~
gone to earth

left for dead

everything is tickety-boo

forget your iron-on measures

and scuttled installation

your life is a bakery

that cake is like your head

bittersweet

and full of regret

what am I reading these days?

a book across the stars

where dreams in the throes

of giddy aerosol cans

**** the passersby

and sleep against

the exit sign
~

~
The name on my lips
is a prophecy

An unsustainable breath of life

It sparks revolutions
both for and against

To say it is to pray it
in a word, a phrase, a life sentence

And it lies scattered on the beach

Put your ear to a seashell
and listen

Listen for the sound of terrible canyons of static

Of plastic birds
decomposing trees

Things we lost in the fire

Listen for the starvation tapes

For the voice of people who eat darkness
and make big fires out every little syllable

Listen for the work of reformatting spiders
spinning social webs to burden and ensnare
naïve reckless hearts

Listen for the heartless aftermath
and the building blocks of sheer madness

Listen for the sound of weeping
at the memory of peace
~

The cube, the sphere
and the triangle

Building blocks, visionary shapes
that brace wind, cut clouds

Industrial smoke goes against
the grain of architecture

Maybe we can find where
they breathe tomorrow in naturally

It will be opaque and after breakfast
arrested by cantilevered thoughts

A ripple in the calm
whirlpool above the falls

As Liliane enjoys swimming
in the **** and collecting modern art

By nightfall and before the uniting
there's a solemn dream to be had

Haunted fragments
within the libretto of a Shining Brow

The contents of Froebel gifts
form organic steps, and led us
Wright to the water's edge

Cloud 9
Force ten
Apollo 11

I'm high in the sky
Driven like the wind
But walking on the moon

I dreamt I still knew myself the moment you turned your face to me

you were about to enter a very personal space: a diary, a dream journal, a shoebox of love letters, a suicide note, the angry ramblings of a madman

Standing on the bridge where we're no longer suffering, the dream exhaled

and joy found eternity running over the closing frame, floating away in every direction where time intervenes

~
celebratory,
fluttermoth-like
boys and girls
born at the turn of the century,
and so suddenly out of time,
discarded at the gates
of a last-century neutral zone,
left as unicorn,
imaginary and pure,
somehow worth less than the price
of admission to a festival,

but this isn't God's will...
~

He loved to teach...

He loved to teach her...

He loved to teach her abject lessons
      in elevators and on stairwells.


She hated to learn...

She hated to learn from him...

She hated to learn from him the inherent
       danger of buildings.

He trails.

He turns.

He falls behind.

But always discerns.

Fortunately our tastes for this
sort of life coincide,
except in the matter of sunrise,
which he likes to see up and dressed,
and I from my bed.

~
The beauty
Of your nest
Lies in knowing
What hides within
Is better than the rest

A glimpse through your foliage
Reveals a soft calyx
The petals of which are
The enthroned souls of the faithful
But a trap door nonetheless

When I enter
You will sigh
When I keep at it
You will know why
Angels sing
~

~
Black as coal.
Moth or myth?
It helps with the lights out.
And travels by thought.

Cleopatra enters Rome,
Dropping names,
Reciting pagan poetry,
Knocking on forbidden doors.

Nicole sees shadows
Of her former self
Staring back at her,
Rock paper scissors,
The color of three.

Give and take after take
On the burning soil
Of a blurred crusade.

Typewriters
And other assorted weapons
Form white lies and alibis,
Calibrating the dusted variations
Of a caught-on-camera obscura,
It is a dark waltz,
Some small hope still,

Yet there's a comma after still.
~

sordid scripture,
warring woman,
both menace and coquettish innocence
—barricaded.

statues,
fountains,
and restraining orders,
filling the garden:
decorations of
sunlight on a clock,
and a view into tomorrow,

revealing the "texture" of her skin
within the realm of her navel,
as soft as lace,
as smooth as
the surface of a pond.

before diving in
gives an otherworldly radiance,
her shape and smile
compared to everyday realities
are solemn in the extreme,  
the dawn threatens
to break in the east.

her voice,
(a lungfully deep, sensuous purr),
is so distinctive,
come what may,
this could be happiness:

sullen, waylaid and capricious,
her urban sexuality hidden
in the attic of revolution,
suffused with the dreamlike, hazy glow
of colored lights and tinsel.

desire is like Christmas
—it always promises
more than it delivers.

