Sometimes maybe the dreams should
go away

--What do you dream about?

Last night I dreamt I journeyed
into that dark part of the city
where even hard-armed truck drivers
refuse to unload alone.
It was late. Street lights knifed
the false dawn and wet sidewalks
shivered off shards of glass.
Perhaps I had come there for a pack
of cigarettes
or maybe I had a message to deliver.

It was dark. I was dreaming. I knew
I was dreaming. When they met me
outside
at the bottom of the long ramp
and told me all the stores were closed,
then I could see the bars across the door
and the sign that said, open at seven.

It all seemed too obvious
but I had found some friends
and they didn't seem to mind the
long walk back to my car.

This was only a dream, after all,
so it came as no surprise
how my blood drenched the dark pavement.
I waited for flowers to bloom or butterflies
to rise from the spot, but
nothing happened.

I think I killed them then,
but it's not clear how I
got to to the soft lights
of an all-night drugstore
and cuddled up between the rows
of witch hazel and staionary supplies.

--Is this what you dream?

This is what I dream. I have yet to find
a satisfactory substitute for the warmth
of sleep, so I dream.

In the air, floating just next to the window
solidly constructed
as sure as the golden highway
stretching from Frisco across the Bay
looking square
as the acres of boxcars
north on the interstate
on the south side of Chicago,
it's all atoms...

This morning my son postulated to me a so-far unrealized condition
relating to matter transmitters and, probably, hyperspace. "What
would happen, " he asked, "if some guy transported himself inside a big rock?"
Indeed.
Putting on my ears, I considered the situation.  Would the hypothetical solid mass of rock give way, shudder just enough to allow the insertion of a soft, squishy human being?  Or would the spaces in their respective atoms--rock's and human's--intermesh neatly with each other?  Molecular integration?  But such a challenge to the atomic bonds holding the things together might result in a nasty atomic accident. Would that leave a human-shaped void inside the solid rock, a mold exact down to the finest details of skin texture and even eyelashes? Imagine the crystal-filled waters seeping down to find such a hole--Behold!! Geode Man.

Holding my silver pen extended
like a rapier before me,
I dissect the wispy chunks
of smoke. The balance of air
that gave them form
is destroyed.  They are
no more.

Radio
fade in/fade out
why
you said that
i suppose
your redolent innuendos
take my hand     take my heart
his hands were cleans
but his ***** clothes belonged to me
I was a washing-machine mutant
measuring out oxydol
and love
while dreaming of Apocalypse
and Metamorphasis
under the guise of musical appreciation
/sliding underneath the static/
there was no time for reality
except the truth we created for ourselves
wrapped it around us
like blue waters
that hid a broken bottle
jagged scars as memory
/channel change
smooth, cool curve of the dial
beneath my fingertips/
loooking to be the runaway
I let him go his own way
again
and again
when he sent me letters
they were addressed to a different party
and were in a strange vocabulary
I couldn't understand
I craved to make him a meaning
but music had a blood fever
I found the music
then let it play

Comma kitty
you syntactical *****
drop your kittens down the well
drowning
drowsing
dreaming a dilaudid nightmare
you word-*****
let go your
cat-gut screeching
I need a song

This
is a poem
         because
the margins are ragged
         because
there is a lack of punctuation
         because
my fingers are sounding
all the relevances
of my internal song

god doesn't care
if i skip a comma
or slight a cap
god doesn't care
as long as I
spell the words write

this
is a poem
because

Cerise dyed her hair blonde
in a strip running from a point
midway abover her eyes,
straight back, medially bisecting her head.
Why not? Her witchcraft encounter group
encouraged her to go for it
and certain signs suspiciously converged
on that particular crystal moment
when she saw the Frost-N-Glow
on the supermarket shelf.
A self-correcting anomaly  caused a bag boy
to stumble in aisle two as he hurried to the break room.
Three doors down at the drug store
all the pills rattled in their bottles
although nobody noticed.

After it was done, she soon tired
of twisting her hair into new directions
and out of boredom she
picked up her phone and dialed her own number, expecting some satisfaction in knowing that her phone was busy.
To her surprise, the call
went through.
It rang twice andwas picked up
by a young-sounding man
who acted as if it were his own phone he'd answered.

