He tells me of his problems.
His job, his girlfriend, his friends, his home
life.
And I nod and I listen.
And I interject sometimes with a cliché or a suggestion, with as much compassion as I can summon.
And he sighs
and takes a long drag from his cigarette, and paws the ground with his Nikes, and hands me the can of beer we are sharing.
And he inhales
                             deeply
as though the air itself can fumigate the scribbles crisscrossing his skull
and with a wisp of smoke
he starts to say something
I don’t know what but
instead, he
                      pauses
in mid-breath
and he turns and looks at me
with sad eyes
But how are
                        you
he says.  
And I pause
just
       long
               enough.

Just long enough for me to look around and sigh;
just long enough for the American Spirits between our fingers to smolder
and for me to weigh the pounder of flat Tecate in my other hand;

just long enough for an overripe lemon to drop
or for a moon flower to blossom
or for a pair of black wings to beat back the wind
or for a bead of dew to skate down a blade of grass;

just long enough for the streak of a lone meteorite to span the sky;

or just long enough for our bones to vibrate in time with the rattle and sizzle and sputter of spraycans in the dark streets behind us
or for the clarion anguish of a million and more homeless to be drowned out by the wail of one sole siren;

I pause
and the world
                           persists.

the earth lurches its creaking bulk sunward for one more day
and the dawn establishes its circumference like a gold aurora;

the desert wind whips down the slopes of Hollywood Hills, past the observatory and Mount Olympus and down Sunset
and its hot dust scours the sidewalk and and slams into our bared and chattering teeth;

And I feel Brian edge

closer to me
concerned
but I have no
                          sense.

The fuming crescendo of space pulses in my head.
My heart is gored through and through by a billion billion whistling neutrinos.
An avalanche of fire from the hills and an inexorable nimbus of smoke advancing on this scatterplot city, apocalyptic-like.

And Brian feels
it now
            too.

A stifled convulsion of thunder.
A muffled ignition of time.
This
         city
an explosion and implosion, expansion and contraction, all thermite and naphtha in its nucleosynthesis, fission and fusion simultaneous;

this pause
just
       long
               enough

for a thousand people or more to grasp for a final breath, their gaping mouths in awe of the energy of one moment;
for this dying
                           place
antenna of flesh and metal, to transmit its final static into the boiling background of the universe until its spiral arms flail no more.

And I contemplate the effect of gravity on a ghost
and the time it takes for the geology of the self to schism
and the fault line in my soul to displace
and the resultant tremors to ripple
through my body and into my epicentered eyes

but I already
                          know
and so does Brian.

He wraps me in his arms
until my trembles subside
and I think
I have paused
just
       long
               enough

to learn the meaning of friend.

After I dropped the box
I was asked what came
next.  I would say, carry
on.

I choose paper ******, I am going cellulose.  
Even Cinderella knows the tone of Bellow's
Prose is bellicose.  Let's smoke some bath salts
Then eat that fella's nose.  What up!

To all my jellicles.  Looky looky
I got hooky.  Put on my robe and wizard
Hat.  Speak Wookie to Sookie.  If 2 cents
Equals three bucks, Skeletor has acid reflux.

Roll over based god.  Don't be hoven
From your umgebung.  Chew Ummagumma
To bubblegum.  Get slim in your jungle
Jim.  Calling all Mongolians.

Those alligators have razor bumps.  If they
Publish this bunkum Faber & Faber
Are chumps.  Plants have lovely lady lumps,
Trucks like sanitation dumps. Angler

Fish love lamp.  El Dorado love Ponyboy.
Caught a full house on the Rio Grande complete
With domovoi.  Know how I know you're poor?
The roaches on your toilet can sing Ode to Joy.

I think you'll be
disappointed
when
I whisper sweet
nothings
in your
ear.

I.
I do not see the (woman) hidden in the forest.

II.
I am attempting to justify myself in your eyes.  I care very little whether I seem to anyone to exist.

--------------------------------
Let your eyes rest on me,
Among the uninformed debris,
After their illicit glancings,
And their numerous advancings,
    I do not want your eyes on me:
Eyes that land yet never cease
Their wanderings and wonderings
On the color of my under things,
   And nauseate with their caprice.

While the scattered rest on the checkered floor
Position adjacent to the banquets,
Ask for more before
The completion of their pigs in blankets;
They ask for more,
As they lick their fingers free of grease
While discussing sports and Credit Suisse…

Perhaps I’ll have one - but just one,
I don’t want to become
    obese
Like a corpse distended in an attic -

I wish it had been me they licked their fingers of;
I wish that it is them I lick my fingers of…

There are eyes on me, I assume
As I rush to the little girls' room.

