They build their gods by hand
on Frenchman Street -

cup by cup inside baroque bars
bearded by brine-iron galleries,

fronting veils of mourning-lace
over ruddy O-mouthed faces,

dotted with glitter-fizzed phone forms,
glass skins decanted into alleys

shoving light down cobbled brows
and back up the laddered spine of palms.

They fill their gods with song,
the hairy-starred sky a smoking mirror

that pushes the music back onto us
as we scroll night markets in slashes

of color and money, strangers dreaming
on each other, discharged from the dives.

They don't build their gods to last
on Frenchman Street -

every night is only walked the once -
dissolve your empires, let the words

plunge under the strange black lash
that drowns the eyes to sleep.

I walked out last night,
barley-headed,
soul burnt down to a stub,
into a black chassis
fenced with star -
my hairy-eyed heart
carried on so.
But I am thankful for you,
my friend,
who so easily righted my keel
back into the tide
with a graceful turn.

Your words sift the holly,
brace the moon,
they are petrichor
in the lavender fields.
They come across the sea,
I eat them like pastilles.
I refresh the screen in hopes
that they have spiced the page.

The way I imagine you now,
in this moment,
you are running,
lifting the beach fleetly,
trailing a supping sun -
go, then, and know that the world
is so much better for you.

Molten web
of keys
& brass tumble
to the ear;
there's cane
sugar burning,
a thick crest
of moon, the
breast of night,
& the piano
is a violent
love, a brace
of stone.

The second
movement
arrives like
a galleon
with sails
of cries
& whispers.
The world
lilts. A scent
of lilacs
in the
hand. The
minor key
move is
devastating.
"I saw the
figure 5
in gold"

Then,
the dusky
iron of the
anvil births
sparks.
Wistful
lace of
yesterday
falters
in the air.
Trumpet
creepers
climb the
black trellis
of evening.
A closing
throb that
speaks:
It was
worth it.

How
many
nights
did I
lower
myself
into the
well of
sleep
unwilling,
like a
sacrifice,
my
dreams
caught
in the
net of
morning?

How
many
nights
did I
chase
sleep
but fall
into
the nest
of insomnia?

Now
I know
the night
front
to back;
but
I am
more
interested
in you,

& the
empire
of dreams
that is
gifted
to you.

What
parades
through
your
drowsy
pavilion?

What
constellations
& what
wilding,
benighted
tangos?

What
incandescence
does your
brain
gather
in those
starry,
wheeling
hours?

I will
sleep
now,
& meet
you
in the
enchanted
ether
that
seethes
between us,

joining
your
wild
tango
of oblivion
with my
burning
tropic of
Aries,

knowing,
with
sorrow,
that
the
bright
axe
of waking
will
cleave it
all
away.

The train's
cleated toes
perch on volts
before dipping
into the cobalt
hologram of
morning.

White pebbled
floor reflects
in the window,
the platform's
strip of faces
wades through
ghostly stars.

The train climbs
the rusted ladder
with humming
hands. The anthem
of sun a blinding
glint on the hide
until it shrieks
into the earth.

Tunnel's halogen
skin dappled
with aluminum
song. This is
my stop, step
through the
birthing wings
into the ceramic
meadow. Gate
opens, subtracts -

I'm an Orpheus,
looking back as
a silvered Eurydice
is pulled away
from me with
a scream.

Dr Weathers wakes
to a ridging howl,
frostbitten, snowblind,
stumbles rudely ahead
on cold black feet,
& hands that might
belong to another –
they went solid in the night.
He plows white weight
as if underwater, the sun
suppressed behind banks & steeps.
But the mountain also rejuvenates –
he is curiously younger,
an adolescent dismay
of being cut loose and held back,
both at once, as the wind steals
bellows from his teeth.  
And then younger still –
teetering march step,
speech blanches in the throat,
his thoughts mirror his needs.
Imagine what the lower guides see
as he arrives, his face
porcelain in the light -
venous glaze, stony veil.
Imagine his infantile thoughts
as they swaddle him,
so glad to be awake.

Dad's college
favorite, he
screened it
for me in
the leaning
half-house
he rented.

The camera tilts,
searching for god,
finding only the
empty parentheses
of clouds, the iron
silence of ovens.
Famously,
the knight plays
chess against death -
god may be quiet,
but death is happy
enough to chat.

