Grains
Fields
slipping between the fingers
everything good is lost
in the sands

torn shreds
vocal cords
twang
my words and wisdom
petering like a flame
in the wind
my screams
stuck in an empty box

A planetary dance
the ink of night
that fills the void
dotted with grains
of light

the sound of music, haunting on the winds
rain
to wet the fields

I have waited for times
innumerably long
the grains of youth
loose in my palm

rhyme and reason
scope and measure
incongruent and failed to calibrate

calcium oxide
lithium hydride
explosive shells
exiting heat
dying mass
compressed gas

the ears of eden lost
the echoes of crying,wailing eyes
a glimpse of pain
grains of sand

I am violently vomiting excretions of words
that may mean naught
fought and died

dead soul of a long ago
wise words of a passing lad
screams, screams, screams and shouts

empty and wholly without

I started this when I had questions,

Wondering if there was an answer to loss

And love that could exist

I listened to her

And wondered as I walkways did

If you intended for this

I dont want to move on

I don't want to surrender to that moment

I want to know what it means to you

And I'll ask you to sing it

For empty halls

In between the next steps
I think of you

You, off on some adventure
Seeking truth

I had it in my hand, a jewel
I polished until it fell to dust

My lust
Nailed my own hands to the boards

And lost

I find it hilarious
That we idolize an image
Though beautiful and true
But not You

You Lord, our heart and greatest Lover
Will never betray
Your faithfulness and stillness
To be with you as bride
To Christ

I know now,
What sin truly is
it is the stagnation
of living pain

It is the doubt of
death and the fear of
rebirth in love
in the surrender of oneself
the denial
of ego
and the growth
of the greater

As the stars dip tonight
and the dawn light casts upon the heavens

I stand on broken, bended knee
Asking for you

How many times have I denied
how many dreams slowly forgotten
in the laughter of sheets

I have walked the tired road
Many a poet followed

and I am at a loss for Word
my breath, ragged and empty

as the moon shines full
and the wind, pregnant with joy
flows graceful upon my shoulders


Those names aren't mine anymore
I gave them in love and they sail
seeds on the gales

For my days will be spent amongst the desert
wandering
in Christ
Suffering
In Word

to speak and not be heard

To see empty skies and dried
rivverrun
To touch cold lips
and kiss
the dead as they rise

If I could be forgiven
For the angst against you

If I could be forgiven
of the sin of my heart

I would walk with the great men,
the wisest ones
the gifted of thorn.

I am faint
And my blood is thin

I am bone and dust
And sin

And you, Lord,
Are in the cloudless vault
With stars cast out
By streetlamp

How long will I push this weight
How long will we walk together
In kindness, suffer
And plead forgiveness tonight

That flaming sword
The cast of doubt
The Enemy seeks to devour me

Spare me, Lord
Know my heart
As none other could share in it
Take my body, how young and bright
Give me to your will tonight

I pray to your ears and ask
Deliverance
And that holy green garden
To be present in me

I have written myself to many wrong people

To idols of bronze
How should one know,
That they need forgiveness in the depravity of the heart
And the heavy weight of pain we place
In ourselves

All sin is but guilt
All praise be to You

I don't know
If you cared enough to find this

But every night now

I think of La La Land
That night I knew I would lose my job
When you convinced me to stay

And why I cried so much
Why I over-empathized

It was me and you.

Im still trying to figure out
If I miss you
Or just the idea of it

But every time I see you now
I still smile
And you do too

I wonder if I'm the only one
With ache in their chest

I wonder if I'm the only one

Who wishes love took deeper roots

I wonder if I'm the only one

Who still thinks of the beach

And the way we just lay together

When I laid in the sand
And another voice is with me

She asked me tonight,

"who was your first love?"

All I could see

Between closed eyes
Was your face

How hard it is to reach out

Between the wrought iron gates

And take a hand

That seeks to save?

But as He severs the ties

And destines us for different paths

I hear the devil himself

Understand his distance from God

You were so close to complement

Yet far too tangential

We now suffer from acute

Dispensation of angle




I do not know how long I will wait

Until I can wake

And not miss you.

