On the long continuous bench in Audobon park, New Orleans, I sat watching the Siren statue. Her hand high with proud strength of her metallic near-immortality. Her cherub children sitting on bronze turtles, holding separate items of ritual in their hands, perhaps a conch, perhaps a lute. As the Siren stood on her globe, a murky green orb of a thing, there were lovers and birds, children and historians with photographic memories in their voguishly composed hands, crouching, cropping, and framing images as infinite as the bronze statues.
I wondered.
If our memories were as sound as granite, and our hearts as pure as the water that froths at a Siren’s feet, would we enjoy and enjoin our attempts, our passions, to act as our own scaffolding to our existence? Would we appreciate the small things, pleasures of love, photographs and amazement that only those bound to and cursed by time could possibly appreciate? Have you actually seen the faces of these bronze castings, once earthly golden in hue, but now terrorized with their own emblems of decay in sheen of turquoise tarnish? Those smiles of the Siren on her globe, her frolicking cherub chums with eternal infantile fists and oceanic paraphernalia, are not the smiles we should ever want to understand.
There was a breeze.
Somewhere in the leaves of an old photo album, across the globe beneath the Siren’s feet, sits an island I call home. Amongst them, the photos of the young boy who always questioned and liked answers all the same now was by and beside himself. His smile eternally saved for the memories of souls yet to come, and no less by the loving eyes of a mother, with voguishly composed hands.

Sardonically ironic, moronically harmonic,
Are beats of emotions unspent.
Overly protective, and somewhat selective,
My shoes on the gravel-laden roads
Of winter are old.
Your silvery hair, neat and bare
Is unfinished. We’re not there yet, you and I.
My name becomes forgotten,
Yesteryears laundry on clotheslines
So hauntingly frigid, and cold they could dance.
The secret of warmth is lost
As the moth dies into the hold of my hands.
Bone-framed windows, with a cryptic message
Surround my palm-tree hair.
My front door is open, hopin’ for a
Short visit, of friends I had not there.
Winter’s approachin’, tree lines are lookin’ in
On the cuckolded dreamers.
Repent.

Like (Chinese) brush strokes I shall find the point on which I’ll pivot turn
Differentials woven in as bristles spin
Ink across the surface although it appears as a two-dimensional space
It seeps further through capillaries reaching depths
Often forgotten

The infinite dimensions within the page
Made possible by the grace of a hand
Devoid of any fate
          save the fate of ink is to be writ
         the fate of paper is to be written on
                   save the fate of ink and paper are in
                   subjective hands

And now a bond emerges from this pair
In a dreamlike movement fact has come
To act and bind as brush binds ink and paper
Fiber Flesh Fluid Foam
A single stroke of inspiration turn
Inward and ‘round the perimeter
Of the page there sits an image of me
(Chinese) Character

The faintly reminder
I spew in disgust, that we
All humans, do smell, have non-
Descriptive individual
Odors, shapes and sizes.
The repetition on formless copies
Upsets me, songs in pop verse
Sing about the neighborhood's
Children, and their inability to out run
A gun.
Smells of my own liquored breath
Remind me still how un-wanting
*** can be.

In the sour drips of yellow
And daffodils,
Not unlike a lemon,
****-ish in texture,
The people only
Say hello, out of disarming
Fear.

It was time, it was time.
You held my hand underneath the table cloth,
and your feet next to mine.
My parents sat across from us,
and they clapped, and laughed.

You pecked me on the cheek
and they cheered, spilling wine.
So we picked up our ***** plates
and took them to the kitchen,
where you proposed to me
with a sterling silver spoon.

It was time, it was time,
my stomach was swollen and ****.
Nebulous and veiny, but you didn’t mind,
didn’t mind.

You touched my tummy and wailed,
as I laughed a scream.
An automated thud tapped the walls inside,
and you ran, and you ran to the door, keys in hand,
hopping and dancing a fool.
It was time, it was time.

How you ran, how you ran.
The teetering Titan steps,
you ate your hands, you ate your feet,
you ate any mush you would find.
You were here, you were there, eating, pooping,
all divine. You gloriously didn’t mind, didn’t mind.

You didn’t mind, that I screamed.
Sea green eyes, thunder thighs.
You were wise, and I was meek.

Watching me with a knowing gaze.
You didn’t mind, that I was clueless,
you beamed light that broke like god.
Dark brown hair, fairchild stare.

It could end now, and that’d be fine.
I would’t mind, wouldn’t mind,
wouldn’t mind if it was time.

Fall displaces our sun
Hidden behind a sterile vale
I wait in ignorance

Wolves chase me
Tear me through the open
Long drawn out dashes of red
Streaks on the cheeks of the river
She soaks in the end of a prayer
A dried ball of cotton dyed into other
Ways of being        And matter

The stone Buddha smiles
Red ink in my palms with thanks
An offering made in prostate
    pose like the subject to the question
Answered with distilled teeth
Unclentched the tongue soft
Under the lips of a kiss in the winter's day

To be given        Not had
This thanks of dubious nature

Red tape outlines the past

Red like the ink in your pleading hands

Red like the cotton in your mouth

Red like the beginning of your life

It comes swiftly into her eyes
Against the blue and green
    of our days in thought

The candle wax
    red too
Holds the negative space
Between the pages

A promise written to home

"My child is born today"

Wasted               Wasted are the sounds
The sweeps        The lonesome
Hallway              Empty seat
Bare      Cold      Littered

There is more un-favored
Un-savored         Delight
In your eyes        I see

Grapes unwashed by water
Fume with need to taste
***        the wasteful father
Perfumes our reproductive
Waists

There is—Something—A mote
Sitting                In the kettle
But dead birds and assorted fish
Come forever
             Endless               Excessive

Wantonly needed

There are sticks               Perchance
Gouging from your        Urn
        
       Dead bones

In the marshes
        Roots
                   Pumped black with tar
        To my plexus
                   Ten dark hats

Spun-woven on your finger

        Tips


        And
                    We
                              Fell
Over the white
        Porcelain graphs
Of networks and tiles
        Powerful deeds
Harpooning the ocean
        Trying to make a hole

       Wide enough
       For a silhouette

Summer calling in August, for the bird named after Saints.
There is a befitting proposition for them both, the season and the bird. She is offered to fall in love for a day, for less than a day, and in so many words, she does.

