Invariably,
You prefer to come
To me in the dark.
"You're more my temperature then,"
You once said.
I'm not much of a thermometer,
But I am the eurythmy
To each syllable you give
In such settled shadow.
A play of murmurs and fingertips,
You once named this.
Always I see a wreath in your hair,
In colors of Persia,
Textures of night,
And the soft blended lines
Of you I know
Infallibly.

Remember,
the best things in life are free

...plus tax
...license
...and recycling fee

~
Learning to patch. Learning to mend.
Learning to venture. Learning to comprehend.
Learning to capture and befriend.

Inventing the berry. Inventing the cream.
Inventing sweet slices before bedtime
and the Fragaria colored dream.

Loving new life. Loving each child.
Securing the stem and raising the vine
by loving the wife.
~

~
Setting out in the leaf boat.
What can possibly remain?
Fruit of the wild rose?
Hypnotica?
These little fictions:
petal and stem
—maintenance drugs,
turning strangers into friends
and friends into customers.
The only unforgivable thing:
snow catches on her eyelashes
and bliss is unaware.
~

~
A fire built within

We come together
we break apart

A wind that blows past
and does not return

Carnival of light
moving colors
in the overcurrent

Where is heaven above?

You'll only hear
the hummingbird
skyward bound

Before finally combusting
somewhere in
the upper atmosphere

The resulting cloud
is probably still up there
— more proof that it pays
to shoot for the stars
~

~
In the mist of late night solitude,
                 from a mislaid plateau,
                 with a suitcase full of sparks

She observes constellations
        reflected as little needy eyes,
                        peering down at her

They could be midnight directives,
       postcards from distant nebula
                            suspended in gaffa

       "Ne t'enfuis pas..." She exhales

Still she wonders:

        will her children grow to love
          their perfect machines more
                                    than they love
                  their imperfect mother?
~

~
She stands on the roof of the world, a ship in a bottle. She likes to wave at passing boats, inviting 120 volts to raise their sails.

Words unbosomed -- her attempt of blotting out the sun and those bloodletting habits.

Her eyelids say, "Only the disquieting muses have time for me." So she writes like an umbrella, shading reality; remembering pluck and luck stories about bumblebees, lovingly wrapped in Tiffany-blue ribbon and paper.

Father used to solve her every contemplation. Now indecisiveness in what she asks. Now indecisiveness in arbitrary tasks.

And she and her negative capability are the last two awake at a slumber party, giving commonplace words the allure of secrecy.

You see, she is only harmless when she sleeps.
~

rhapsodic pastoralism
as beguilingly bucolic as tempera gardens,
where nature’s wild beauty
is domesticated and made
into a safe space for dream and play,
reverie and revelry.

with the bright dawn
chatter of birdsong
it seems to reach your ear across distance,
like a girl singing happily to herself
while walking down the road
on the other side of your garden wall.

Once at the guillotine

Now an out-of-focus angel

"Crime is shame, not the scaffold!"

She's got a '45 strapped

To each of her thighs

Speaks French with a Martian accent

Wishes she was a siren

When bathed in happy thoughts

Wishes she was the ladybird

When her wings

Confuse amuse transfuse

Into dreams of blood

Lukewarm prisoner

Detained for seven years

Now lies beside her

Asking for a helping hand

She loosens her corset

But tightens her grip

~
Lost inside a labyrinth

Tight-lipped tinkerer
open-mouthed cynosure

Pressing matters completing their circuit
all things said, but not spoken

Osculated locution, succinct phrasing
released, but not heard

The human element imparting
seminal spark
—together felt and touched

A tingling syntax
owing to its art
becoming its nucleus
~

~
Holding court at the Zanzibar,
they looked on good nights
like Egyptian Queens, like Ancient Babylonians.

On not so good nights,
they resembled Brassaï's Moma Bijou -
"fugitives from Baudelaire's bad dreams",
and even then they looked magnificent.