At the end,
the unbroken
line of the dead
dances up the hill,
inscrutable.
My dad drinks
bourbon from a
coffee cup,
old wet sting,
his thoughts
pulled in
like oars.

Alex with the "ox-head"
& his dad's old magazine
by the Haitian's house,
stroking our eye
with fields of skin.

Alex, killed at the bus stop
by a drunk driver,
chewing an apricot
as the automatic neon
stuttered to life.

Green on green
          scrape
add copper
          scrape
add blue
          blend
               scrape
     blend
          scrape.

No matter how hard
you carve at the pigment
with the long flat knife,
the canvas tooth retains
the wraith-stain imprint
of the older image.

There is no night
                 without your name.
The day suffers too,
but limps along
on a swan's wing.

There is still much
                 to do
before you fly in,
but if we need anything,
it's ours.

When I ask
                 how you've been
write me a book -
your hours
are always new.

So give me that
                 laughing look,
for I belong
only to you -
there is no night
                 without your name.

The suicidal hospital
floats away
into the past -
paper gowns
& abject beeps
& red-eyed
streetlamps
all turn into
valentines,
sugar silhouettes.

Being kicked
in my unfaithful face
while donating
my guts to the john
after too much
goodbye tequila?
Gone like a skip -
take a pattern
from my
better thoughts
& drag the
needle across
until I only
remember the yard
where I ate grass
& the air
was cruising
with the perfume
of hyacinths.

The woman who
left her ball gown
on the hook
behind my door
for months
after we fell apart?
No, keep her,
let her stay.
I need the bitter
to remind me
what the sweet is.

My skin, thin as foam
on the beer body...

Then it evaporates,
& something leaks out

from the valleys inside
into the ornate air:

some of them can feel it,
& watch me closely.

The bathroom graffiti
sings my name in choir.

The waitress smiles
a little too much
but we don't care,
our little glass lung

of Bordeaux dips away
above slatish cobbles.
A Gauloises whips ash
from a smouldering hand

into the corner table fragment.
Systems of traffic evaporate.
A massive shadow folds
above the grifters.

The river laps
at knees of bread,
while empty bottles
browse the blackness

for their corks.
Beside cathedrals
a dusted dusk glows
& we follow it

back to the hotel.
It's a little room,
our neighbors make love,
& the courtyard roars

with high orange;
I think towards you
when sheets of clouds
betray a skimmed moon,

& we pull sleep around us.
The river tongue falls
& sleek stones gather
to a new language.

Saturday night's
rain down
the glass
reminds me of
when the sky
tipped
& beaded
on my face
in the spare
maple as spring
came on.

I laughed
& shook the shine
from my hair
as my fingers
gestured water
into the hillside
streeted
with roots.

I found the road
as the dusk
whistled
& followed it
back to the *****
where headlights
kicked against
the first pierce
of stars.

The rain sat
on the ruddy brick
& glowered.
I sailed
over lawns
black with dousing
& listened
to the drop
and lilt.

Lancing sun
in a wilderness of
roiled stratus -
a day begins
under threat of rain.

A stalking heart
crawling the high grass
searches for you.

I've made hundreds of
searches for you,
crawling in the high grass,
a stalking heart
under threat of rain.

A day begins:
Roiled stratus
in a wilderness of
lancing sun.

Neruda
my father,
Plath
my mother -
watch how
their child
eats the
raw
peach
fingers
of dawn
with
teeth
sharp
as poems.

Within
me, a
tower of
patience,
where
I stand
calm as
barefoot
trees.

It rains,
drops
fat as
cherry
stones,
as I
nestle
my stripe
against
my throat
in my
good
black
shoes,
aching
circles
of smiles
on my
cheeks.

Darling,
come hide
in my
heart
& peek
at the
soft
world
when
you are
ready.

There is
room for
both of
us in
here to
watch
the
accordion
of my
ribs
play
Astor
on loop
until the
cherry
rain
dies in
the branch
of sky,
revealing
the playing
card of
morning.

Occasionally
I will
pack a
suitcase
of language
and flee
to your
heart,
hiding
behind
the petals
of history
and art.
I know
I will
be safe
from
the shackles
of the
glacial
darkness.

