Trickster summer

This one is for/about a friend of mine in Sacramento. He inspired it, anyway, but it’s mostly just the picture in my head of that time.

Shot glasses and swastikas, buzz-cut and bowlered,
Trickster sits on my couch in the summer heat.
His facile tongue dances around words as casually
and as beautifully as a moth around a flame,
soaring and diving, in and out of trouble,
in and out of drama, melodrama, and foolish humor.
Taking side trips into blackest despair
before climbing back out again
to dance around the fire, laughing,
like a sacred clown.

Rowan

What can I say that hasn’t been said before?
A million songs to a million pairs of little eyes?
Little hands and feet wave at me
through clouds of fragrant wordstuff,
almost buried beneath falling cadences and
sickly-sweet prose. Reaching down, I brush
ineffectually at the swarming bits of fluff,
trying to find something within that is solely you.
With a giggle and a sweet-scented burst of clarity,
you reach for me, scattering useless noise to all
sides, emerging before me like Venus through the waves,
moss-green eyes burning the chaff off of my mind until
all that remains is you, unique and whole and singular
and more precious than words can say.