Thumb through cracked sepias and foggy grays
to see ghost-photoed bytes of heritage
exposed; then closed to light again. Their days
are left behind them on the left, each page
progressing, yet bereft of glory, joy,
or sage advice. Not rich and grand as, say,
a portrait of the royal clan of Troy -
still, here’s a Hector with a “make my day”
upon his lips, and there’s a Priam, proud
to be a seemly pop. The progenies
appear to be okay - a mellow crowd.
Presuming no one blinks or sneezes, in these
we have the past well-posed from head to toe -
Cassandras smiling, knowing what they know.

Edwin Abbott wrote a book of only two
dimensions – an overview of squamate souls
in platter realms. An envoy guides us through
their squat constraints on institutions - goals
and base illusions stretching to the rim
of page and space. Floating boneless, skin on skin,
these horizontal citizens must skim
recumbent throughout life…must live as thin
as light. By pancake platitudes they buoy
up hope, they praise the slanted sun. They raise
their choral voice in geometric joy
when spirits soar. But sometimes luck betrays.
When Flatland victims feel inclined to pray,
they dream a new dimension…Edwin A.

My students listen leisurely to tales
of continents colliding in the storm.
They yawn a bit at glaciers crushing Wales,
and drift to inattention when a swarm

of locusts eat Algeria. They blink
and nod to hear, “Neanderthals lived right
next door to humankind (or, so we think) -
one thousand centuries they were polite.

What snuffed the one and made the other us?
When hippo habits, elk, and rabbits changed,
hip sapiens shared common tactic buzz
and deftly rearranged their common range.

Who murdered Paracelsus in the bar?
Who knocked the honored doctor down the stair
to crack his skull? The doc - launched though the air
above conventional descent, cigar
in hand, still chugging vodka like a czar,
still crass and arrogant - had spiel to spare
despite his sudden flight from here to there.
This highest priest of booze and cinnabar
did not fare well. Bones crumbled from the fall.
Small wonder we remember him bizarre.
But who would have the moxie, spunk, and gall
to fell our cocky, cranky superstar?
Why, it could be just anyone at all
who murdered the good doctor in the bar.

Emotions scramble thalamus
and dopa up a limbic mess
in hippocampus and above

while planets sizzle at the core
and galaxies wait at death’s door
and clocks transform (push comes to shove)

when Albert Einstein falls in love.

Young Goldilocks knew nothing about bears,
knew nothing of their habits, skills, and schemes.
When they come home they catch her puffing weed.

The ditzy blond had tested their three chairs.
She tasted porridge (big in fable themes)
and snuggled all their beds. So, girls, take heed!

Eschew extremes. Stay out of lairs.

Behold the hard-boiled Easter egg, dyed red
and cobalt blue, spun hard upon its side.
The tiny coffin twirls - its hues collide
and blur into confusion. But, instead
of smoothly whirling like a spool, its thread
of execution swings it with a tide
reborn of deft imbalance - swings it wide
into a wobble - raises it from dead

to standing upon end! Amazing sign!
I’m told it’s sacrilege to analyze
an icon’s tears or faces seen in pine
bark or strange auras pulsing from the skies.
Will you and I be blessed for what we’ve done
if we leave ordinary eggs unspun?

One woman, flared in tangerine, can fly.
The other’s earthbound, distant, plain, and dark.
Above them, streaking in a counter-arc,
a comet tries to warn them what’s too high.

But look! They grasp analogy. They spy
a silver rim, a sightless eye unblinking -
see triangled spangles brightly linking
out across the gray and blue-milk sky.

Two phantoms stretch above their motherlands
where, strained by wondrous lunacy, they try
to guide the nascent moon across the sky
within the crescent cradles of their hands.