Neruda
my father,
Plath
my mother -
I'm patient
& inevitable.
Love,
forgive
my queries
& take my
nine lives.

We have
claimed
the sun.
Come,
let us
steal the
moon, too.

I grow older,
my body fails,
it's just what you'd expect:
corrupted voyage,
blossoms turn away as they fall.  
I become convinced
we are unusually alert animals,
drifting in a soft chaos.
I fill my spaces with alcohol,
& with her.
The sun marches away,
saffron step,
& the day is throated.
I just hope that my love
doesn't come too late.
Or if it does,
that I can be wiped away
easily enough.

In a photo
a man is
lighting
his
cigarette
in a
grain of
shadow,
his face
just for
a moment
caught
on a
hook of
light.

It could
be anywhere.
Maybe
even
this city,
clad in
green
squares
& stone
circles,
whose
soft
evening
runs
like yolk
into night.

Then
in another
photograph
I saw
the
hallelujah
of your
face.

I forgot
the
speckled
city,
I forgot
the man
& his
vine
of light.
My own
name
seemed
drunk
with you,
lost in
the wine
of your
talent.

Some
things
are
branded
on the
inside
of your
skin
forever:
the taste
of milk
or mint,
the raw
flower
of ***,
the slow
sacrifice
of the
candle,
a first
love,
& a last
love.

Darling,
turn me
inside out
& sign
your name
with fire.

Look at this Moor,
with his dolphin
held like a bagpipe
splitting with water,

while beside him
tourists stack three deep
grabbing at their beer,
pretending to ponder

the veiled Nile,
while their eyes slant
towards the open seats
at the cafe and the Aperol

that issues so freely
you'd think Neptune
was pouring it out, too.
The sun is wincing citrus

above the high windows
that overlook the plaza,
laughter cresting above
the tourist scrum, and

children scream with gelato
strung between their fingers.
People like to be close
to history, but not too close.

If the old stones spit water
pleasantly, so much the better.
Browse the pamphlet,
tell the wife it's Bernini,

not knowing that Bernini
once paid a servant
to take a razor to the face
of his mistress because

she slept with his brother,
because history's scrawled
as much in blood as in marble,
and the colossal Pantheons

of the world are easier
understood with a dizzy
laugh and eyes shining
with afternoon wine.

On this red rug
the memories come:
the driving angels of meat,
the ocean yanked
around by the cue-moon,
the antler of sleep
that hummed past,  
the bar-room mystery
that was never solved
on a cold night when I
was about twenty-five.

Someday all of these
memories will fall away
into the crevasse
of my death.

Until then, all I can do
is bring them here
and give them to you -
as an offering,
as a plea.

A cloud is grimly passing,
                  passing grimly
o'er this raven cawing glibly,
mocking us with twilit eye.

In this hellish ev'ning hour
you clean the garage, clean and scour,
finding tomes both low and high.

But now you leave to do a chore,
forego the raven at your door,
who blithely chants his "nevermore,"
his soft ironic "less is more,"

the darkling chant in falling dusk.
The ice around the heart's not thawing
shadows form claw, fang, and tusk
from the raven's stony cawing,

and in the late and lonely hour,
lonely, late, and dimly dour,
a chill that passes cold and sour,
tells of ebon raven waiting,
a raven perched and blankly weighting

my soul against a feather,
now, and then forevermore:
a rainy hour's graven weather,
this black bird with his dread languor
whispers ceaseless: "nevermore."

The stair-shadow bar
a blackwood twist that swims
& recurves under elbow and pint.

Eyes knock in the false, exacted twilight,
against the yarded backdrop
of felt puddles stroked with chalk.

Here is a glass of rye - it waits
in amber for the pink warm wash
of my prowling, kissing palm;

here is a glass of Powers - the sweet
scent flowers the stale angles,
fumes away beyond the lip line.

Things can't quite be read -
what does the canted shoulder mean
when it turns my way?

Words tumble into the chrome-crumbled
struts of the barstools. A kölsh floats into me,
then two, small columns of silted yellow.

On leaving, I am amazed to find
the cheer-charred night, rude gestures
of moon sweeping the towers,

& a fearful silence that finds its harbor
deep inside the glen of my ribcage:
a barking heart, chained to its house.