The truths of comets and little girls,
Death and a young girl
Skulk on painted toes in the murk,
Where Death and a young girl lurk:

    He is with a mannequin in the back,
Hugging it tight in order to lift,
Though the limbs are limp and head is slack,
He brims with hope
    Like a panner with his sift.

I go away and leave you now, I leave you and
go away.

    I know what it is to sprawl
Prostrate and empty in a stall
With these squalid fingers,
To hear the snickers and the whispers;
    I wish that it is me they lick their fingers of,

As they powder their noses
Then emerge from the gloom smelling roses,
They go away and leave me, they leave me and
go away.

   To know what it is to say,
“I am beautiful, o mortals, like a dream in stone!”
In a most definitely denigrating tone,
Though my words and eyes betray;
Or boast that my expertise is
    Spotting a prosthesis,
To call attention to one if I see it
   on display,
    [Including the curator’s toupee];
Or to pop a squat
On his prize Jean-Michel Basquiat,
    [Though He is my personal Jesus!]
You go away and leave me now, you leave me and
go away.

    He is with a mannequin on the checkered floor,
And when he is completed
He licks his fingers and asks for more;
I would show him my portrait and say
    “Ceci n’est pas une moi,”
And agree to disagree,
I would show them my portrait and say
    “This is not a me,”
And they would laugh at my simplicity,
Then whisper hatefully and frown
Into one another’s ear
How they wish they could fit into my evening gown,
     I wish I could dwindle down
And fit into an opaque sphere.

This is not a me, the powdered nose,
The needle between painted toes,
The creak of leather, the swinging chains,
The clumps of hair swirling in drains,
There is still beauty in blackened veins -
Was there beauty in these veins?
Mascara streaks like silent shrieks,
Do your eyes still rest on me?
I would cut them from your face,
But I need lines for me to trace,
Lines to guide me where to cut.
Do not take your eyes from me,
I will not be precise if they are shut.  
Do not go away and leave me now, do not leave me and
go away.

Do I drift between stations,
Bow and curtsy, nod and smile,
Titter courteously at prevarications,
    Struggling to suppress the bile? -

    “Oh my goodness, she got so big!”  
    “Yes, she must be back at it again” -
    “But I love her book club” -
    “Oh my goodness, me too!”
    “Ha ha!”
    “Ha ha.”

There are so many with me, so many eyes,
So many hands resting on my thighs…
I cannot find a solitude,
This is not a solitude.
    
I am a beautiful use of negative space.

I count my age in eyes I detect,
The older I grow, the less I collect.
    Time leaves us out of focus…

I do not want to grow old…I will not grow old,
Unless my mind loses hold.

In this sepulchral cattle car
    We ride,
Like cattle to the abattoir,
With our patron saints beside,
    We take them all along for the ride.
This is all so familiar,
    So familiar…So familiar…
Do I want it?
Time to gargle a gin and tonic
While being shocked catatonic.
Your eyes will still be with me in my vacant sleep,
To function as my guide.
Break me into bread and partake till no sign of me
lingers,
    They have all been taken for a ride,
And even God will lick His fingers.

A shovel lies on a mound of dirt.
It is cold.  I stare at the sky and do not blink.
A hundred hands grip the wood and dig.
When my time comes, the handle is warm.

I build an altar, parade in the streets
**** on a sugar skull, stamp on your grave.  
I want to weep, but instead I write
words like skeletons that leap and click their heels
grinning with jaws of orange like choked marigolds.

I wear a warren of jade, a den of ivory, a lair of shells
to wake the dead with a dance.

Why do the catrinas resemble you as you live?
Why do the calaveras still smile and tip their
top hats mockingly at your tombstone?
  
Alone in the colors and candles, I row this mariposa
dipping my paddle like sugarcane in taffy
reverberating grief like a sack of chattering teeth.

From Ocotepec to Patzcuaro, masks mourn
their losses, stars are pulled from the night
islands are invaded, bones rattle like marionettes
bells seek their towers, corpses leave their caskets
crosses fly like kites, feet clap in a frenzy
mayors deliver speeches, waves stutter ponderously
souls are exhumed from tobacco smoke
yellow ribbons cascade from the deaths heads
and we all dance like madmen, the dead grieving
the living and the living grieving life.

Is this the red chaos that you gulped down, the
dagger that distended your stomach?
Who draws from the pail that draws from your well?

Your body is half water.
You will rise with the moon and pass as we all dance like madmen.

