Plan on holding my hand
I’d endure the wrath of raspy snake tongues and burning bites so you
Can be a little happier today,
My darling

I’d take on every wild creature with yellow
Eyes
Poison on medusas finger
Inside of my brain
I’d shake and shake
Shake and shake
The sky a vibrating landscape of your
Emptiness and no phone calls back
I’d shake amongst the choreographed reeds
And die
Die for you
My darling

And if it isn’t enough
I’m sorry I made a bad estimate
Of what was in the jar
If it wasn’t enough
I’d find a way underneath the windowsill glued tight with the obstinate no’s and the moons idle hands moth cadavers and fits of frostbite blues
Inside of your room where no sound bold sunflowers pink sundresses the incessant chitter chatter of chastising chumps ever finds it’s way into your abode of sadness my
Darling
I’d brush the rectangular flesh that sits gracefully, sadly, atop your
Handsome cheek
and
I’d kiss you my darling until
Death discovers my sheets cold and
The devil flushes with purple rage

the beach is for losing yourself
i ask you what manner of man or beast could ignore its siren song
it dragged our silly smiles across the sand
feet trailing giddily behind us
we slipped wearied into the warm unceasing avalanche
and a year was washed away
in the thunderous salt rinse

the beach is for best friends and for beer
it is for games beneath the stars
while a plankton metropolis fluoresced underfoot
and a meteor grazed the spine of leo
we slumbered through brooding rains
that slunk away when we awoke to stare them down
white shapes cast slender shadows on the reeds at noon
sea breezes crooned tunes every child has always known
in languages no man will ever understand

the beach is for all of us
last night we dreamt of ancestral slimes marching out of it
today let us plunge in
it is for even creeping snakes and gnawing fleas
verily

but most of all
it is for your glistening face
for two sleepy seagreen eyes accustoming themselves to the bright shores of morning
while your coffee cooled on the camp stove
it is for the sheen of your wild brown arms
the surf of your laughter
words with which you filled a quiet moment
circling in my mind like gulls over the harbor

yes most of all
most of all
it is for you
speeding down the narrow cape
i was beside you
tapping in tandem with your electronic music
realizing more with every pastel cottage flickering by
that you had found me
and i had never felt
so safe

Is it any wonder that I sit and ponder
Upon a pond holding no answer; faith sacked,
my soul asunder, by my greatest blunder:
what I see in the mirror, my fear of her.

That crystal water, from which I slip and falter
upon viewing its sewing of my image,
does haunt me with its gaunt plumage;
beautiful, and disturbed by reeds of punishment.

Sticks of which I cannot switch off
mar the stitch I wish to bewitch,
with the twitch of my wrist,
upon her ears, turn her to tears.

But these words are for cowards,
better suited to please a cow herd
than deep rooted damsels, solid footed
with good counsel; I deserve only a morsel.

Yet I get not that, but only this cat
to sit at my foot and howl and hoot.
In the end we are great friends, wound mends,
and like my dreams he'll die within my seams.

Yesterday folds our vital documents
into its briefcase and steps
onto a busy street.
Busses lunge on asphalt, rolling
knotted muscles and emptied pockets deeper
into roads where dogs and paper
blur the lines between news and shit.
Lovers, condos, taxis, and sidewalks
pray to scrape up rent.
Tomorrow crouches, ready to spring
and thrust us back into the boxing ring.

I sit at the end of the Earth,
an old, fractured dock worn by water
cradles me and fixes the scene.
Yellow sails swimming the Jetstream
hang on to the red dinghy whose wake
sets my eye on the far shore.
Coney isle ‘cross the murk-warped sea
holds ancient homes like tapestries
hold ancient threads that you can see
in some museum for a fee.

For the residents at Rosses Point
this is no end –
it starts their children’s dreams
and holds them to life,
roots them in communal grasses
that grow and will always grow.
I didn’t know
that where the weed-stalk masses
life’s abundance would overflow.

But where are their riches?
Cast in ditches by roadsides where
three hundred years of smiles,
vein-pulsing beliefs, busy thinkers,
sweet upswept streets,
all put wealth – the heaping of coin
upon coin till nothing can breathe –
aside and laugh. They live;
happening as they survive.

Inside the crumbled watchtower
I fling passion onto thought
onto nerve onto pen onto page
and then am limp,
like the carelessly treaded sage;
a child’s footprint.
What anguish did the watchers know
looking through the barred stone walls? –
their travelers were still gone.