I painted some poppies a year ago,
long-headed, red as the watery sun
that floats in the Bay at evening.
A girl I knew asked for the painting,
and I said yes, it was hers.
Then her silence gulped months away
in great raw swallows.
One day my phone shook in my hand,
and the girl who wanted poppies was there.

By then I was alone, in an abyss,
so I was ready to answer a voice
that drifted down in flurries.
She sang jazz across the city
into my pressed left ear,
and I opened to her
like a drawer full of old knives.

I tried to embrace it
but it wasn't two weeks
until I was in bed,
staring at the wall
where the poppies hung,
long-headed,
red as the watery sun
drowning in the Bay.

Angry-headed poppy,
come deliver your sleep.
I want the black dream
that comes at 3 am,
& leaves only when
the numbers rake across
the face of glass.
O ****** poppy,
bring me the blankness
of your dry child -
my beloved slips
into scarlet wine,
she opens to wavering night,
without even my hand.
I down myself with coffee,
then wake with poems
erupting like lilacs
over a new grave.
Sweet-headed poppy,
come distribute your sleep.
I need the black dream
that comes so late
that it blinds me
to the ways I love her.

O tunnel of firs,
tied with rain,
were you watching too,
when my parapet
ate a hock of indigo
at seven, and, still hungry,
gobbled a dull star?
Were you watching
from cold roots,
little grove, when
something unfaithful
happened? A curling lip
received a sacrament
of apple cider vinegar
under clouds of hospital gauze.
O firs, you never tell me anything,
too proud by half in your
gowns of needles.  
That's alright - I'll lay until
the night slips over the line,
and imagine a kind of morning
where I have nothing to tell you either.

Bone in the branch,
right on the face of it,
embedded symmetry.
Tillerman's lawn chain
in a dead leaf choker,
garbling the sway.
Maple skim dip,
a patch of buttresses,
pooling October.
Inert array,
flicking cardinals,
shoal's chaotic mural nose.
So many days like this day,
indistinguishable,
crushing.

Language ends here -
in the hazel of her,
in uncountable sleeps,
in a bundling of sun,
in a resonance,
a stray violin.

Your words
open
in the quick
hours,

& the long
distance
feels like
a sway.

Here, evening
is installed
with blue
pieces:

blue tree,
blue cloud,
blue angle
of sky,

flat as a card.
The moon
is just some
flour,

flicked
into place.
The miles
step away

& I taste
your sweet
honesty
& want more.

Primo Sonno, the traditional First Sleep that was common before the Industrial Revolution, it occurred between nightfall and midnight after which the sleeper arose to interpret dreams, pray, write...

The cherry liquor puts me down
around the time the snowfall arrives,
when the blackish hem of night
is snugged over the last lacy orange light.

I have jamais vu - I see the familiar,
& feel nothing, an iron-browed stranger
gazing out at the dim flake-fall,
the urban hush that sweeps away the scrawl.

At midnight I wake to an insistent horn
deep in the street pockets. I dreamt
of people with guns following me,
gluey-eyed, marching quay to quay.

In the dark, I almost remember her.
In the dark, my stomach is filled with acid.
Shadows hiss in the bleary mirror,
a cold breeze scrapes a little nearer.

I was speaking
the words
that divorced her
sometime long ago.
The words
were less
than air,
& multiplied
like bacteria.

Some version
of them happened
again in a
cell phone
& again,
years later,
in another mouth,
while I watched
& again, again
came the words.

I gave them
my absence
too many times.
Now I sit alone
with a Scotch
on the rocks
inviting
the repetitive eagle.

Across thousands of miles
you lay your claim on me
with your purple stockings.

My body is your riot, full
of blood's disobedience
& a climbing incandescence.

I am your lamp. Coyly
you insinuate provocative
thoughts. I'm helpless,

I'm guttering like a candle
on a caravel, burning
despite the danger.

Thousands of miles, but
there is only me and you
and a thin, thin stretch of purple.

Your hair shakes
with a debt of stars.

City night can't
pass blue, and the

coin cloak moon
escapes its room

with a key made
from a rose thorn.

You lay into the bed
clad in pink silk,

black lace, your
skin fair as a page.

There is a breeze
that sounds like rain.