Not dream of the same foggy Venice

Or the same question,

"Why, Why, Why"

Or stay up fighting mind to erase you

And the image of your smile

Or the sound of your laugh

Or how much you loved the way I ran my fingers along your neck


There's not a poem long enough in the world

To justify this

And the surrender to God that must replace

The emptiness you left.

By next week,
I will be on the road
In protest of the many forms
I found myself within.

I had asked
How many times?
Should we travel to Zion?

Should we see the majesty
for what it is?
In the glory of a setting sun
on the precipice of us

And there would be no answer
but the whisper of God on cooling winds.

Now I shall go alone
into the valley of Him, into the darkness hidden
between the flanks of the canyons
The armies of Hoodoo
where the echoes of birds
travelling south
give me peace
and sing to me
the way you never knew.

The everlasting shame
that tears bring to this parched ground
given solely to subterranean streams

I saw it once before
in coastal limestone
with strands of ivy
and tropical greens
withering into teal seas.

Please forgive the erosion
for even the stone could not consist
against the waters,
their fundamental nature
that irresistableness.

Would you have liked to know
the way the shadows parted
in newly-born morning
the potential of life
in this trying state
at the deepest depths of the canyon
and looking up upon beauty

But you could not
only the fossils in the stone
only the buried things
the lost potential
the foundation of beauty
if only given time
if only given trust
in nothing but divine

this nature,
this place
solely to God's grace
his supple touch more powerful
the kiss of light wakes me
and now,
seeping within the rock
there,
I view upon the entirety
and see it

Could I tell you,
That you were supple
as the string
that guides the long days
and the careful nights
the musculature of the mice
that comb the fields
looking for the loamy place
there we sat

Could I tell you
That you were the soft
gentle breeze
that tousled my hair
angered my nose
upturned
and sneezed
no compliment to give
yet constantly
there

when I hold a ruby in my hand
or a pearl by your ear
it is you I see

I cannot guide these words the same

I will machinate
But never create
the same feeling
you gave

The soil does not loam today
it is still and packed
at long last
it rests

The sun is high
the fields filled
the roofs shackled with doubt
the sadness that enters the valley
with the foggy morning
and leaves
an empty dusk

with but the sparking ruby
of Mars
or the twinkle
of Venus
and I am all at once, lost.

No matter what I said,

No matter how I told you,

the columns
still fall

the roads
still grow old

and the vines
drape the necks
of marble molds

In Rome, the forum--
I can think of nothing but
Madison Square
Gardens
and the stone that should be old

I think of the Roman--
and the fields of wheat
I think of man
and the sowing of seed

how fallow the winds,
how empty the streams.

I think of the columns
I think of the streets
I think of the cities
I think of these

And I
could not help but weep.

Hello,
No one.

Hello
mistaken one

hello friend in the lost pages

hello friend in the archives
with a careful pen
and soft fingers

do me a great favor
remember these bits

remember this:

"Ye, the ancient ones
in sifting dirt, do decay--

their words, their words,
the same grey
sky
which told the tale of
a future you
stuck behind the window
caught within the sill
the rain
that makes you feel the same"

as that lonely peasant boy,
arranged
by the callous night
and obeyed

the command--
the soldier
the sword
the bullet
the bolt--

Zeus, even which at highest worship
could not consume--

even Apollo, which better thinker than I
decided to draw the universe through

and Dionys
the chaotic hue
the uncomfortable ache
to every truth

you will know the dialectic
you will know the dichotomous
you will know poetry
you will know truth

Give to me in ancient song
give to them me in my truth
give to them the imperfection
give to them the nasty
the fake
the lost
the snake
the pain
the world
the whole
ordeal

Do not ask me to recite poetry,
nay, not with grape in my veins--

Do not ask me to proofread truth
as the rocks
or the water I drink in my cupped hands

I am a father of simple
child of no one
brother of singing voice
son of music

I am but acids
tripping on acid

i am but time
tripping on seconds

I am but stone
with electric current
reciting current events
eventually distinguished

but not for me
not for these
atoms,
or time
not mine

this is the curse of poets
the curse of 23 followers
and counting

the liars of open scheme
and dying rhyme

i am the last scream
that bathes in obscene
and truthful
meaning

When I roll my tongue--
Cellar door,
Cellar door,
Cellar door.