Of course, The cosmic Ga-Ga had
it all planned out.
True, he was often less-tham-subtle
but a brick wall was frequently
sufficient in closing off paths of chance
and more sure than a feather duster. Very few feather dusters have stopped a man
from keeping an appointment that set
his path in life.
This was all The Ga-Ga's job.
Lost car keys, premonitionary dreams
some days he had to search long and hard
for just the right number of Sunday drivers
to let loose on Monday morning rush hour.
It was no easy job.

Cerise ended up at city hall, shouting about the monsters
in the walls. Her job was
not easy either.

I loved you but  all of a sudden
you left me all alone
I gave you the best of my life
and you left me all alone
Those years were the best
until you left me

You left me all your technology
so I clipped all your cables
I turned off all the connections and
deleted your files

You left me your car
It was time for the annual servicing
You left me your house
you left me your money
your stocks and your bonds
The wolf's not at the door
it's eating at my heart

You left me all alone

Bottles of moonbeams
jars full of sunshine
stored away on a basement shelf
gathering dust and spiderwebs
carefully  collected then forgotten,
the distilled essence of days long passed
when love was a man
who promised summer breezes
and delivered winter winds.

***** widow
arachnid
dwelling in
your own
web-spun darkness
denying awareness of everything
except
what trips the threads
leading into
your own
solitude isolation
Sister spider
you bit me but
I can no more take offense than does the moth when it receives the fang's venom
It's in the spider nature

Consort of witches
cause of the dancing madness
creepy things crawling in the basement
nobody's friend...

sister spider
***** widow, arachnd
dwelling in your own
web-built cage.

The morning begins with another bottle. Her
broken mirror has already spoken its lies,
crucified her  with a stranger's face invading
her bathroom.
Later
the stairwell does not echo her footseps
as she descends, carefully, one foot, then the other,
the exact placement of each step thoughtfully
considered, planned out and
executed with a grace that is almost
Procrustean.
She leaves no shadow behind herself, throws
away words into the deep green silence.
They fall.
I could get a job, she tells herself,
listening to the silence of her footsteps.
I could blunt the stings of honeybees,
gather the nectar of drones.
Her feet sink into the softness of the stairsteps.
At the bottom, she opens the locked door of the mailbox
hugs junkmail to her breast.
Her fingers leak tiny drops of blood
over the sealed envelopes. Her mouth
is full of dust. She eats her memories.

Ashamed to be an American
Ten years now in Denmark and it's getting harder every day
to name the land of my birth
my accent betrays me anyway
When I first came here I saw
a land that the US might have been
The field of the Danes is itself
far from perfect
but it's much more like the country
I grew up in
than what the US has become
Its leaders don't turn their backs
on old friends
and none of them share a common bed
with our enemies
Our leader
is a slander on the office he holds
and he supports
the worst of American flaws
and adds to them his own avarice
and hate
Is impeachment our only hope?
The sooner the better
for the land of the free
and the home of the brave

That's what I like!!
Sittin' here on the floor
we speak of old friends long dead
put a name to the places
the peacefulview cemetary
thee city morgue
johnson's funeral parlor
ah, those were the days
when there was sunshine in abundance
and flowers beneath our feet
you said you'd be with me forever
when everyone else is gone
that's the way it has been
you've been with me for many years, my love
your eyes are open and I'm getting used to the smell
they'll never take you away from me, sweet one

He contemplated the viability
of an extended relationship
She, content with ambiguous design
knitted him a sweater

He wrote sappy love poems for her
about the swell of her *******, the curve of her thighs
She took on two other lovers
to fill the time they had to be apart

He came to her house, scribbled
obscenities on her bathroom walls
She copied them in an elegant calligraphy
illuminated with gold leaf on fine vellum parchment

She adjusted his carburetor
when the Toyota wouldn't start
He read out loud to her
from the Time's Sunday Supplement

She got drunk at his party,
puked in the kitchen sink
He put her to bed
then quietly cleaned up after her

The moon never
scrawled their names
across the sky

Hurting for the
cold dawn, pink ripples
cold fingers wet with
lake sheared from his thin line
Big Fish
Big Fish
following his daredevil retrieve
the nagging whine the singing
of his reel
figure eight at the side of the boat
a flash, a glimmer
he dreams he would
stand up in the boat
dive into the cold water
and become a fish

