Searching for Galileo,
    the race to be first home,

In a sea of patients
    we climb the probability tree,
    walk upon the shore collecting
      memory shells,

We win the little wars,
     lose the big fight,

These windows are breathing apparatus,
     this ceiling, a blur of tungsten sky,
     rain, tears, weep,

To rest near to you,
     the technicolor sleep,
     and I died with you,

All farewells are sudden.

~
You are
the river that runs
beneath this city.

You lend
the beautiful but empty
buildings a beating heart.

And the buildings were essential.

They were a part
of the lives unfolding
in their shadows.

Sometimes it
almost seems like
they are listening.

I'm sinking inside them.

Tell me a story
about an outgoing road,
the house where you grew up
near the Sea of Azov.

I think
I flew there once.

The birds
that perch inside my chest
sing loud, sing soft.

Maybe they
will sing again for us
tomorrow.
~

The first glance

Unsteady, unsure

One beautiful smile

One thoughtful flutter

Godspeed you butterfly!

She comes to my shoulder

And pins a rose on me

She leaves a note

She lifts the net

But wants no words to her song

She is from November

And I am from snow

We stand together

And everything is new

Derail your anxious train of thought

Open your inner spirit

And enter the dream corridor
like a leaf from a tree in its dying season

Coma come quiet
Airless linger delight

Sacrificial pasts
give you the power
to leave places

The world won't get better
but you will

calm seas, restless lungs

breathe it in
the mournful breath is out there

skin is numb

the words are too

holding still
hidden under the tongue

holding
hidden

one more dies before he gets there
(what did the letter say...?)

holding
hidden

what did it say...?

~
The method is slow
And probably dangerous

From your telescope
Fewer and fewer places
No advancing horizon

Are you rendering again?

Two miles of uncertainty
Too much undergloom
You don't remember his face

It's war of attrition
A home for you
No place to run
No place to hide
To live is to die slowly
~

~
How did a dead man in Reno
come to be a field of ink
in the Martian salt flats-?

It only took a whisper

An addicted civilian
driving the metaphor machine
the last man to voluntarily fly
asleep and well hidden
writing about his life
without survival techniques

Autopsy report says
he slipped at the hand rail
blemishing his planet
in riding time's escalator
a longing to see the stars up close
and give them new names
it's the future grim repasts
of cullen shores
from a cancelled earth

That silently floating figure
was a human all along
~

~
Sun drips
on leaves

not the backyard variety
but the trembling kind

the kind
that weld night-time
intermissions to
the roof of the mouth

sonnet-filled
evaporation
reveals
the timely concealment of
a very, weary
inanimate object
at the brink

just enough hip
to be woman

just enough wild
to be frontier
~

~
"Why is there only one chair in this room?"

"This once was an island." She replied.

"You favor this place then, I take it?"

"How can I not," said she. "The dawn here is quiet."

"Not on this floor, you are much mistaken! The stairs are like an avalanche."

Looking down at herself, she quickly changed the subject. "There are barcodes on each breast now."

"I see. Were you nervous?"

"Only when focusing on the morning break," She confessed. "Otherwise I was much like you--killing what keeps us alive."

"Is that so bad?"

"I wonder. Sometimes I still feel the bruises." She stated. "But I am told this is normal."

"What else did they tell you?"

"To quit worrying about not being built to scale," she stated in displeasure.

"...and?"

"For me to prepare to fall again for the apocalyptic things written in the sky," She admitted with a wicked smile.

"What's so funny?"

"I recognized your handwriting long ago," She uttered into the centrifuge.
~

~
faded mauve
butterflies
fluttering along
defeated
selenitic walks
the sound of
abandoned ship bells
in the far
parlor north
but the guilt of
wind is silent
like Venetian whispers
from motionless lips

us, then
inward and upward
one step too far
a house of strangers
tipping like boats
seaworthy as sleep
oars divide
the ocean
but framed pictures
and love letters
unite the walls
to this unstable floor
then, us
always, us
~

letter by letter,
     some of great lust,
     some of espionage,
     and secret meetings.

part film,
part theatre,
part fever dream.

we were woven together somehow,
      like we were characters in a book
      being read out-loud somewhere.