Dangerman
—a buyer and seller
of mostly himself

Petticoat
—a ***** on the take
and about to slip

Each made promises to the other
but both loved journeys
and valleys
and limericks
and turntables
and spirits
and skirt-raising
and slowdives
and lip-biting
and come-hither
more than their here-and-now vow

Trigger-happy begetter
with an ax to grind
killing captives slowly
with jagged little things
it's the strangest sound
in spite of the plight of
the ringing in his ears
it never fades away

I reckon numbers and lead are arbitrary
to a button man
whose wheels turn circles
mainly in his skull
revolving/rouletting
as infinite go-around

Never mind though, the time must be now
for a show of hands

Motherhood waited in the ship's hold
until the treasure hunt
brought her to this final island
a choice between gold
and the aging ******

The young who suckle at her breast
might one day run mum through
with the sword at Payback
—that unsteady little homestead
where profit and loss
share the same face

Never mind though, the moment must be now
to ring the bell

And raise redemption
like a burning flag of regret

windowless day,
particles of strange salt on his brow,
generator man
on the coil,
double-sided,
a love for radioactive honey:
a storm in a teacup...

but for some reason
could not reciprocate
due to the metallic taste in his mouth,
and so he seemed driven
to build his electrical dream,
and took comfort from his pigeons,
the “lightning machine,”
the hair on his head bristled
as he discovered his purpose
in rings of glory that died
as flags of dust...

~
Bergamot morning

the astronauts are sleeping

and she dreams like a mannequin

ceiling stars abound

like hummingbirds in celestial flight

about the nectar of

young bodies, young machines

we drew a map together

from burst to bloom

from fever to neckline

from scale to mirror

pretty scar, a thing of awe

when the curious girl

realized she was under glass

raining in time lapse

she traversed me ad rem

with might and main

I didn't have the heart

to wake us from

her brainchild's motif
~

~
"memory runs back farther than mythology."

two years,
two months,
and two days,

in a cabin they built
near Walden Pond.

on a mission of gravity,
the heavens forming a spotlight
on centrifugal force,
abroad the hollow mind,

chronically untethered.

"I went to the woods to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms..."

this ship's captain was an architect,
but her starblazing failed
to break ground,
so this life is now a structure settled upon sand,

and way out yonder,
where there is
no blade of grass,
just weeds growing out from under the floor.

but her daughters are
grinning magnets,
passionate machines.

"copy that?...," asks Houston.

she takes a long, hard swallow,
the shadow of a bell
inspiring the astronaut in her
to shoot for incapable stars,
but the bell she hears now
is that of an alarm clock
telling her it's time to wake up:

shoulders straight.
hands free.
arms strong.
fingers stiff.
chronically untethered.

she's not looking for new days,
she is a new day,
compacted out of water,
tired of changing real estate
and showering with
other people's success.

those loud kids, her kids, play
down the hall, in the beehive.

radio jargon's on full blast too
and telling her where
to buy and sell today's instant pleasure.

she's busy now with self-stimulation,
Betty Dodson Method,
then mixing orange powder
with 100 year old whiskey
kept in the lunar module:

it's a spacewalk to eternity, faster-than-light:

she sees broken pool tables
and backyard swings.

she sees 'ordinary'
checked off on the calendar.

she sees 'happiness'
hiding in an old photo of Murphy's Camp.

she wakes to
her husband, Houston,
in a holding pattern,
she feels him moving, whispering,
and touching something
far off inside of her,
but not moored
in a specific time or place.

in search of where
she now exists
(if she even existed at all),
her memories feel artificial
in that she lacks
the emotional attachment
that comes with
actually having lived them.

there are no answers, no choices.
only reactions.
it is always going to be
that broken state of things:
these days of heaven,
chronically untethered.

"only that day dawns to which I'm awake. there is more day to dawn, I suppose. and like us, the sun is but a morning star upon being dreamed into existence..."
~

She egresses from a pool of blue and straight into the colorless, Californian dregs of summer.

Each passing plane reminding her how stuck she is.

The question remains whether some people are doomed to just survive, a yearning for freedom following them around, until they learn to numb themselves to such aspirations.

Faraway trains pass by.

The sound in their whistles knowing the events she will litigate with herself for years to come until it empties the contents of her soul.

scavenger bride,
she counted periods
before the children came along,
but never suspected
eyes like bottles
beginning to blue,
a tangle of scars
hermetically sealed,
the new order of
a broken romance,
dead love cassettes
in the glove compartment,

her cold and empty
constellations,
like cold breath
passing through a beam of sunlight,
grid of points, pendulums,
the ratio of freckles to stars,
no subtle countenance,
martinis and bikinis,
soft ******* and ice cream,
slight, elusive things, on a beach
with no more meaning,

the repeating pattern of
her mistakes and reliefs,
a preservation of decay,
sustained by the tiny
human fault line
in that oneiric hinterland,
between dreaming and waking,

she draws around the noise
and the clearings,
she creates within that sightline
the way her sadness can feel
comfortable,
an extension of loss that turns
her ruins into a home.

