I feel the weight of nearly a hundred moons upon this suggestive flight deck, overtaken by transfusion in a high formation rhythmic way. Fluorescent headphones—neon red, rotate around neutral zones. Push in, pull out. Swim under the pink, towards some aerobatic link to mother earth. And still, we're not in orbit yet. Your dawning glow you blow into my lungs. Will you catch me if I blast away?

~
A break in the clouds
Of heavy burden

****** sand between
The toes, for certain

The surf, a cleansing
A light mist descending

Dark days of struggle
They ripple away

Laughter in the air
As children again play
~

~
black tie, bare feet,
a walk through dandelions,
following the scent of wine
and mirthful promise

phosphenes and paresthesia
—slow dazzle motif;
the bluebird of happiness
echoes in a shallow bay;
pieces of places to claim as theirs:
moth wings, flower petals,
and blades of grass

seduced by eventide,
unhurried mouth(s), lips searching
and soft, all words seem to have
a few extra vowels;
sudden ubiquity
to collisions and slippages,
cultivating suggestive shapes
from aleatory arrays
of objects and forms

in the surf they mingle and link,
emancipating adrenaline;
they love like they were
water for life
~

~
I work in the clouds
Building a world out of hype
I could be a beekeeper
A prison guard
Reverse pop idol
Extinguishers, all

Hackers ferry contemporaries
Around the diseased city
Merchants of transference
Polymorphing
Paths and angles
Pieces of eight

They could be brutal war fantasies
White noise translations of the snow
Cathedral nights in the deli
Ghost recordings from an opera house
Each with its own price tag

All the pretty girls
Thick with mascara
Go to plasticity
Drink chloroform
100 aspects of subterranea
So long as they come home
With a credit problem

Money devotion
It's what transferred us
Into numbered silhouettes
Slavishly pouring our blood into the sea
~

Walking home
at twilight:

the gentle breeze

the lavender sky

the wave goodbye
before the sun
closes its eyes

and the lingering disquiet
of knowing
you're all alone
for the next several blocks

The rosy-fingered dawn
  bleeds excitation
and atmospheric trails
  for seeking out tomorrow

Are these stars like rain?

  Emitting imagination,
  refracting suggestion?

Perhaps a new art form swimming
about as cloudbursts?

In undulating waves
  war and peace
are colliding out from
  the center of the sun

Could they be
messengers from heaven?

  A signal from God?

Perhaps at magnetic midnight,
four horsemen shall ride?

~
...of wine and mirth
and holy birth,

of flowers and promise
and braided calmness,

of hummingbird and dragonfly
and their descending sky,

of porpoise and whale
and us as wind against the sail,

of grown wishes and sadness
in the flat fields under duress,

of sugar-filled cocoons and syrup
and sweetest honeymoon trip,

of dimples of Venus
and smiles from Adonis,

of thin walls about her room
in hopes to visit soon,

of all things made and said
and each time we shared a bed...
~

~
Apathetic city skyline
This must be Drum Street
There's critical thinking
Digital tendencies

Pigeons on the roof
Kids in the library
Hail and flashpoint
Homeroom
Their final resting place

Who of you misses the bleak missiles of youth?
And how they used to hit like needles?

I can count your sufferings on my fingers
See them hidden in the tall grass
They move in secret
With shadow blister
As much as the caterpillar:
Elusive and eruciform

Sixteen crane wives
Collect on the guide wire
Their weathered plumage
Strangely displayed

Airplane debris on an uncharted wild
Macabre flowers growing out of air masks, gone quiet
The magic word is drear
It's a sorrow-filled caw
As if feathers from the grave
Clothing our fears

I can count the flock on my fingers
See them separate in mid-flight
Each a solitary path
Fusing rage and grief
Each a solitary path
Fusing rage and grief
~

Year after year
--at daylight savings--
he kept moving his clock backward,
but never forward,
until he wound-up in the wrong century.

He then slept in masks,
his dreams repeatedly
disbanding and reforming,
as if in someone else's show,
but it was his hallucinating set-list, for sure.

He lived at the call of the void,
feeding off peppermint sticks
and clusters of chokeberry,
to help ease the pressure.

