We lunch on dust.
We wake, wage our campaigns

of mistakes across a quiet,
wary, unwaving old world.

No greeting, no parting,
no arriving, no leaving -

we are jabs in the air,
crudely curbed animal feints,

& then our names are packed away
& left forgotten in a taxi,

or in a train station bathroom,
or in a fray of rain.

Don't think too hard about it;
that, too, is a mistake.

New-make maiden, soft as flake,
staring at a flower cake field
as brass-headed bells are bawling:
a cloud’s detonating head rings you.

I have also been reshaped by promises,
& felt the dead-dream weight
across the shoulders. It stings me,
seeing you yearn for the old skin.

A river is ****** inside us,
& grows wider and wider;
the shop registers are singing
after the sun-brunch.

A river is rising within us,
& grows deeper and deeper.
Come, take the tennis court oath with me -
let us revolt in the afternoon.

There is something coming
out of the summer fog.

It abrades the full bellies
of ill clouds which burst

into sloughing rain slices
that slush and slide in soft slips

& slurs as it slouches
through the soak and sinks

sodden and silent and spent
to the wet-stunned cement stub.

Then, a pause - and it is already gone:
a visitation from an unwanted memory.

Shadows rise and suddenly fall
from slick brick gibbets:

cars throw stray starry bars
of slim dim shine from their teeth.

A palace of broken fog
escapes into the east,

leaving a black tabletop stain
fading slowly on the brain.

Coifs of lightning disentangle
under a black cloud lattice.

Thunder rustles to rude growl,
bracelets of leaf are trembling.

We're eastbound, hundreds of us
on this loosened buckle

of corrugated silver flash.
The rain attacks the window

in excoriating scrawls
slivering down into a sluice.

Red-shirted woman, run now,
over the yawning pool

that shivers with addition.
Blue-breasted runner, fly,

fly into clay-colored false dusk
that heaves with humid breath.

Escape from this wet hunger
that walks over us so indifferently.

We stumble nightward. Rain laces
our eyes shut. We're alone here.

Tell me I'm not here, alone -
that I've finally traded this broken meat
for vapor, a stock-share of memory
that wavers through the dusk screen
into a charry blued imbuement -

For a moment, I'm by the riverside
in Paris, eating bread and wine with her,
a small and stony autumnal Eden.
Now I'm dying in Saint-Eustache,
craning my neck into the god-vault...

O reader, I can't lie to you:
I am here alone, after all.
This blood-ended prison twitches
with memories of Les Halles
& Tiquetonne, and that's all.

Paris was, not is. What "is"?:
Medusa's severed head in a cake box;
an anchor of whisky nestling itself home
in the cold iodine of the soul;
my name dissolving into a beard of ash.

Here is the piercing sun,
its lean tongue carving us,
etching our unclouded skin.

Under the yellowed fingernails
I'm in the brew hall by the train,
missing my father.

Where are his memories?
When his liver folded away,
where did his thoughts go?

I hope he waits somewhere
in the yellow spurs of air
that radiate around us.

I must go -
my friend is waiting for me.
I walk down the canary *****

into midnight's arms,
gut full of fat blooded summer,
a fission of grief and understanding.

The stars are out:
rhinestone belts
frozen mid-lash.

The wasp-wax sun
broke its last crutch,
sleeps behind the hill,

& the smeary bone-pocks
of moon are slouching
silently overhead.

We are inhabited by the dead.
They live inside us, smoking calmly,
like a recently fired gun.

The vapor is carving its way
toward the envenomed starlight,
yellowed drips, old waves.

This humid umbrella, pinpricked
with the soft vacillations,
briefly covers us both:

we huddle under the winding,
thousands of miles apart.
Your river laps against the stone,

my river floods the pine path.
We chat about lost cats.
Stars are dying despite our spells.