By: Jake Sheff

I Reassure and Measure Time’s Reluctance Down at Silver Falls: an Ovillejo

How do you steal moonlit nights?
Squatters’ rights.
What do you tell whiny trees?
Eat the freeze!
Where do all your secrets run?
On the sun.

Now the autumn rains must shun
Metropolitan elites;
Every Pynchon novel cheats.
Squatters’ rights eat the freeze on the sun.

Elegy for Cat II: A Failed Acrostic

Emblems of energy entertain nothing
Made without love, made without mercy;
Makers unmake whatever moseys
Away from its birth. Bandages burn

Today, its dagger darker than heartache.
Helmet of faith, with your holes for horns,
Existence calms when my caring is keenest.

Decided by stars conspiring nightly,
I’m mourning the cat of cats, her constant
Lightness that lent me so many ladders.
Emma, like epigrams, eloquent takedowns
Mingle with me in memories of you,
Make known my annoying habit of not
Acknowledging newness itself was your numen.

Entrainment dances in the rear view mirror;
My fate commands me, “Be what you admire.”
Men only change what doesn’t love them back;
Accommodation hides what might attack.

This morning was fruit-forward, but I miss you;
Heroic couplets reach, but cannot kiss you.
Excuses say, “No property, no peace,”

Excusing times I failed to see you on my knees.
Missouri’s small meow was never still
In you on earth, and now, it’s never ill.
So long to sorry’s length, its trampoline!
So long to the tyrannical tambourine!
Apart from you, this world of opposites
Retires as your absence slowly quits.
Youth! Youth like yours is never bruit-bruised,

Or faith, its fountain, looks at hope confused
Forever, blaming fear while love’s amused.

Let eyes, without restraint, seek mournfully,
Occasioning the soul of warmth for me.
Verbose, the stars above should bow to you;
Each knows your name, and this I vow to you.

Effortless silliness written in Garamond, written in precious
Metals on miracles’ walls; Arthur C. Clarke was so wrong:
Man is terrestrial. Slumlords might live in the frunk of a Tesla;
Asinine people: the moon will, like Atlantis, know slums.

Better than freedom from garish infrequency, pleasantly weeping
Embers of history; words Hansel and Gretel could drop.
Underneath heaven I pet you, you say, and reduce me to ashes.
Limited moods there are… Life’s helpmeet is Weltschmerz; its joy –
Acrid as Timon of Athens – refutes any foraging roughness.
Hallowed as Harrison Ford’s uncle, my pain is so dumb.

Sacrilege cries from its balcony: Gain is here! Lacrimae rerum,
Harvesting habits too harsh, hoisted with halyards today.
Emma, sweet Emma, your goodness and hijinks were not too hygienic.
Flames need a mouthpiece when rain falls; it’s the rational poise
Fate allows faces like yours: peaceful, so keno is noise.