~
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
~

~
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.
~

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.

~
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
~

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.

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.

~
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...
~

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

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

~
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?
~

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

~
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
~

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."

~
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

~
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.
~

~
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
~

~
Holy smoke!

This is a drag.

Nevertheless,
I've come to depend upon it.
~

Welcome to Misadventure, you're drawn to it in some berserk way, maybe due to it's atomic habits or technological urges,

sometimes there are cool, but irrational gun-totting robots who speak in foam, their presence detected by iron filings or teeth fillings or both or neither,

I just know there are tire tracks on your wife's new dress, the smell of gasoline coming from the guest bedroom, and a half-eaten Stouffers lasagna rotating on the record turntable,

and here a replicated version of your wife dances to the Italian Song, her ******* like lodestones, upturned and pressed together,

drawing you to them in some berserk way,
and they give such life and merriment to your brain's parcel of needles, that they prance and sway as if the devil were in them.

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.

~
Another green world
reels them in

unfledged
lovers

they yearn
to be hydro-electric

cascading over
emerald and stone

floating along
with the water hyacinth

where they evaporate
but do not falter

in the naked spring
of continuously November

jumping off
a bridge above ecosystem

a new frontier
under their nose

as souvenir:
pioneers to the fall

and yet all they really
need to remember is

this is where they
first made love
~

instrumental
dreamer

time free
to sight see

wide
down
corybantic
oval
perimeter
shedding
tiers

in a garden
of angels
sprinkled
with pine cones
at the border of
void and Vaud

cantons
of meltwater cirque
les petites Fauconnières
the inner basin
of my outer reaches

I am
your
visitor
I am
your
audience

let's
stop
for snow
and polar cap
songs
where things
are still run by the natural elements
instrumental dreamer
not by algorithms
not by advancement

~
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.
~

~
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.
~

~
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.
~

~
Sheltered within her cryochamber, the offspring of Armageddon dreams of play. She swims in an algal bloom that no longer stings like jellyfish. She floats on the surface of content, far removed from the synthetic sea and its plastic isles. She dwells in a bubble, but her mind hangs free as a halo, soaring with clouds. But these are not the skies that sense their own act of vandalism. This is the space and ceiling of a child's mind, in her capacity to absorb disturbance and rest her tiny, fragile hope in pretended, unclaimed worlds.
~

Exiled to dusk,
Fractions of the sun
Begin to lift away,
In concealment
We shudder,
Casting our reels
Into a pond of uncertainty,
Clock hands bend
With advancing shadow,
And speak of time
Only in past tense.

I so want everything
I ever felt for you
Preserved for posterity,
Even should forever
Be far less than
We imagined.

~
The arithmetic of murky waters
Is not so clear

Neither are my chances of survival

Here is me
Face down in urgent sea

My wave
My grave
My gateway, perhaps

Whatever the consequence
Suffering is the new salvation

It all adds up
Sum how?
Sum way?

And if I was your ship
Destined to flounder
In the wide open drink

You'd re-enter the equation
And find a way to pull me through

Just so we could once more
Make the hurting count
~