One phantom summer,
he read The Joy of Euthanasia
from cover-to-cover, over and over,
until he could recite death.

He poured his heart
into his new work
as an artist of tacenda,
--yes, he kept a lid on it.

And when the pretty young bees
buzzed about underneath
their brazen parasols,
he'd smile up at the sun
for her complicit glow:
the warmest days
always drew them out to him,
like honey on the tongue.

Now naysayers may keep
him out of Canton,
but one day, like most serial killers,
they will name a school after him
and his hijinks.

~
Time is a dark feeling
—the spell of a vanishing loveliness;
in the present mist
the imperatives in the wind
move less and less.

Haul away the anchor,
this is not a safe place.

Between insufficient coasts
—a land of look behind—
science is dead,
pessimism in the remaining oar,
and flies in the eyes of the Queen.
Their graves decorate the spine
on the east bank
they call Euthanasia,
each crucifix made of plasticine.

There's a discursive quality to the sea,
I can see the pearl fishermen,
the empty dancehall,
victims of latitude and eclipse.

I can see the tattered sleeves
of Edmund Fitzgerald and the pockets
of emptiness inside,
hoping to quell the hunger
of the cruelest month.

I can see an underwater country,
colonized by the unborn children
of pregnant African women
thrown off of slave ships
during the Middle Passage.

I can see myself sinking;
farewell my sorrow,
keeping precarious time
against a backdrop
of silence less and less;
its final sound being
that of seagulls
flying away into the distance
—a force of nature that’s
both solemn and inspirational
in equal parts.
~

~
pureland flower, always
twisted into someone else's
creation, never of her own
~
volition, breakable eggshell,
quiet and still, lifeless
from pushing boundaries,
~
a color without color, lifted by
the breeze, folded up neatly,
no wonder why nowhere to fly.
~

a falling boy's
measured out footprint,
slipping in vain search
for a breadcrumb of solace

lost is spring, and green,
and bird nesting,
lost is his mother's smile,
he breathes in deeply

a memory of trees,
an afternoon sun
emptied of fertility:
a high wood on its last, teetering legs

urban air is everywhere
and wishes to be free,
but we are all carbon emissions,
separate living-dying pieces

polluted hieroglyphics
with nothing to convey,
fragments of a prayer
with nothing left to say

~
This level crossing--

stick,
sand,
and broken glass,

from naming to numbering,
names tend to define,
numbers are neutral,

they count the roads, follow their failings--

flow,
force,
and absorb,

dictated by a headlight,
I feel nearer to the surface of us,

motion made of visible memories, arrested in space,

mere unorganized explosions of random energy,
and therefore meaningless--

to fall in love with our progress,
and yet be outgrown by it.
~

In the days of seafaring yore, in a candied littoral time, my parents shared a love for wingsails; propelling their craft on the surface of gentle waters.

It was here my father navigated me into existence, by taking my mother for a long enchanted boat ride.

And like a hook and eye, they so clasped and rowed into the boundless deep. The tender rhythm of their waves stirring a rivulet that would come to be called me.

Floating in this colostrum bed underneath the heart's thicket, I settled to sleep; dreaming of cradle song and breastmilk.

My unborn hands and feet routinely practiced swimming toward the open shore; until that day when a familial voice called.

And there in the dilation of a growing current, I sprang forth; thirsting for their love from my very first cry.

See you everyday
haven't seen myself (in quite a spell)

my brain is
an abandoned building, a dry well

I traced your phone call
to some viral spiral

I'm connected to you
in a spider-like way

--webs, phobias and decay

the essence of life is
reproduction and mortality

see you everyday
in shivering downloaded depravity

your starry smiles
your synthetic ciphers

and I'm all alone again

this body is a safe house
this fear, a panic room

but the enemy within
is always right under my skin

Strange object at sundown

Brittle heart

Living off the salt

Fighting for survival

Faithful as dogs

Broken as rock

The soil taking its soul

In the blaze of the sun

Stinging itself to death

Within the nook of a dell,
a good distance
from obloquy
and inhibition,
floating on water,
listening to birdsong
descend down
the stream
of a musical scale.
Don’t need to believe
or even consent to
any critique,
any look-see,
you are free and light
on the surface,
buoyant and supple
beneath.