“The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.”*
Stephen Jay Gould

Give me
vacuum tube torus Lorentz-Klein interference receptors
dual noble-gas maser integration processors
at least one
prosthetic Gaussian carbon-coated ribosomal Tesla coil
an anthropomorphic hierarchical temporal meme-pseudopod
some
support vector k-nearest neighbor algorithms
reverse engineered quantum optic die-cast silica motherboards
self-assembling three dimensional electro-active protein polymers
maybe even
a superconducting spectral alkali resonance analyzer
paired with
harmonizing piezoelectric kinematic thermal modules
dipped in
subzero Kurzweil-circuit nanite neurotransmitters
and voila!
God.

When finally
I lost
patience, I broke
her heart
on purpose.

I only spoke
to make
her feel,
at best,
worthless.

When finally
I lost
patience, I fed
upon her
fears.

I only paused
when I saw
my reflection
in her
tears.

Lifting spirits will lift your spirits! Let’s
grab a goblet and have a guzzle.

I’ll toast to you my friend, and when
you’re done, pour you a double.

For those we’ve lost, we’ll spill a little
and stare down at the puddle.

Reflect on the pangs of life a moment,
commiserate about the struggle.

Then splash the liquid all about, and shout
“Barman, hustle!

If our cups didn’t runneth over before,
they better now or there’ll be trouble;

if our tankards aren’t foaming soon
our fists'll be balled and white of knuckle!”

We’ll drink chicha in Peru, and sake in Japan,
mezcal in Mexico, and palm wine in the jungle.

The bar’s our gym, it’s where we go
to train ye oulde esophageal muscle

but we’ll chug or glug or quaff anywhere,
be it farm or cave or hovel.

We live for libations, go goo-goo for grog,
and drain enough to dim the mind of any mere muggle.

The hoppy makes us sloppy; now
most of my drink lands on my stubble;

eyes are bloodshot, mouth is dry,
body wrecked like so much rubble.

You’re not faring much better…
we make quite the lively couple.

But we'll be back here tomorrow sister,
I’ll have no rebuttal!
You may be gone, but you’re alive
in me, a piece of my puzzle.

Let this ***** quench our pain
‘til off this mortal coil we shuffle.

She hangs herself on every word I kick the chair from under her.

She plummets
first
head
next
arms
then
legs
last
feet.

My pen plays The Hangman
the paper plays The Gallows
my words wear the black of The Executioner's Mask
my voice knots The Noose
and her death sentence is uttered.

A tension.

She hangs herself on every word I kick the chair from under her.

Here we are again, in the deathmask of the city spinning.
The circumcised sea with its crocodiles and scars.
Never is the onrush of blood so violent the falsehoods
of the sky that drip neon on our heads
from desiccated clouds so true

This is the wild:

To the clusterfucked and cloistered swimming
in their bowls of soup and the scuttled
shells synchronous in their bass pulse beeping
to the blackhats who don’t believe
their messiah will ever come because they hear
the trump of doom every second of every day
yet they still stomp in their flatbeds for joy

and the prismatic dead who drag themselves from
their gurneys to march through the alleys
like tuskless elephants shoving their fingers
into the sun’s fumarole determined
to disintegrate into a mist of Krylon and copper

where we carry our concrete world slung
over our shoulders and the ravenous
moon in its ellipse above beached night heaving,
eyes curling in their sockets like gunsmoke smoldering
hearts humming like taut snares beheaded fish
in front of us, beheaded bodies behind us
I drag mine along by the hair.

To the children and the panhandlers who greet
the lion like hello kitty
and the skittish magnetic few in their
lightning-spaded furrows
on the ecliptic chained but leaping ever farther
and higher like the wrecking ball’s pendulum

and all the naked lost milling among the mummified
tenements, waving Geiger counters before them
as they wander  the sweaty street holding their heads
high as they grind flesh against flesh
pulverizing themselves into rubble

measuring the toll of time by destruction  
drinking in mercury and hard water and
shrapnel and gamma and fire and gold

to them I say:

turn your hourglass on its side turn
your hourglasses on their sides
then acknowledge me so I can die in peace.

