you waste one chance
out of just shy of five chances
There is a way you use your fingers
to snuff out the tassel before
permanent smoke turns to paste
Let’s imagine I’m a perfectly formed midget
My ear stands flush to your daydreams
I crab my way around you until
I reach the soiled and earthy smelling
bandana you put both hands in to decompose
Now, if I had just a kernel, a bit of meal
I could feed them all, but it’s tricky
First of all, one of them has a horn
and the sound of it’s so dense a shim
is inserted here and there for dynamics
What makes it intense is how you turn
and your mane of hair becomes two manes
An accent is all that’s lacking
That’s better, but not so gaudy
There, you render your question with authority
and darkness reveals how close