Languid movements,
reminiscent
of a weir,
cascade
and trickle,
springing forth
to orchestrate an overture.
This feeling is
beatific,
euphoric,
the moment one of
nonpareil,
bijou,
objet d’art,
and these transports
are yours only
to involuntarily
succumb to and relive:

Rhythmic waves
quivering
upon your shore,
as your limbs and spine camber.
It’s no wonder
you often lift
your voice in song.

~
Saturn Jupiter Mars,
three blind mice running
up the clock to find freedom.

starlight stairs in abyss,
cities of the interior ring
carry a dangerous cargo: citizens.

t-minus one/this is fear

I am no astronaut,
I'm a refugee, bleeding hands pressed
tight to the barbed-wired fence.

we play charades from the window,
lunar phases keening
in the tender light of these infant wars.

t-minus one/this is fear

farewell threshold on laudanum,
the grifted gift of the Joe Blakes
painted from memory.

the far off observation
telescoping my fear, leading me
to believe I'm hiding in plain view.
~

~
Pieces of this and that

From remember when

It used to be a flowershop

She used to smell of roses

Panting church candles

Now and again

From the quiet corner of absolution

Eyes closed to the dusk of sensualité

In search of lost time

"yearning for a song of reply"
~

~
Prescience
of dawn:

a sunny place
for shady people.

Long shadows
on the lawn
of a thin pixelated
crowd,
in parade
of blood red
sorrows.

But your curtains
are always
drawn.

You hide
behind
smooth and sterile
surfaces.

Finish your
collapse
and stay for
breakfast.

Buildings aren't
haunted,
people are.
~

Helicopter water ballet
And Charlie's on the grid

Front and centering feng shui
Choreographed in the fields
Where ****** sticks to kids

War is the fashion
That never wears out

Smell its smoke
Sickly sweet and orange
In the early decay of morning

~
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.
~

Technological giants

We learned early

How to command our angels

To ascend higher than our sins

They offered us immortality

In exchange for our planet's wealth

And naturally

We signed on the dotted line

Like spies selling

Secrets to the enemy

But here we are now

With the well run dry...

~
Mammaries
Light the corners of my mind
Misty watercolor memories
Of the way they were

Scattered pictures
Of the ***** we left behind
More bounce to the ounce
In the way they were

If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we?
Could we?
God-given vs. Store bought?
I'll take the Lord's work
Every time
~

I remember her
in old
photographs

she'd been
daydreaming
all her life
in her under-age
world

spinning
like a top
eternity
in her head
but recklessness
on her tongue

crusading for
******* summers
in Europe
and all that comes
splendidly hither

when laid down
by the embers
in the groves
close to
the congenial sea

I rightly recall
before the page
turning

electric particles
shooting off
as fireworks
in each of her
copper eyes

and how destiny's
curtain fell
with such
suddenness
that morning of
the thin blue line

Born with flesh and blood, but heart sold separately. Bird way up high, falling from the sky. The raining aftermath is the common denominator. When it shockwaves from ground zero, it leaves an atomic shadow—fatal impressions where a living, breathing thing once stood...

~
This isn't happening
all of the sudden
we need to close the beaches
and call in sick

Don't cry again teargas
it's not your fault
don't get hot there gun
you gave it your best shot

Song and dance, weekend warrior
soothe your soul
with a little radio friendly fire

The forest can be petrified
the sea wild
working without a mask
is both, you know

It's quite out of this world
but you haven't
really seen outerspace
until you've had DayQuil
with dissociatives

Then you take hot trips
to odd places
like an international
convenient store
where they're always
out of Africa and milk

I wish Monday mourning
would go jump off a bridge
I wish taco Tuesday
would become a festive holiday
nevertheless, our girl Friday
is always good for the job

The weight has lifted
the wait has (week)ended
the search for
my socks and sanity
can now kick off
~

~
A mix of
Startoucher
And Venus in furs

A minor astronomical event
Between luminous beings

Timean sparkles
Fast atoms escape

And in their wake
Baby satellites to bear
~