Grey skies
flying moor
storm in a teacup
gas cell 4
the clock hands are matchsticks
...
The letting go of everything
in hopes of trimming the airship
this seat is no longer taken
...
In love with a bad idea
the zeppelin and the magnetism
closing in beyond the minimum safe distance
...
Dim blue flame
a psalm of survival:
days and peoples and places
are transatlantic numbers
crawling from the wreckage
the clock hands are matchsticks

thin. paper thin.
here is a bonus. (or is it bogus?)

the order of release.
the order of dead pages gliding in the wind.

advertisements for adopting a lonely asteroid or building fire extinguishers in your spare time.

the rain of acceptance comes with dark clouds of shipping and handling.

just check the appropriate box and send it in. send it in now!

The waves are silent. The waves
don't move. Nobody wants to be here
and nobody wants to leave.

There's a man trapped
under his house with an alligator.
His wife does the thin space walk:
an olive, a cherry, and an onion.

She'd sensed his gaze and took off
her dressing gown. She asked if he thought
her bottom was too big, her mind too small.
He said a faded, faulted no.

He's stupid, but he'll catch on
sooner or later. He once saw a ray in her,
but she fell out of orbit. Waxing and waning.

She's got to be careful, after
the sleeping pills and gas. She knows
it's Wednesday because she
took her last pill on Tuesday.

Allowing the world she so painstakingly
built up to ignite and burn apart
in front of both their eyes.

Oatmeal star

Is that your hand
in the cookie jar?

Go for burn
where chocolate heavens
meet that interstellar souffle

There we'll melt together
as the dark side
of the Milky Way

~
Dead ahead
The target is always
On a similar horizon
It's about surviving
Every blasted thought
More than eliminating all threats
When they strike
They form castellated holes
That network new fears
To long existing trauma
Careening off the deep seams of life
In intervals of jagged breath
I become part of the debris
A genuine tourist attraction
The size of a crater
Even after nothing else
Remains of my former self
~

Not of ancient lore,
or some cross to bear.
But here. But now.
No Prince Charming
at the castle door.
Only her, Miss Damsel herself.
In some paper city,
called Zilch,
where things fall apart fast.
She's trapped in no tower,
but a loft instead.
With tin-foil crown,
she climbs across
the kitchen table
to slay the dragon,
in the flames
of his own black-hearted
bedevilment.
A dagger to the heart
of the matter,
and all is quiet again.
Then with a satisfied yawn,
she retires for her afternoon nap.

~
lost library books
and broken lunchbox thermos,
her childhood under a forgotten
leaf on a pond.
she's attracted to the sound
of the breeze through her hair,
inner-city birds recommending
she listen with her head underwater,
to experience it as a fish might.
this is inescapable.

blood roses in the snow,
her unemployed martyred
fingers in the factory.
the manufactured years go by
at a price too great to recover from.
for every flash of beauty,
there is a hint of anger; a dash of violence.
this is inescapable.

her sleep-flower recital
in a dew-swathed spring morning hospital,
some kind of faraway pink funeral for
dead trees and traffic lights.
treasure impaired clouds capture
an isolated moment in time.
perhaps several moments.
perhaps several parts of the same moment.
this is inescapable.
~

Sun comes up,
she goes down
on some upended main drag,
if i were an archaeologist
i still wouldn't dig this place,
every other day she dwells
in tedious, empty cafés,
but on the weekends she flashes
her "license and registration"
to oncoming traffic,
hoping for grifted furlough
to wear as silken, shiny beads,
and so we ride
this merry-go-round,
because moving in circles
is far better than being trapped in a square,
we've stopped climbing the calendar
in search of higher elevation,
she used to pour it on thick,
stirring drinks inside my head,
i used to shake
worries from her hair,
now with bitter orange marmalade
low in the sky, and stacked against us,
it's home before dark,
lest our eyes open wide to see
we are nothing more
but strangers at sundown.

High above this
destiny

I can see your private
mystery

Mechanical wasp controls
the hive

Its sensors are buzzing and about
to go live

Over the shoulder, around
the bend

The naked you is about
to trend

~
"The sea complains upon a thousand shores"

Yet, I miss your current

passing through me

infinitely I tread this water

in the hopes you will soon awaken

like new horizon

"my precious, the sea will never rest"
~