I dare to read your
emissary shoulder

& become dizzy,
my breath broken

among my teeth.
You could be made

of engraved silver
and I would not

be more speechless
or more delicate.

Shake the stars
from your hair,

so that a midnight
might curl there.

Light the little candles
bright as thighs

and join me here
by the window

sipping your whiskey
and watching clouds

chase a truant moon
towards the gigantic

green lacuna of
Grant circle.

You fill the world
with secret meaning -

for example,
these small wisps,

these puffballs
that meadow to

dandelions,
Once they carried

my wishes.
They would scatter

on their strange
sails and raise

the yellow brightest.
But then,

you and I
we watched Amarcord

where puffball
swing seasons

into town,
salt a wedding,

mark the limits
of memory,

of childhood.
Now I see them,

gracing across
the fields

& yards
& I think

automatically
of you.

The mind is a constant quarry,
the scrabbled ore of thought
gathered to furnace maw,
deveined, burned out.
Birds wheel, hook, and flurry -
drop the ash seeds that brought
rubble to flourish. Dead rock and raw,
bad teeth in pit’s open mouth,
unwanted dross tells its story –
for every bar of artful iron wrought,
an equal amount is grossly flawed,
discarded, the earth’s wracking gout –
for each cathedral built, for every Gilgamesh,
there’s **** enough to grow a leafing ash.

A quartet has lulled me
to sleep this week:
Ardbeg, Bowmore,
Talisker, Laphroaig.

I'm holding this in,
living coughing strings
of days oh so carefully.

Walking home
through the drowning
grove in the sunken park,
I vacillate like a nurse's hand
choosing veins. Either way,
blood is coming,
with a blooming bruise.

My particular curse,
falling into these affairs
that end up straitjacketing me,
choosing the wrong things.
I need someone who'll reach,
but narrowly, narrowly.

We'll be seven
hours apart
& heaven
for poor Evan

is across the chart.
I already feel
love's dart
transfix my heart.

But night's wheel
goes by,
& day's repeal
undoes the seal

& soon we will tie
our voices tight.
I send a lullaby,
carried with a sigh.

A branching chime curls
into a hanging chain
of grayish rain.
The neighbors extinguish
all their yellows,
placing the winter
back in a black relief.
I'm leaving tomorrow,
off into the marrow
of the world, to see her,
to step into the unwritten;
nothing can slow me -
on my way to the quay
I'll throw over a river.

Blue letters of rain
are waiting...
Reticent molecules,
why are they
unable to pierce
the gauzy tent
that's vaulted up there,
gray and sick?
Caught by the elbow
on the way out the door,
living in a cloud's foyer -
don't they see
my hands moving,
filled with keys?
What silver seed
are they waiting for now?
Blue letters of rain,
sleeping in a sky
dark as a bandage,
the air is so heavy,
so metallic; the whole
city is waiting
for this wet birth...

The moon comes double,
with a necklace of river.
It sighs and sighs
in black flakes of rain.

Red trees give us
mouthfuls of nocturnes,
like doves whistling
from the roof.

We were the shining ones.
Our bottles never broke,
coffee was always at
full steam. My perfect
memory pulled at the
hair of time. Your wrist
tattoo sighed in the sheets.
The bed ached. The sun
was a press. We were the
shining ones, to be sure.

But then you were called
back to the green. I watched
your plane. I dropped throbs.
My heart was broken harp
strings. There was fever
crying in my hands.

But you will be back.
You'll cross the hems of
the world. I'll hold you
again in the sweet of
the night. You'll draw me.
Your paintings will sing
Hallelujahs from the walls.
The moon will moan glory
from its lonely sconce.
We'll be flooded
with reunion.

I post a warning,
old friend:
I feel violently
about everything
you remember.

Like when
American iron
thrummed the air
all the way down
to Richmond.

Your future wife
had uneven floors.
I said hello
& was defined by it,
I was just
hello forever.

Peeling paint
rubbed off
on my fingers
as you two
went up
the braid of stair.

You in your
old shirt,
while I stood
unsteady,
filled with
the glassy venom
of cheap gin.