~
she's thunderstorms.
she's asphodel meadows.

I fall outside of her
into the suburbs of askew,
where she hides behind
happy occident, where she
lives with the afterlife of a man,
but is in love with a scientist.

a jaded thing, she likes
to drop anvils on her
husband's head and blame
her fragile scaffolding,
she wears the wreckage
on her face, it's far easier
than admit her own fallacies.

before the children came along
she was able to pour some
of her own frustrations
into these knotty tussles.

now the midwives have left.
now misadventures in her
own backyard commence.

no hiding place down
the front of her,
the remaining secrets
come from underneath.

but if you trust her
and go along, she knows exactly
where to lay her hands.
~

~
Ladies-in-waiting
reflecting on
a fragile state of mind

precarious creatures, these
hunters of coal
that outlines both
eyes and words

black paint for blue girls,
they pray in a circle
for their queen's wedding night
to be one of celebratory rapture

deep into the looking glass
they peer for a sign,
a soul, a stigma,
but cannot see
beyond their own glib faces

a universe ago they
caparisoned as pixies
in sunflower corsets,
twirling in a centrifugal forest

tonight in eclipse,
in their all-together,
they merely wear masks
of their former selves

the firelight dramatically shifts
in bacchanalia pratfall
--the oblong menace
of their smiles, fingers and navels
dancing to the age of Sideria
~

Different
lines on the thermometer,
when it happens,
it moves all by itself.

Deliberately
random restless waters,
terrestrials standing on their banks,
recidivists having deposits
and withdrawals
at an inflated rate.

Dungeoneering
--the amplified gesture
means a convenience charge,
elevate me later.

Defibrillation,
I'm on the existential end
of viral paradise,
"the files you have on me"
are a trail of stolen pebbles,
sure to inoculate my final
walk into the sea.

It must be dark
out here in the cold penumbra,
where mile after mile
no one smiles,

dots and loops,
dots and loops,
a kind of blissful nullity,
beautiful and pointless,

wearing at the edges
it almost stings,
seclusion unraveling
at the underground in us all,

aubade aberrations abound,
challenging the orthodoxy
of the troublesome
morning road,

but should this near-life experience
hydroplane toward
another mineshaft, it helps to know
less is less, not more.

~
Cotton duck canvas
on careful days
in a closed room,
intersecting tension,
energy and interest
for strangers to interpret

Three bashful belles
and lovers of art
undressed as a figure study,
cloistered together
in a line of beauty
for moral support

Their congregation assembled
in glorification of
angelic landscapes,
tempered by the mysteries
within convexity's arboretum

In unequivocal parts and gradation,
where good posture
and graceful presentation
count in equal measure,
to create Hogarth's
line continuous
--the Analysis of Beauty,
bended at the waist
to spread light through the canopy

During such exhibition
the belles whisper
under the rose,
of war and shopping lists,
they seem to avert eye contact,
gazes fixed to
the eternal sphere
ticking on the far wall,
never directly into the eyes
of those who come to
paint their *******
with sandalwood
~

~
It feels like the anesthetic is wearing off

This circus of machines

From coin-operated hostility

To wholesale apathy refineries

They tell us it's winter down in the subdermal

They tell us the foundation has grown weak

Dislocation is an incoming storm

Mirrors are distorted screens

Placeholders really

In a city without children

Even the statues weep

Snow upon the ground that was once blood

Now an empire without heirs

Even the trees hate us
~

outskirts of
Seagull-Sunday
tethered
in darkness
the road
is moving
at the perfect
speed

intermediary
spaces
like peaceful
trees
blend into
the fog
of circling
insects

brittle
nocturnes
an overnight
journey
spent
staring out
the window

forming
itself
entirely out
of the interstitial
moments
that make
for a sort of
homecoming

~
Who can circumnavigate Avalon's depository and the palpable swoop down toward earthier terrain?

Yet, here I am.

Where is your gravity taking me, Kahn?

This building is an invitation, and I am humbled in this sense of arrival. The books are stored away from the light. So a man with a book goes to the light, the serenity of light.

And therein lies the hidden meaning.

But you won't let it become just a building; you want it to remain much a ruin; it's all somehow sinister in its celebration.