The lime,
Shored up, spine cracked
And open paged
Is ridden with vine,
Life
Rife with tree and green
A hidden lung
To which you inspired,
This rich tapestry of coral
From old looms of woven Word.

As time washes them to the sea
And their beached bones populate the beaches
I rest my feet on the shores of shores
The neap of these spires
The catch of your breath

And am left without any.

One of the minnows
Cast in the light
As blades of chaff in a summer plain
Flares, as a star in the dappled light
To become the murk of dancing sea.


As babel casts distance between our words
Flowers and plants we drink and burn
Our church is upon the water,
Where God writes his testament in the rock
And shows us Our image
Reflected on the sea

Where I come to understand
Command
The path of all beneath
The current made
With every stroke
Guided and goaded
With rice and stick
With love and fear
I knew Him in me.

The deep holds Your waning disk
Twilight dyes the waters
I saw the wonder placed in us
Traced upon the fleeing skies

I have no words for your kindness
I found etched between the ancient grains
Only that I wish I could see them better
Written for more familiar shores.

As darkness blots the sky with ink
And the ocean fades into crashing waves
I am left with but the faintest warmth of day
Whispered 'long the breeze.

For a moment,
All I could see was the water--
At night, the lights embedded along the surface--
Shining as jewels.

The air is cold, the kind that kisses the breath of covered mouths
And gifts my own with truly visible spirit of hot air, rising into an empty night.

She's with me here--the most beautiful moment in the world cannot exist without it.

That feeling of love, warms every streetlight along the Arno
Every whistle along the Danube
They all sing, shine, in dance for you.

The years that built those piazza,
The generations who smiled upon the cathedrals
The God who lived and died
To bring us right here,
Toe to toe,
Cheek to cheek,
Lip to lip

Two souls, tangled in the vines
And drunk of its fruits

May we find love in these streets,
On these banks
Rich with the feelings
Of all those who set their feet
To the tune of these sweet winter nights.

Can you lament the loss
Of art
With me?
That all this--
Every part,
Has to be
Broken
Deconstructed
Probed
For its ichorus juice

And mixed up into a poultice
Of parlor trick
mirrored upon our asphalt
As oil slick

Lament this loss of art
When the meter ***** off
To the picture of rhyme
And the Earth is a ball
Floating backwards in time
As brute animals stare
in constellation
At a star-sketched sky.

It was enough for artists to have to constrain
Themselves to knowledge of the natural grain
Of syntax and measure
In which we design
Our lives,
And passed ourselves on
To the grief of our daughters

With such failure of art
Even they would not bother.

No hope for this,
This is but the status
of dead poets

And yet we do not weep.

No need, we are inspired by the sickly
The eminent decay
She is the muse of our words
The sadist of all our play

Just as when our fathers sought to rebuild their dreams,
Our kin are excited, delighted by obscene
Obscurity,
and isolation of the penitent mind,
To commit societal acts
Of the dastardly kind

I am but a Reed, a float on the stream
I am but delicate-phrased
Scaffolding - -

And even me,
With all my tender lonely
Body,
Cannot in good conscience save
Anybody.



Our world of dreams is but a bunch of rows,
With even the picket posts
Torn from their ancient holes--

This is the fate of the ants of the earth
The dust of the stuff,
The fit of this pit,

Those that have no hope for the metere
Above
The senseless rhyme
Of the lost divine

Limitless space,
The eminent decay,
Atomic malfeasance
And interaction, risqué

Even couplets are ******* in this
Autonomous age,
Even the coming together
Of words on a page

In anything more than subjective display,
This word seeks not to know
Of this limitless race

To the end of it all,
To the flip of the page,
To the top of the spire,
And away from the mire

Enough!.
Too caught
in the wrong fuHawking
Black hole.

Poor man, in recognizing his own wretchedness sole
Upon the Plains of Tunis, and the pillars of smoke

His enemy obliterated from the earth
But their soul,
Not so.

Rome, his daughter, to one day be given to the field
To be cast as coin and
As a slave, sold

The gift of Scipio's victory
Fades unknown
as the iron fence on the gates
Pounded by salted airs
And lost to bitter seas

Or the broken spines of buildings drenched in sanguine pleas
Of the demolished, pitiful
Defenders of brooding earth.