Identity wasn't something you nailed
yourself into in late adolescence.
It was a trick of the light,
and if you were to avoid
burning yourself out,
then you simply let the flames
lick over you
and turned the ashes into kohl.
~

~
Daydreams
in passing with the clouds,
and their weary structure,
and their idle loneliness,
and their struggle for tomorrow.

You and me and the image of an immense tree; satellites hanging from its branches like minacious ornaments; sending frightful messages to far out places; convincing us television is real but our lives are fake.

Nightmares
in passing with the shadows,
and their elusive silhouette,
and their active aggression,
and their march for tomorrow.

You and me and the image of a school bus sliding down into the ice...
~

~
alone and an imposter,
deep in syndrome.

she absorbs the frost of seasonal ghosts
and hopeless feelings
of death and darkness.

she only shows one side of her every time.
she calls a random number
from a bar in the middle of the night,
seeking to confess
or find solace in the voice of a stranger.

but any stranger might just happen to be
a lie detector.

still she lays bare all the duplicity
and fragmentation of self:

prescription bottles with two different names,
elaborate façades in Los Angeles
and in New York,
so complicated she creates
something she calls the lie box.

inside her purse there's a collection
of file cards. "I tell so many lies," she says.
"I have to write them down and keep them
in a box so I can keep them straight."

alone she waits for either
sweet apricity or identikit:
each a memento of her faces.
~

at the furthest
                        reach from me,

somewhere on the other side
                        of these lucid hills,

a box of sun has been
                        opened,

cut into manageable
                        pieces,

and given to all the young
                        dreaming denizens,

to blow with all
                         they have

inside their strong little
                         lungs--
                               ­     up,
                                          up,
                                                upward
into the sky,

circulating light
                          until it dawns as us all.

a desire to erase,
to stay away forever.

an opportunity to transfigure,
to sit on the floor and wait for storms.

a line to cross, a lion at dusk,
a catastrophist.

a pen filled with acid,
a book of theories full of holes.

once this begins, there are only endings.

Lost underneath the hood
she made sure
he stopped to ask for directions
then with map in hand
and strapped to the seismograph
she tremored into the land
of eternal sunshine

his hobbies include
                          invisible girls
                     bubble wrapped
              shielding their eyes from the sun
                        up the side of his mountain
holding fast to the cable
                                  and the eventual terror of drawing
                     paper moons
                         framed a bit too
                                                   insular
                                                   binocular
                                                   funicular
                                                   vermicular
                         these out of sightlines
                                    opaque and cobwebbed
                               screening off
                       his ***** little secrets

platonic years insurrected by civil wars (again)

one girl hit by lightning (again)

x-rays of her broken limbs painted from memory

caught between flintlock and fossil

with a just-sleepy-enough, narcotic feeling

his ghost in the sock drawer

his odd fingerprints on her luggage

the wilt of flowered books

full of wide-eyed selfies

and running scared old love letters
(or were they death threats?)

all roadblocks to her star-shaped chemical world

until her coup d'état falls helplessly into the sea (again)

~
atop the Manhattan skyline
her similitude descends as rain
we see her wonderwork
we see her water-standing
her very abandonment of draperies
unassuming and artless
where the heedless moths settle
with bodies of mystic warmth
colored with rose and a dash of flame
~
– for Audrey Munson

~
drawn to a twinkling
crown of muted lights

a moment in the waterfront
of your eyes

in between circadian rhythm
and a place called irresistible

there we listen to sun-filled hymns
and children's laughter

not caring what comes after...
~

~
Hark!
He knocks.
Time, it's time,
the Kuroi Jukai within me.

Finding an unordinary
drifting off to sleep point,
a hollowed-out spot,
where I can let
God dream for me.

Whistles in the wind,
in lullaby the sky and sea
seem to trade places,
bending around me
as vertical blanketed surges.

My carcass is a colonization (of bones)
for my dearly departed ones,
forbearers of migration,
seeking endless sea,
until like them,
I settle upon
their ancestral shore.
~

Not to string you along, my dear

but we cannot simply cut ties with the past

even the inconsequential have its consequences

You might outlive regret, but that doesn't mean all is forgiven

Star soldier with the rocket arm,
you bleed silver, gold,
and product placement.