Two migratory birds dove into hopes and dusted dreams,
Picked the salt form old wounds, binding and mending, singing loss,
Crafting off of creational dust, making new things.

The their giving and giving, given into spent, like pendulums swing. Nature has tricks up her sleeve, and her hopes and promises are not the hopes of promises we keep.

Flying, looking for something over the water.
Wanting under depths of wanting, under depths of imaginations.
The two got stuck deep in the chemical dreaming of songs that played pretend.
The heat lost in the sun, and the season dies in a shell of milky
Indifference.

Birds swoop for signs in the air, flying and hoping that something would land in their narrow mouths so that they may go home and go to sleep.
They glide on. Hoping for ends to their broken songs, dipping and diving farther and farther away, with the batting of imagined wings behind their backs.

She had a small flower
Attached to her hat
There was a lilt in his smile
It seemed to give much without
Having a need of return

She talked a lot
But she was easy to follow
And he listened
Patiently
Not because he wanted to change
Some word or two later
And sadly his attention was bent
Dulled and fogged at times
At best

Maybe she was afraid to hear
Afraid of following him
Maybe he was too quiet
She too was normally a quiet one she said
But he followed on
Taking one breathe at a time
Keeping his head clear of mist
Or persons else where else when
He would rather not remember

Years later he answered
When she asked him
Why did you follow so well
So easily and why oh why oh why
He took a small breath
Stopped her and smiled
It was a force of nature
That urged it on to happen
Just as the wind fills the sails
Your voice filled my ears
And though at times I did feel lost
It felt good

Never seen again,
Going and soon gone
To pipes thorough the air as steam.
Give the libations, those
You never did need, to those
Up top, they, towering kings.

Never still. You demanded to be
Going, to be gone.
To-morrow through the streets,
Let the moon guide your bilge.
You admit defeat, temporarily.
Down with humility, was your sickly hound of pride.

Never then, did the waters ever part,
Going was not so spent, or to be done.
To the shores you wept.
Turn the tide, thoughts grew in vines
Around the sun,
And you felt stronger, drunk.
Desert the power once given by me, now go on.
You were blistered from the sun, only drunk from the ***.

“Yes,” is the sound I make
At this crossroads, barren,
And cold.
A clean-cut cringe, hoarse
Noise of boisterous old men
Sitting, playing.
Slapping hands, applause
Of slight defeat to one man,
Atop the tower of cards.
The power lines watch him
From above. Critters of the sky,
Perch with worms and bugs,
Even babies in their bellies.
Harboring the coming
Change.
My bare ****** catches
The attention of watchers,
Voyeurs, timid learners,
Who all like the examples
But seldom skid any stones
Themselves.
I’ve put down the kin,
I’ve put down the knife,
I’ve put down the selfish night
Owl, eyes teeming now,
With respect,
Dilated, humbly begetting,
Stealing with sight.

I wanted to set markers in the future,
So that, when I came to
Points of no return, I was able
To show myself, what I could not tell.
Along the guard rail of my life,
I tied ribbons. Over the Cliffside
They would blow, reaching out for me,
Touching, and tasting the air,
As the sky, oblivious of my treks,
Continued her smile.
Down the road, I found one,
A ribbon tied in red.
Not put there by myself,
I wondered where they were,
Those others, tying knots of my life
For me.
With my eyes closed, I created night.
Through the space between my eyes,
I caught their smiles, and toys,
Their tricks and their attempts
At being coy.
Pretty soon, I opened my eyes to a whirl
Of dance, swooping and looping
With partners I hadn’t seen before.
Kisses and smiles exchanged with friends.
I forgot the Cliffside, and the ties
That I tried to make.

Tuesday, off-day of this world.
Pale faces ignore the sideways
Skewered poles of the symphony
That we so attentively abhor.

These hands are not weapons,
They are tools. My world,
And the one I share it with is handled
Through them.
Because of them, I can be a part
Of you.

I like to make indistinguishable shapes-shapes with tissue paper that lies around.
I like what my thorax makes, those unintelligible sounds.
Starting in or below my abdomen.
I hope death finds me
With this silly note in my hand.
I hope death understands,
It's fun to not be all that might-yee. To be a layman,
To fully and humorously
Understand just what it is
To have wiggle room.
In the eyes of god I want to be Slime.
In the eye of dog,
I am sublime.

Old mister Kerouac singes in the medium
Of prayers so loud so open as the surf itself
Howling and beckoning with a quiet elation
A simple pride of being content with enough
Tho he did have a sin or two in him
And his defense is passed with austerity
No one should be ****** for being one who wants
No soul mind or single breathe is tainted
By minds other than their own
His gift gives still today in the old pages
Of faded ink and primordial vocation
He sings to children of this haunted hollow
World of dreamers and sad quitters and simple fools
How easily is he not heard
How simply good gems return to the soil
Finding their resting place calmly in the hum
Of undeveloped thoughts