But do not despair young Scipio!
Your tears need not plant themselves upon these sands
And sow these seeds of eventuality

Rise your Saber and shield, order the command
For the sake of love and power,
For the glory of your state

Be proud, you great Achilles, ye servant soldier clean,
Wash the blood beneath you, and give to them their deeds

These men who dared defy you, your presidential will,
The men who walked beside you, who suffered every ill

To them you make this pact, to them your will enact--

To them your curse betrays you, to kin and king exact.

I want to wear a Persian shirt,
Run through meadows in a Celtic skirt--

I want to Don a Russian hat,
And plant my *** on the throne of Rome.

I want to bomb my words upon
London, Lisbon; Taipei, Taiwan

I would diffuse my fissile mind
And launch theoretical material like guided missiles

Give me this world of sand as a ball,
And children on the playground to toss against the wall--

It is a gift of thought to view the bulb
Of this time as a light in the firehouse
That ultimately dies
Only to be remembered by Liver's More.

Rumi was a great man,

But as the fire that burns in but one hearth,

The Gala Hall remains damp and cold.

The soul
Is seen beneath a face of glass
With eyes looking up
As
Beads of water from clouded skies
Dispersed across the pane.

Were I not in love with you,
The rivers would run dry--
The grass, grown gold with age
Where hills rattle with the cry
Of those blades

I would I were in love,
And float upon your mists
Travel to far lands
And lost to all your minds

With you my love,
I would dance
Wither my voice away
Calling upon your name--

The pungent fruit of tropics,
The shining jewel of cave
Your voice guides me as a dog
Garnering the scent

I would lie upon the fields
And tell you how
Humans are like tulips

Bright buds dancing in the wind

You smile, and it was good.



Love I will span the gaps between the world
I will fill the empty oceans
With thoughts of you
I will leave no electron unturned
No atom unexcited
In the prospect of knowing you

Do not give up on my spine,
On my bones,
On this calcium

On vital thoughts
And serious winds
Do not walk away from the field
And leave them in the rain.

The sand that creeps around the rock
The base of that column, lonesome
The valley, splayed in beige and flaking
Sands,
Fallow and constant--
The cold marble, weathered and soft
And lost is the rigor of its shape.

In old age it has grown pale,
White, cracked, sinking into the grains
And I watched with solemn gaze
between the tightened gasps of breath
Thinking in good time to watch
The sinking of this fated tower
Upon the rustic sea of rock

And I watched.

Pompey, the last vigil for our Trojan souls
With no way to mount this feeling
And guide it to the pastures of the east
Or comprehend the rudiment
Of the west--
What phoenix keeps the desert in its crop
And feeds these grains to hungry beaks?

I could not satiate these thoughts,
The burning of my heart that dripped
From the embers of that bird, aloft

Pompey, for your sake--
Do not give your name
This place, the knaves, the cruel
Failure of council
Will be our end of days
As it knew yours.

Please forgive us,
We have no place to run
No Coptic King nor Ptolemaic ring
No sigh but sin within this vein

We are legion
Humming the prayers of heroes sung
When Quaestors rap upon the snare
For tides of valor left in blood

We are the mist of that
Coagulated stuff,
Bound upon the rock
And left to Love.

Why do we call it a "Performance Review"
When we aren't putting on a show

Why do we call it "talent acquisition"
When nature didn't gift us to them

Why do we call it "workplace culture"
When it's an artifice of art

Why do we call ourselves "employed"
When it's for anybody but the will of God

Why are we stuck in this
Why are we cursed to "field operations"
Why are we lost in "development cycles"
Why are we living for "benefits packages"

Why don't we curse the steel stakes?
Why don't me make our own?
Why get lost in knowing quarterly reports
When there's autumn leaves, spring trees,
summer heat and winter's snow?

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Where your presence is given overtime
Instead give your presence over time
To the love of the one
Who built gardens for us
And will gift us away from the pain of this world
Don't trust any who say it can be here
Don't trust those who say paradise is a product
When we are the product of paradise.