In the swirling, swallowing night,
that drops like the judge’s gavel,
I write images of the sundry
numb-fingered seaside –
the birds call through the salt-stained air.
Fly away my wind-swept birds,
fly, fly till you reach my words
that are split among a thousand minds and cities.
Fly till the grass overcomes the tread,
till the sun succumbs to lead
poisoning and dawn’s jaw drops dead.

The lighthouse, the sprinkling showers
from the clouds that shroud and mask
the would-be sky, guide
the heart that falls inside my throat –
two hundred tons of blood
beat through its bulge – I’m alive
and live on, like this unhampered ground.
The sound of ripples, the rustle
of reeds, they bring me back
to the time-broken dock.

I sit and remember my friends –
calmness soaks in and through my bones –
I am and will be here always.
And when memory fails and fades
I will float the channel of everything,
beach upon this shore
and will be the grass and nothing more
until history becomes the future
and the first layer becomes the core.

we gather reeds in the pale beginning
our roof in thatched symmetry
place a foot firmly in the marsh
and cast a hooded gaze eastward toward the breaking light
cloud systems shift above our lithe and tenacious errand

we will tread on padded earth hedged by the green and supple hills
and the heat slumbering in the stony paths will awaken late
simmering, breakfast can be heard on the approach

Wildcat bobs, circles,
Briars twined with stalks and reeds,
Red wings— black birds fall.

You dip your toes into this glass still pond
so steadily, and yet I know your heart is racing.
I see the flicker of panic in your eyes, and the
tugging desire you have to jump in.
I see it there in the strain of your well formed muscles
and the quick rise and fall of your chest.
It's so quiet here, isn't it?
In this wet mirror where you see such a peaceful vision
of the way things are, and you don't want to
stir and ripple, to see what will be.
I know your kind, and I know the way you fear
and the way you consume.
You will eat up this stillness until chaos blooms
from these reeds and crickets and warm scents.
You want the summer I hold,
it lives in the way I kiss and hold and smile.
Come here and sit by me.
Hold my hand and listen to the sun sing on your skin
and feel the warm breezes on your face.
Everything will be alright.
Just stay.

I am a bundle of scars
Ambidextrous
There are too many holes
In my arms
The veins are hiding
Warm fingers coax them
Come back to me
The dog returning to its vomit
Hands well calloused
Smelling of diesel and grease
All fun no business
Makes me suicidal
I swore I would never become my father
But the universe finds that funny

If you would come to me
Tell me its alright
I would pass through
The blood-brain barrier
And warm your skin like sunrise
I am a son among the damned
My body feels brittle and ancient
My bones like old stone ruins
Covered in thick green moss
I prize your lies
Kept sealed in jars
Their dim glowing
Keeps me awake

Show me your claws
Show me your fangs
Scrape them on my skull
Play a song on my brain
Impulse control
Dissolved on a spoon
Momentary salvation
And eternal doom

Pincoushin
Nobody else can hurt me
Quite like myself
I've built a tolerance
To everything but you
They'll find my corpse
Tangled in the reeds
Fish eating pieces of me
And taking some home to the family

I am glorified fertilizer
A stacked up dung hill
I think I am something
In my monkey suit and tie
I cannot wait to die
And be at your side

Tremble little polliwog
the pond's Great Bass is nigh.
and if he should to catch you up
you certainly will die

But wait, ahead some reeds so stiff
that should you wriggle in
could be as strong as prison bars
and protect from tooth and fin.

creek in th'dark
w/brightest stone baubles, dappled riverbottom pebbles under moon-water,
a thousand faces glinting, smiling upwards.
school of carp in the reeds, the stalks rasping in the warm air
as the tails buffet them back and forth.
the unheard steady suck of flapping, feeding mouths --
drawing in of algae, snails, waterbeetles;
soft crunch of shell and exoskeleton.

two legs on the dune by the stream wishing
there was two more legs on the dune, angling
down toward the stream.
a tender accompanying voice singing maybe Piaf
avec un accent provincial (de châtillon?)
hair wet, tangled;
sporting powder-white two-piece,
fresh from having swam with strong, slow kicks of slender pale legs,
long in the green water.
legs that look good in black heels.
their clicking imagined in the head.