Smile big for the camera,
the media will sell its soul
for a new bankable face.

Party hardy, Heisman candidate,
******* your semi-steady's
sorority sister,
then ask to see her again
sometime after the **** kit.

It's quite alright,
so long as you have talent
beyond this hemisphere.
Why even the fatherland, ESPN,
will gladly call you "son."

~
Lipstick to void. She is a race against time. The beveled past a disruption in her lines of influence.

Travel is dangerous, and tonight it darkens the highway of blood vessels coursing through her extremities. She wants to be luminous and under the skin.

While Dorothy dreams of tornadoes in Kansas, she dreams of remote climbs in lesser Glasgow, of party drugs in Tokyo. How many lights does she see?

In her hair are sixty circuits. But she waits, religiously inclined on the hotel bed. She drove through ghosts to get here wearing nothing but Las Vegas.

So strange at this hour, in a city full of sleepwalkers for the taking, she now dreams she's a bulldozer, she now dreams she's alone in an empty field.
~

~
In her sulking-place
alone and naked

framed in soft sepia
—the vintage, harlequin hue

at this supposed faded hour
she sits looking back on memory

she sits and stares
into the boudoir mirror

at herself
at her embonpoint

yes, at these *******
—at their landscape

how they fall
(like Niagara)

where they point
(like a compass)

what they tell (so fondly)
when pressed together

about their time
—their work and play

towers on the precipice
of judgment

both callous and
uncharitable

if the mirror
truly be her reflection

her vision is turned around
as illusion

—a study of tonality and tolerance
for one's own flesh

the room
an invitation

or perhaps
a lockaway

where she even keeps secrets
from herself
~

~
I hold still,

let him finish stabbing me

                                                 — I count six,

let him believe me dead,

he moves on to Cecelia.

--

It does not go as well for her

as she continues to writhe and scream

and carry on,

not well at all
                                             
               ­                              — I count eight,

                                                                nine,

                                                                ten...
~

~
The disruptor,
whether digital or analog,
strikes the bell,

bioengineered automaton
—a manufactured life form
given little agency or dimension,

mnemonic to the finitude of life,
and subtle muddling of humankind's
supposed moral transcendence.
~

~
Lift the veil from a grayscale morning. Vividly imagistic. An odalisque no more.

Her shape beneath the gown is a foreign land, a series of quiet revelations. Its pattern manifests as pinpricks of light perforating the shirred fabric of his heart.

The preponderance of dream in her eyes becomes a call and response evoking purely imaginary spaces. The contained chemistry is beautifully insular, monochromatic.

And there her lips. Into claustrophobic kiss. This lower register of love comes in unadorned, subtle colorings like the darkest part of night.

One thousand shades of gray.
One single light of white.
And everything merges in the night.
~

~
Mermaid in a manhole
suffering hibernation sickness
she drinks in every sob like wine
her oceanic call reverberates
whilst speaking dead languages
into the receiver
but slipping off melancholy
and blown a wish
by hide-and-seek lips
she chooses an unfamiliar light

****** with scissors
throbs of undamaged energy
from her vernal equinox
but in love with a bad idea
and beyond the minimum safe distance
she no longer plays at fragile volumes
and careful times
hands playing butterfly
pinch nippled skin
she chooses an unfamiliar light
~

coloring inside the lines is impossibly bleak,
with a hissing noise
atomic locomotive
rounds the bend,
extrasensory perception is not
a mindless gift,
it's a train station in the clouds,
tracking all my starting points to you,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.

you leave in opera
with secrets and grievances
under the radar,
and your ready-made
wings catch in the power lines,
you're coiling like smoke
in the arches of my cathedral,
a sense of elegant decay
while sweeping up the debris,
committing arson
with the paraffin of my temporal lobe.

yesterday's fairground waltzes,
ghosted lullabies,
and woodland hymnals,
set in a context not of
resolution and closure,
but of contradiction and assimilation,
break the bond,
away they float on purveyor belts,
one too many molecules,
one too many departures,
always on the surface of everything,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.