In the valley,
It is grassland and heat--
And God cooks the worms and the water beneath
Hides from his sight.

But there you are with me,
The smell of flesh and insence
The perfume of love and word
And this valley is no longer
Than a longing for you.

Would you step with me on these
Quaking soils
Laughing along warbling streams
Dancing on heated sands
Tracing likeness in the leaves
With me?

Hidden beneath the cloudless sky,
The air breathes life into this valley
And leads towards the sea.
You and me,
We together know where these
Sorry summits go--

To the sea,
You and me,

We trace our paths along the floor
Depressions and empty spaces where our legs were raised together
Where we moved together
Where we touched down to earth
Were we felt safety in its breast
Enough to clasp our hands as one
And not be unbalanced

Love,
This valley
The pathways
The mouth that ends our gaze--

This is but a grain of sand
The love I have for you
Is that ocean, cooled and new
On our bare skin it will tonic
And find rest in every section of you

And me,

I will be warmed by your body
I will splash between your fingers
I will glide along your hips
When you push against me

Fall into me and know that between the alien air,
Stand the safest sands
You have place to rest your feet
And buoyant,
Float your greatest vessel along the tip of me.

I love you.
It is this.

Rotate
Clack!
Rotate
Crack!

Rotate
Shhhzzck!
Rotate
Click.

Rotate
Ow!
Rotate
Wow!

Rotate
Rotate

Snap-
Out.

Is a breath,
Stuffed with coffee grind
Thirsting for milk
And never to suckle.

Is a thought,
A dream quickly awoken from;
And lost in the tenor of real,
Sighs from life

Is a light,
A shaft of gold
worth all the stars
And yet empty

Is a place,
With silent waves and screaming winds--
The ears, pierced with calculated air

Is a God,
Is a moment,
Is a place,
Is a thought,
Is a breath,

Is a time to give thanks to winter
And dance in the snow.

Is a time to kiss the trees and hug their leaves
And laugh
When their cackled, dehydrated ossicles
Ground to dust in our arms

Is a time to worship the sun between the planes of stone
And calculate the equinox online
With electrons and info

With a careful rasp
The next turn of the marble
Grates against the curve
And the Mancala track keeps what it has sown.

When I think of you,
As but dust
In a carbon filter
I am disgusted
In the fact
That
This is what
Was expected

And thus,
I would not be
Anything
But
Trusting
as I am,
Gush
At the thin
varnish
Of your skin

When,
Perhaps
You had found
Gladness
In a day,
Or in an
arcsecond
Of the sun

You would
Know
Nothing
In the way
That I do--

That is the curse
Of us
And thus
I make my
Words
With love.

I am a sojourner,
Wandering the paper-sand shores
Of pulp and rock--
Tracing the fields of ink in my mind
And following them
To the terminus of thoughts

And yet there was never a longer trail
Than the constant sound of vowels
That placed in me this solitude
And promising to

Go somewhere; see someone,
And see now--none but you.

To sail seas, searching for pearls
Across the shores of every beach
Inside the depths of chitinous chests
Hidden from the world

A jewel embeded,
Found by me

You--

You are the fire of the Greeks
You are the Pharos, of lovely beams
You are the granules beneath my feet--
The pearl I never thought I'd see

And I am an island of thought
To rest your tired storms
And pour your heavy waters here,
To wither these blackened stones

My love,

If there was no more land to fear,
These shores would hold the skies
I'd grow a garden from the sea,
And let you name it ours

Of all the mountains nestled here,
And rivers coursing high
I'd have their shadows take to thee,
And in these passing hours--

When all the words are written,
And all the hymns are sung
As long as there is air to breathe
I'd say you are my love

Could you dive
From the 29th floor of a building
Into the waters
And survive?

Even now,

The lone pine
Stretched its dry roots
And gentle,
embraces
the lime
Of rock,

This sky gives me no comfort,
A fallow plain
Empty of rain
Rolling winds across
the Firmament

And the needles whimper
In the autumn breeze
As a field of clouds churns
In the mountains
At the horizon

The day is lost here--
Where time comes and goes with
No witness,
For the ancient sea
Is but talc and bone

And in the distance,
The glimmer of a car window
Reflecting the sun.