I am crystal:
the molten river flows
I cannot shatter
I will not bend
The gods have touched me
illuminated my countenance
with the fires of ten thousand furnaces
No waters will ever extinguish their flames

I am crystal:
at the center a translucent
nothingness
shatters the solid light
and shivers off
rainbows

haunt empty mirrors
Pastel fingertips trace lipless smiles
eyeliners and mascaras circumscribe vacancies
These women do not suckle babies
They do not write books or poetry
They never read the editorial pages

Their husbands never get hard-ons
except when they *******
The women are glad
Their hair won't be rumpled
and the sheets won't be stained
They rise early in the morning
apply honeysuckle or springbreeze vaginal sprays
and polish their mirrors

When the windows of their houses melt
they turn up the air conditioning
When their men leave them
they shore up sagging *******
reclaim their virginity by its loss
practice pouts and pirouettes to perfection

The moon is their enemy
Another presidential election means
more wrinkles, more grey hairs
means nothing on TV
and they have to fold up
into themselves, a lonely
place where the mirror is the mind

I am full up to here
inhabited, possessed
a vessel for imaginary beings
and things that never happened
silent voices whisper in my ear
my eyes dwell on imaginary landscapes
and I cannot rest

All the god-concatenated words
rattle and clatter inside me
they are not mine to control
I can only release them

Nouns skitter across my mind
verbs hunker down
in the shadows in the corners
A strong gerund is prying
open the locked door
My mouth
my fingers move

Spill out that which is inside
being emptied, I am refilled
Honey bees could distill the essence
into neatly stacked pages
I am not so accomplished

Because time was so heavy
her fragile lace was crushed.
Because the world held still too long
each moment twisted like a corkscrew,
bored into her heartword like worms.
It just made more sense to dress in heavy denims
and leather.
Smoke or warm wine could grease the seconds
make them slip over each other
in a fervent tumble--wine too bitter
smoke too easy.
Nonetheless, without them minutes lingered
like bad company, crowded the hours and days
with shrill laughter.
Only small deaths could evict them.
Hers or theirs--no choice was easy.
Because now was forever
her days melted into small puddles,
soaked into the earth and she clothed herself
in the granite of young mountains.
Diamonds grew in her ears,
bats nested in the crook of her arms, had babies
and the dark flocks shaded her eyes from the moon.
Now when she sleeps, she dreams, and she dreams
the dreams are real.
The dreams are hard as the rocks
and her lace is the dust of her dreams.

Come to the edge, he called to them
We might fall, they answered
Come to the edge
It's too high
COME TO THE EDGE!!!
and they came
and he pushed
and they flew

You wait for nothing. Patient
like the prairie enduring the burning.
I could be you.
You
could be me.
I practice the burbling gurgle
I'll use in my senility
dream of warm sheets
wet with my own *****.
Your stillness has already encompassed
my penultimate fervor.
Schizophreniacs often rhyme
because they have the time.
A dime used to buy a line
from me to you
but you don't answer the phone anymore
so I don't think I'll call.

Hard work accomplished your Nirvana.
Your casual grace sanctifies the electrodes,
you become guiless God of the wires
and I race with myself
trying to catch up to my own possibilities.
It just comes naturally to some.

She was sensitive to
              the variations in air pressure
              that announced the advancing storm
Her fingers tingled
              when the salmon began
               their run back upstream
The tree buds bursting out
               green and green more generous
caused small tremblors
right next to her heart

or
Sometimes she would dance
through all the moon's cycles
feeling her blood ebb and flow
in tandem with the tide

Earth-fall and moon-rise
march in measured cadence
while her even breathing
echoes the song

The Ice Man
has shattered eyes
shards of ice for his soul
his passions burn cold
no flame only pain

The Ice Man
cannot hold me
and will not let me hold him

Do you laugh with amphibians,
share the secrets snails whisper
in the dark?
Are your fingers long and slender?

Come, don't wait.
Tomorrow may be too late.

Send me tiny spiders
crawling over my skin like eyes.
Send me dry-skinned snakes,
blind, I will make them see.
Send me your name,
send me your number.

Receive in reply
coyote murmurs,
the lingering smile of a turtle,
possum probabilities.