As Jack wipes blade against
Black butcher's bib,
Calm as clouds, London lies,
Dark sloe.
Extracted so easily, her heart’s
Firm in its new wax paper square,
Growing cooler by gradients,
Hardly weighing a pound, nestled
Inside his pocket as carefully as a wallet.
Jostled in courtyard, just
Knowing what they brush gives him
Little fevers that don’t stop burning.
Mary, Black Mary,
Nothing could have stopped him
Once he turned his mind to you, your
Painted paper skin, black pulp mouth
Quiet, and ***** hair rustling,
Rusting ginger to burned blond.
Saucy Jack sends his cards,
Then goes out and larks
Under a moon greasy as a kidney;
Violence foams from his lips
Where no one saw it before or
eXpected it. Imagine calming
Yourself as he does: surgical
Zeal transformed into the most banal hello.

She wrote our love in water,
(the rain lived in her)

we drummed into each other
with blue Pontiac fumbles

breath skating our necks
& empty loops of denim left

in book-spilled footwells.
Our smiles cooked the dark

as we recalled the road
to Cincinnati, to see the college

on the hill, her mother
& her friend up front,

us in the back seat napping
(& then not napping whispering

with the wet of our eyes,
her fluent periwinkle

my coffee-steam pools),
hands so careful so careful.

She wrote our love in water
(the waves lived in her)

our names purling, creasing,
stirring, smoothing, gone.

Umber hillsides tumble
steeply into leaf, pine steeple
vault and nave, brook vale
dim to hush, branch dam
licks dusk, red lake
drains to night, tight-drawn.

The clouds keep dying -
I eye them from this rooftop,
sitting in blue wicker,
living exactly one year
in the past, back before
you took that selfie
in the plane's oculus,
the one I printed out
& put up on the fridge,
on your way to Istanbul.
Covid spit out 9 months
of long distance and maybe
something died between us,
like these clouds die -
softly, slowly, failing
in the early evening.
You entertained someone else.
When I visited Dublin,
you could barely kiss me.
It took ten days
until that toll was paid.
Now you're still in Dublin,
the green city I love so much,
visiting those parks you lent me,
running to the sea
where I bought you a high tide.
I still live in Washington,
so ******* alone,
sitting on this red rooftop
watching clouds pass away,
not knowing when
I'll see you again.
I've given absolutely
everything to you,
so please grant me this favor:
turn your handsome hazel
to this blue chair
where I down scotch
after scotch, and find a way
to save me, because the night
is coming so quickly,
so quickly.

We held hands
as we approached it,
the pink, black,
orange monument.
We stood as if we expected
something from it,
but it failed us,
an indifferent oracle.
Your hand slipped from mine
as you stepped closer,
for a second you were
inside it, eaten whole
by its hide glue mouth,
before you drifted
in diagonals
to other colors.

I dreamed about
runaway horses
dragging the shadows
of early winter through the field.

I dreamed about first snow
falling today in the wood,
collecting in little pockets,
gathering in the grass.

I dreamed you held my hand
through all of it, breath
hanging in the chill.
The two of us, watching

wild hooves stamp and
kick through new snow -
I dreamed of love,
I dreamed of distance.

Open eyes and rise,
lope to the bath,
salt meridians on cheeks,
third day this December,
though no dreaming cries
whose bleach-paths
waken one weak
are remembered;
the night-face dries
and the aftermath
is grief's white speech,
a scrawl in slumber,
unmapped marks
a brush's lead-white arcs.

Most of the snow has melted now,
gray dough-banks ****** on curbs
under a wind-lacquered gloss.

The Thai salt sits in me, hours after,
stirs thru blue yarn veins,
sharp in the stomach's wax-pit.

Night declines when lamps snap on:
dead, reclusive salmon eyes that broadcast
onto the cold screens dotting the walk.

I haven't seen anyone for so many days -
my tongue is still as a lake skin.
Lost hearts voyage in whitened dunes

of all my yesterdays. The winter pattern
is so quiet. I am a crease in the fabric,
a black ache in the ruined prism.

Lace curtains
of merlot
down the side
of my glass -
I saw that color earlier
in the fold of a
Madonna's gown.
I'll see it again,
when I close my eyes.

Blame the
wine for dreams
that fold into
forms. Blame it
for another salvo
of mistakes.  
In the seven hours
between us, I have
somehow found
every wrong step.