This is poetry--
Unknown and discussed
In no particular matters
Until death
Doth part
the Poet from his art
And ought to be--

But the saddest lovers are the living--
Who weave dastard tragedies
In goldpence and fame
And in hope, break Foundations
on laureled mounts,
Calling desperate to empty crypts
Which once housed their Muses

Praise and please to you, Polyhymn
Us hominids speak so bold
In our kindness to you!

While this is computed
And tooled to the ringing of gold
Glass
And transitions--
Mere sparks
In the ember of forge

That these mint implements
Are the forgery of that art
Consumes Hephaestus in his doubts
Of a father's true fires
And the alchem of his own

Clio, remember thy crowning!
The doubts of this mournful sphere
And the pain of our pasts
Are yours to cast within the stele
And praise be, toward your simple carvings of man!

Doting and careful could I be,
Lashing my wrists with decay
Stash my words by the reeds
I could hold the world up to keep
Our own love of the earth
In the same way
she should be earned

There is a certainty of that
Loveless act, the plotting of land
To place corpses upon the earth
For circus and grandeur

This is ultimately
The fate of you poets,
Cast as stones amongst the stream
Blackened and cold

And you will not know but the soul of you in deed
And your words will fall Deaf
Upon these fears of the freed

When they devour themselves in the temples
And massacre the streets
Exhume worn roads
Which bridged their father's feats

And when it is done
And the words come to rest
In the ruins and the spires
All but symbols and jests

No more, no more!
For it is all in their speech
It is all in good kind
And all left to me.

You give me the feeling,
Of Dido on the funeral pyre,
And I am the wood

You have me as some beast of the wilderness
Fears God in the spear and the teeth of metal
And I cannot help but run towards it

You are a sickness that has developed in my head, an idealism that may do nought but destroy me

You are terrifying and controlling, destructive and wholly
Consuming the flesh of my brain and in pain Perpetual

And you go on not caring.

Standing upon a terminal of the Pacific,
I am as calm as the waves.
As the sun falls
The colors gradient and gasp an infinite breadth
Of nothingness between the bowing photons.

I am dreary and blue,
Blue as lapis,
Listening to the waves that make no sounds--
But the sifting sands on the edge of the earth.

There is haze on this day,
And the light asks me to see it differently
Than all the days before
It calls to me, an empty voice, saying to me

That it carries the birds
And the winds
And the gulls
And the sins
Of my friends and brothers who live amongst the hills
And dine amongst the trees
And cry together between their sheets

Of metal and mold
Plastic and cold,
The earth gives me a shiver upon my skin.

In this everything,

I am lost.

In this moment,

I am skin.

On the border of the horizon that cuts
The oceans and the air
Ships without sails fight the gales and win,
Coming to rest in their deliverance.

WORDS!
APHORISMS,
THOUGHTS,
PHRASED

CURATE
AND SPAKE
FOR
SPIRIT'S NAME!

I give you
the fire of the soul
The blood of the earth
The dust of the aether
In the gasp of the known

A liquorious draught
That tickles the throat
Where providence sat
And closed heaven's door

HISTORICAL SPAT!
Spittle and drivel
The fleshy sacks grovel
While Satan
Clawed his nails
at the sand

Of souldom!
Cast amidst the stars
And Not moving very far

A *****
No more
And Gamorra absorbed
Before that perpetual want
of more

HERE, AND NOW!
the scent of battle on the wind
Sulfur and toxic gas
Humans behaving mad
Leeward of the path
Struggling and daft
Illiterate and crass
Fallow fleshy sacks

I am in love with it all!
A raving lunatic with
romantic comedic timing
And no taste for time
dining
But on the feast of the bone
And savored moment

I will be alone!
Except for you, poor soul
Who reads in these words
Your own fated toil

I miss you, I love you, from even beyond the pale
My words float in the clouds
And scrape the sentimental trails

Back home once again,
Maybe find my next trend
Or Hear HIS next sermon
And go tell a friend.