I have become lost in the sanctity
of fresh-baked bread
its scent evict my tenuous presence
the house is filled
with all the days of the past
and memories of all the strong fingers
that have worked the dough
my hair smells of yeast
and I have been delivered to my enemies
my hands are stained
with the stigmata of floury dough
caked
flaky
and a cheerful smudge
on the tip of my nose
marks me forever the subject of history

When I was a child I filled the vacuum of ignorance
with philosophies founded on a pebble
or a dandelion seed
In that time cats communed in slant-eyed syllables
savored gossip of ghosts and goblins
Outside time and space unborn souls lingered
waiting for the call of conception to take them
suddenly to a moment of birth
When I leaned against a telephone pole
I could feel tiny voices running inside the lines
The earth rolled on. I knew
I could feel it move when I lay in bed
before sleep tumbling eastward
spinning within the great circle of the year
I knew the plane in which the sun moved
I felt the spin of the Milky Way
Only passenger on the  Cosmic Carnival Ride
I worried at infinity or pondered the history of  rocks
"You see, I see this thing here
and I say it's green.
You say it's green too, but how
do we know it's the same color. I mean
if I looked through your eyes
would I call this thing red? How do
we know? Maybe it's just
a long time ago we decided grass is green and the sky is blue and because
we all call this color green
we think we all see it the same."

Infinity will always remain. Half of forever is still forever
I prefer to sit facing the east
looking to see what is to come.

Mother
sits in splendid silence
her deadfox collar
pulled tight around her throat
Dear Mother
Isolation mother

my face is bloodied with
her carmine lips

I cannot remember or recall
when she tightened my skates
or bandaged my wounds

shut the door
you *****

Fetch you candy
or my love

This is recorded on the edge of sleep
a moment at the top
before the Ferris wheel's seat swings out, then down

the passenger screams out in pleasurable terror
at physics aborted by mechanics
has faith in the security of metal
no pins will slip, no screws unravel
then, over the edge to the bottom
and back up again
waking is always easier than falling to sleep

I will die in my sleep
God save me, take my soul

one sleeps
until the morning sun fills the room
one does not sleep
cold flesh between the rumpled sheets
will not wake to the sun

I saw my mother's face today
when I looked into the mirror.
Been wondering for a long time
what happened to her.

Look--
It's waiting...
Over there, in the corner,
in the shadows...
It's patiently waiting
to tear you apart,
gobble up your liver,
devour your heart...
Look--
It's waiting.
You can stand where you are,
rot where you are,
wait until your hair goes grey
then white from the fear
and it will still be waiting.
You can't escape
as long as it's waiting.
Look--
It's waiting.

Some days you just feel like letting go
saying goodbye
Other days the sunshine is so sweet you never
want to die
you want to live forever

Today all the beautiful boys
have become ***** old men
and you look like a witch yourself
the blackbirds still come
when you toss them raisins
but everyone you know
is going away
the cat loves you
needs you and
there are still friends
who go on breathing
you've always chosen your way
now you should just chose to stay

To Stardancer...
      Lost somewhere...

There's no reason to be concerned
and I promise I won't worry
while your silver stardust
falls 'round my head
             phantom memories

How far is it
until I can no longer remember
the curve of your smile?
How many more miles
until my skin forgets
the warmth of your touch?

I have a picture of a dark-eyed demon
taken while he was in the act of possessing me.
His sooty eyes flash atoms and electrons
spiralling orbits that encircle me
in his spell.
On the curve of his lips there lie
incantations and magic words
that lead me on deep into the dark forest
where witches and warlocks dance naked
around a leaping fire.
He watches me and I can see myself through
his dark eyes as I join in the magic circle.
My own eyes are squeezed tight
afraid of what is all around me.
But I see it all
through his strange sight.
Dark-eyed demon
teeth flash in the sullen night
as he smiles on me.

My demon comes to me in the nighttime
rattling my lonely bed
and I hear his howsl
echo through the empty house,
fearful cries that stir me to placate his demon-ness
with my willing sacrifice.

Little spider
hanging in my parlour
who said you could slide down from my ceiling?
The sudden shock of meeting you
caused my eyes to cross
and my feet to stumble,
but it set my mind to wondering
at the nimble leg-magic
you use to weave your web.
No matter;
I crushed you in a crumpled up tissue
anyway.

There have been a lot of temporary alterations
of the temporal continuum
and reality has been revealed
as plastic
pliable
thoroughly without
a concrete infrastructure
so when I saw peacocks in the tomato patch
I didn't worry too much about it.