RUNNING TOWARDS THE LIGHT

fear of War
walks upon the air
strides across a countryside

like a gigantic
demonic **** in Boots
a Grimm tale let loose

upon a world
that can only offer
in its defence

the beauty of this spiderweb
thrown across
the space between

hedgerow and fence
this the last sunset
that will ever know "Peace...

. . .in our time."
I fear Mr. Chamberlain
has got it - wrong

Herr ****** has caught the bus
a hawk hovers
in its beauty

I sit making
its jesses
and leashes

already I can see
I stand in the ruins
of my life

an ordinary man
turning into
history

War invisible
yet totally tangible
its hand touching

my landscape
an ancient chalk man
holding the gates open

the what will
be...will...be
a sunset caught

in a spiderweb
the last time
I ever was me

When I looked at the night sky, I felt a deep sense of loss.

The stars, were too far away.

I packed jars into the fridge, so that they preserve all I have left when I come back.

It was a plague, a silence, that followed and sputtered life and people were scared.

But I got to see you. Goodbye.

And when I got back, I starved with little I had.

Sometimes I would go out to my grandma's
and bring her lunch.
She didn't like cooking for just one.
We'd eat hoagies from Vito's market,
bag of Lay's chips between the two of us,
and sweet tea she had in her fridge
using only the plastic cups
because we couldn't have glass around the pool.

She'd point to necklaces and cashmere sweaters
from the new JCrew catalog,
dog earring all the pages she loved
her tan hands steady on the corners
with several silver rings on her fingers,
big diamond on the left one.

I hated to leave her with only the sound
of the Pennsylvania state flag flapping
against the pole,
or her neighbor's lawn being mowed.
But she smiled something huge when I waved goodbye
from the sidewalk
slowly closing the catalog,
a sympathy wind chime scoring her steps,
walking back inside
to no one sitting in the arm chair
and the TV on mute.

Fascist fascist
Fascinating
Liberating or degrading
Hangs from single strings
Nothing comes and no one sings
No one laughs and nothing breaks
See the cracks drip down my face

Fascist fascist
Fascinating
Fascinating fascist face
Flash-forward foreshadow
White cold lace
Not as durable as we first thought
But the car is packed
In the parking lot
I light the cigarettes we bought
And now there is no going back
Not back to there
Nor back to that
Not back to night
Nor back to day
Nor back to summers
Far away

Fascist fascist
Fascinating
Forget my fascist family tree
The fascist fascist memory
And moustache moustache damaging
Or fresco firefly reverie
Just tell me that I’m yours
Sign the line
Like you have before
This is where we are right now
Two souls alive
In the empty town
Two souls alive
In the ******* ghost god-empty town.

So, What think you of Whitman?
And what say I of Plath?
I understand all but maybe half
On my greatest finest day
(dearest, how’d we get this way?)
How’d we fall so far from grace?
How’d this canyon split my face?
Maybe it’s the trace trace amounts of fascist.

Fascist fascist
Fascinating
Friday fickle convocating
Tragic talent intubating
All the world smiles, undulating
But in the end
You’re still a fascist.

they come
for me in the
summer

sweetness of
the moon rains down
on the last bus
going home

all the flowers
crushed beneath
the sky

cry for the
mother tree

it's not that hard
to mute the violence

for she was standing
still when I met her

now she's part
of the crop

I don't know what
else to tell you

I've never known
what it feels to be
someone else

I wear my skin
more drunk then
others

my bones pierce
through my veins

the blood rushes
down the staircase

spiralling into
the circles

circling the end
of times

I wish I'd known
you better

but you don't
exist inside these
walls

if only I was trying
to build a better world

we could've known
each of us

there's nothing
else to succeed our
thoughts

there's only so much
you can feed the insides
before it eats you in your
moment of silence

it's better to burn the
rest of you than keep
living the lies

maybe the fire will
cleanse us of our stagnant
despair

nothing moves without
a herculean effort

is this how you feel
when you are sober?

it's better I don't
wake before the end
of another year

I've never felt more
alive when my mind is
blank

so let them come
and find me

I'm waiting for
something to happen
anyway

I'll trade all my
fantasies for one
moment of absolute
nothingness

I can't even tell when
the summer begins and
where it ends

I wasn't born to
count reality

546

To fill a Gap
Insert the Thing that caused it—
Block it up
With Other—and ’twill yawn the more—
You cannot solder an Abyss
With Air.

between sunrise
and sunsets

confined bone
and flesh

nests an ocean
that cannot sleep

each drop a
breath escaped

where it pours
in the sorrow

of everything
in mourning

for eyes that
do not speak

I hear it's going to snow tonight,
& untamed words run through my skin,
but I don't think I'll write -

snow may smear to tussled white,
but we're such fools for indoor sins
that if it's going to snow tonight

we'll stay in, turn low the light
until the walls are dim and thin...
I don't think I'll write

or hew you little metered sleights
of hand, more smoke than djinn -
No, if it's going to snow tonight,

sun sluiced away in spite,
sky low and gray and blank as tin,
then I don't think I'll write:

these crawling words are feeling trite
& the bedsheets gather in a grin.  
It's going to snow tonight,
but I don't think I'll write.