Soon it'll be me
Staring down the nebulas
The contortions of the sky
The stars that wander by
In my eye
Bright
And almost divine

Just practice nodes
Trailing the wheels
Rotating per Fortune's minute
Decisions

This place
The vessel I will abate
At moments end I feel the hand of fate
RIP and tear my string from the yarn
And born again
Somewhere in the galactic arm

Sometimes,
The way I like to understand the soul--
When someone goes "home",
And their body fades

It's a great cosmic spigot
Running endless
fresh water into bright buckets
On this waning summer day

When feeble little hands grasp at plastic
And hold the sweetwaters
Close to the chest, bringing them along on journeys to the distant sands
With every step spilling
Tiny pebbled beads
Of that water onto the ground
Gradually shifting the weight
Until comfort holds, unaware
The space between the fingers
And the pan

Eyes glazed with redness, tired

The little one in us falls asleep
As waves lap quietly at the sand
And the mountains rumble inevitably into dust

And the feeling of the earth is lost
And our body, like a rusted telescope mount, unable to stand
Cants
And spills the whole pail
Into the pale
And we leave this place as we began

It is not my job to be a poet,

not my job to spew hopeless clauses

Not my job to weave callous causes

Not my job to print insipid logic

Not my job to parse sight through the darkness.

Not my job to tell souls to behave

Not my job to give credence to knaves

Not my job to sell this gold to the state

Not my job to give words away.

No, it's yours - -

Yours to obey, yours to disdain

Yours to compare, yours to reapir

Yours to create, yours left to fate

Years of the past are not of one date

--

Not my job, not to wish or to pray

Not to shine one's soul with spittle
And lacquer its grain

Not my job to place words, no, merely to give
Not my place to give words that do not serve fit

You all know better, you all say so
And for note, with a sad, careful bow will I go.

Reverberate
The souls
Given circumstance by historical
Methodology and theoretical wanderings

Lying poets, they take their words to street
And sweep their hidden eyes to the pissant stone of curb
And drink in the sound of vehicle
Dreaming to be heard as loudly
But soft
And dreary
As the cloud
that casts its watchful shadow
Over the golden hills at the edge of space
And perpetually disposed themselves
Of any real fluidity

The sun pecks at the skin of the earth, as the waves of heat dance for her
And I become lost in the very essential part of it
That runs across the blades of grass in a quiet park
Where children scream gleefully and rub up against the chain-link
And the dogs empty themselves in feeling

The church bells, a trolleycar, the hobo collecting cans from an oasis of free trash bins
I drink the taste of **** and flower fields in the sweet summer sun

I could not believe what I had begun

The dream of Milton, my friend Kerouac, the Republic
The marble columns on Sansome
They are a treat to my ever-aging eyes
Seeking something in the dirtied troughs of heat
In the summer sun

But when will I be done?

All of you below
Are little tiny ant-people
Bumbling through these funny streets
Hidden beneath my shadow.

With their cut cuticles of hair
And those knotted clumps of muscle
Around the pebble streets they roam
To destinations unknown

All around are towers of steel
All air conditioned and ventricled
Made of stone and office drone
They are the buzzing hives of employables

On the street the blood cells meet
On embolic artery of Battery
On varicose Vein of Sansome
The exoskeleton of this city
Curbed with Grey
and auburn streaks

Far away
Beyond the bay
In the neck of a wood's decay
The tiny ants feast on bark
As cars fly past on an interstate.

The rails scream in the darkness
Sparking, lambent bulbs trace starlight behind tinted glass
No words, just motionless exhibition of man
Child
The shrill yapping of a terrified pup
Ears plugged from the disastrous din of metal rubbing against itself

The train flies through an evacuated tube pressed beneath the innumerable water column
And it is deafening.

Behind us the gentle shipyards, ahead the recipient city
Waiting to drink up our wallets and time with her promiscuous streets
As she bends her towering legs to the ironically Chinese
Barge
Blowing its baritone warning flutes
As it tugs itself upon her Bays.

I am reading the book, seeing the Brothers through the din, in between the two cities
The two unhappinesses
and the creatures they identify with

It is a giant artifact,
the tube
It protrudes through
The ships
She sunk and constructed
Market, Mission, Pier, a swamp of concrete
Over the dried clump of trees
A thousand bits of Theseus
And the abandoned bones of thirsting men
Running east, towards Pittsburg
Richmond
Warm Springs
The line is soft between these rusting zones
And the gold
Forgotten for silicone

I am reading a book
About brothers and the curse of stone
Sharing stares with dirogenous hobos
And girl's pupils
feasting on bodies hidden behind periodicals

The rails scream in protest
The railcars are turning up and out
Towards the end of the darkness
And the start of the largeness

The city waits to list her failures to me
To cry herself to sleep with raindrops of fog
And rasping breaths of breeze.