Occasional distraction is as important in reading as concentration.

And I'm reading between the lines in a corner carrel, looking out at academic crop circles; I grapple with each texture: it's this combination of imposing austerity and weathered familiarity that you seize upon to make your current landscape hospitable.

This building is an instrument, creates a sound in my head akin to music; and this music remains a glowing source of solitude, all driven by a desire to be hidden but sought after—a celebration of all things lost and unnamed.

Here I find closure by opening a book.
~

~
Belonging to Eden,
the garden of
inescapable pleasure.

Prepare to fall again
for the pretty things.

The desire to preserve life
lies at the root.

The way of flowers
--let them beckon and bloom--
sincerely upright,
vessels for memories,
methods of communicating
with distant versions of yourself,
a conversation that could
drift into tears or laughter,
personal revelation
or total silence,
depending on the mood.

If only time and thought
could be as perfectly
arranged as flowers.
~

~
So where did you go?
Where in daydream tarnation are we?
     If only you could see my exodus
     and relent

Where are you now?
Matters of blood and connection
forming at the mouth
we are the fabrication
      --an image apart from ourselves

To break is something sacred
in the Morse code of brake lights
     through time stained windows
     through a thousand contractions
the dead are getting younger

If only you could see me
walk into the blackness
not to build a fire
       but melt, wander, disappear
       and relent
       relent
       relent
~

soap and water
          dishes
          laundry
          or shower

brick from mortar
boys against girls

urban velvet smog
city vapors clog

this train -- there is a line
        beginners
        quitters

this parking lot -- there is a line
        shoppers
        influencers

open bar pharmacy, bottled water

                  no pity
                  no guarantees

dragon chasers
chin music
        
          lapsed short term memory loss

opening mail for grandmother
                the obituaries
                that ****** fly

a discussion among men
about a woman's voice
           come sit and listen

one last cigarette couple
walking home through the park
               driving alone in the dark
                             on the heels of
                             a reflection
                             of Christ
                             or an hourglass
                             in remission

them or not them
       just arrived
       just married
too many stairs
not enough elevators
worry about it later

them, definitely them
sharing beds
      under the leotard
      under the candlelight

a helping hand
finely manicured fingers
one stationary
        then two in missionary

word upon words need aspirin
            orchestrate
            headache
                            pillow is the threshold
                            tomorrow...soap and water

~
His latest greatest film,
Spa Days Before Life Support,
welcomes back misanthropy,
ventures with vultures
--tasteless exchange--
a depraved ideology
that drains the heaven inside
his lead actress.

Straw men,
watching the storm clock
on opening night,
praise its framework
even if hollow within.

Visits to the ***** carnival
next to the reconstruction site,
leave the pamphleteer
with no options other than
filling silk pockets.

And his trophy wife,
good for the press conference,
bad for the environment.

Let the ladies know
empowerment
is another name for
imprisonment.
~

~
I.
Killing Mary Poppins
with a spoonful of sugar,
the sugar from the medicine
on the other side of town,
the town called Silent Hedges
And A Bit Of Fluff.

II.
Only a display model,
her name is Marmalade;
skin white like the moon,
she wears her ****** stranger dress;
one of her sisters is dying,
the other never lived;
God is a far off concept,
the fuchsia colored ball on
an overhead power grid
points her way to salvation.

III.
Morning became something else:
bright decline,
cold things start to burn,
tragic saxophone
among the beckoning,
everything's a symptom:
tax exiles, imperialists,
girls talking nitrous
--mouths full of soil,
Virginia Reel around the fountain
(do-si-do),
ready to buy up impossibles
as the dominoes fall.

IV.
Memory is a chemical
to the girl who cried champagne,
like ceiling stars
during the prodigal summer,
she played the game
on all fours,
and found a drawer
full of quarantine polaroids,
some with blood in her mouth,
others, of rain on her birthday.
~

Image
autumn
womb

sunset chant

a feathered fog, isle of wight

we all have places that we miss

lie still, sleep long
panoramic dream
snippets
bathed in seldomness

lie still, sleep long
the gentle hum of eunoia
holding their absence

like balloon days
when delightful little occupants
holding adventure
in their very hands

keep them
from floating away