Me beneath the zenith's sun
The light she gave to Abbadon
Shadows genuflect and none
Could bear the dark's dissatisfaction

But me,
Beneath the zenith's sun
Is life in God's light bastion.

Ahead the span of ocean waves
Towards me and man at end of day
Behold her secrets in our gaze

Yet no sound but hers escapes

Above me, the great zone of sky
Where wonder and darkness forever hide

In her a sad and lonely guise
So blue, so kind,
a lasting cry.

There sit the pebbles on a stream
From ancient depths and time unseen
Stolen deep

From mountain peaks
And laid gently beneath my feet.

When the flower blooms
She smiles her pleasent hues
Her juices ooze
Advancing petal and raising shoots

A blubous tower in her youth
She curtsies, twirls in my view.

Look at the tree
Such soft bark, those hard leaves

It has no place for me to see
Just fuzzied lines in a dappled breeze.

Standing upon these novel halls
The man, waiting
Seeks temperance and a kindness from God

He says,

"Give to me the gift of your knowledge and I will smite your enemy--rebuild the garden and replace those fruits long lost"

And his request echoes impotent through a voiceless hall

He cries, wails, churns and smashes
his dirtied knuckles on the walls

He yells, buckles, whines and sputters
Choked and lost in miserable,

The flanking rooms locked and dark
With constant voicing, gently call

"Who upon ye has the gall,
to name me Father"

And he is quiet.

------

In Moscow the Siberian fall grips the air
A wandering Dostoyevsky speaks in exhalations to the crack of gunshot in the dawn

A brief tightening of callous rope around his dry poetic throat

And at once his words sought to cull
the exquisite embers of furious retort

And he is silent.

----

The kindness of a failing city-state
Conveyed on the precipice of a bay
Jack teethed his frantic dharmas
And said to Them,

"What terminus of road
Would ever serve my unwinding soul?"

And as his gut trembled a final thought,
His eyes turned skyward, above the clouds

Where it was silent.

----

Dorigen, repenting the patient shores of tranquil sea
Accusing the chalk of its blackened soul
Traces the subtle dance of gulls
As their drowning feathers face these ageless things
whysper'd deep upon the winds

And she is Silent.

---

Basho, with a wanderer's grin
In solumn steps between the grains
Shades the path of unfamiliar road
And every poem steeped within

Where clouds are soft, where crickets sing
Past warbling stream with cadence grim
The Dao, leading ever onward

Says to him,

"Like water, do I rain."

---

Milton, his misted eyes
No light to guide their failed sight
Trace an ancient knowing glance
To Crown, his subtle circumstance

No soul in life
could see the might
Who gave this man his funeral rites

And when his words fall deaf at last
On his forgotten time and wishful past

He will stare deep into an inky void
And see
The stars for what they are:

Light, dispersed between the dark.

---

In the waning tide of Cresent lune
Twilight casts a gentle hue
Below the hill the city glows
The Palatine, gold and new

The ides, with consequence they come
And with them carry the will be done
Augustus' silent retinue of one
Notes a sky of draining sun

For Rome claws at all of Gaia's *******
And from sea to mount and desert dune
Ancient Africa, nascent Gaul
To Rome, will they forever fall

In darkness, the Palatine shadow loomed
Over web of flame-lit avenue

For the roads all led to Rome that night
For one small moment God guessed right

Cesar's legions on the fields of Mars
Clashed swords and drank to their Centurions
As an Era waited to see the dawn
And new blood to baptize the marbled Columns

And in the farms
beyond Rome,
The shepherds walked their sheep to rest
Where families returned to their homes
With stories of the day's parades and jests

And in the time
Between the days
When Rome slept and the crickets mated
The world was cast in velvet night
Lighted solely by constellation

And in that moment
God became
silent.
---