there are so many places to hide,

in my home at 17th and South screaming death threats at my roommates laughing diabolically playing  videogames and Jeopardy cooking quinoa stretching canvas the dog going mad frothing lunging  spastic to get the monkeys or the wookies or whatever random commandments we issue forth  drunken while Schlock rampages the backdrop,

at my uncle's row house on 22nd and Wallace with my shoes off freezing skipping class to watch March  Madness unwrapping waxpaper hoagies grimacing with each sip of Cherrywine or creamsicle  soda reading chapters at my leisure,

in the stacks among fiberglass and eternal florescent lima-tiled and echo-prone red-eyed and white-faced  caked with asbestos and headphones exhuming ossified pages from layers of cosmic dust  presiding benevolent,

in University City disguised in nothing but a name infiltrating Penn club soccer getting caught after  scoring yet still invited to the pure ***** joy of hell and heaven house parties of ice luge jungle  juice kegstand coke politic networking,

at Drexel's nightlit astroturf with the Jamaicans rolling blunts on the sidelines playing soccer floating in  slo-mo through billows of purple till the early morning or basketball at Penn against goggle- eyed professors in kneepads and copious sweat,

in the shadow tunnels behind Franklin Field always late night loner overlooking rust belt rails abandoned  to an absent tempo till tomorrow never looking behind me in the fear that someone is there,

at Phillies Stadium on glorious summer Tuesdays for dollar dog night laden with algebra geometry and  physics purposely forgetting to apply ballistics to the majestic arc of a home run or in the frozen  subway steam selling F.U. T.O. t-shirts to Eagles fans gnashing when the Cowboys come to town,

at 17th and Sansom in the morning bounding from Little Pete's scrambled eggs toast and black coffee  studying in the Spring thinking All is Full of Love in my ears leaving fog pollen footprints on the  smoking cement blooming,

at the Shambhala Center with dharma lotus dripping from heels soaking rosewater insides thrumming to the  groan of meditation,

at the Art Museum Greco-fleshed and ponderous counting tourists running the Rocky steps staring into shoji screen tatame teahouses,

at the Lebanese place plunked boldly in Reading Terminal Market buying hummus bumping past the Polish  and Irish on my way to the Amish with their wheelwagons packed with pretzels and honey and  chocolate and tea,

at the motheaten thrift store on North Broad buried under sad accumulations of ramshackle clothing  clowning ridiculous in the dim squinting at coathangers through magnifying glasses and mudflat  leather hoping to salvage something insane,

in the brown catacombed warrens of gutted Subterranea trying unsuccessfully to ignore bearded medicine

men adorned with shaman shell necklaces hawking incense bootlegs and broken Zippos halting conversation to listen pensive to the displacement of air after each train hurtles by,

at 30th Street Station cathedral sitting dwarfed by columns Herculean in their ascent and golden light  thunderclap whirligig wings on high circling the luminous waiting sprawled nascent on stringwood pews,

at the Masonic Temple next to City Hall, pretending to be a tourist all the while hoping scouring for clues in the cryptic grand architect apocrypha to expose global conspiracies,

at the Trocadero Electric Factory TLA Khyber Unitarian Church dungeon breaking my neck to basso  perfecto glitch kick drums with a giant's foot stampeding breakbeat holographic mind-boggled  hole-in-the-skull intonations,

at the Medusa Lounge Tritone Bob and Barbara's Silk City et cetera with a pitcher a pounder of Pabst and a  shot of Jim Beam glowing in the dark at the foosball table disco ball bopstepping to hip hop and  jazz and accordions and piano and vinyl,

in gray Fishtown at Gino's recording rap holding pizza debates on the ethics of sampling anything by  David Axelrod rattling tambourines and smiles at the Russian shopgirl downstairs still chained to  soul record crackles of antiquity spiraling from windows above,

at Sam Doom's on 12th and Spring Garden crafting friendship in greenhouse egg crate foam closets  breaking to scrutinize cinema and celebrate Thanksgiving blessed by holy chef Kronick,

in the company of Emily all over or in Kohn's Antiques salvaging for consanguinity and quirky heirlooms  discussing mortality and cancer and celestial funk chord blues as a cosmological constant and  communism and Cuba over mango brown rice plantains baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies,

in a Coca Cola truck riding shotgun hot as hell hungover below the raging Kensington El at 6 AM nodding soft to the teamsters' curses the snagglesouled destitute crawling forth poisoned from sheet-metal shanty cardboard box projects this is not desolate,

at the impound lot yet again accusing tow trucks of false pretext paying up sheepish swearing I'll have my  revenge,

in the afterhour streets practicing trashcan kung fu and cinder block shotput shouting sauvage operatic at  tattooed bike messenger tribesmen pitstopped at the food trucks,

in the embrace of those I don't love the names sometimes rush at me drowned and I pray to myself for  asylum,

in the ciphers I host always at least 8 emcee lyric clerics summoning elemental until every pore ruptures  and their eyes erupt furious forever the profound voice of dreadlocked Will still haunting stray  bullet shuffles six years later,

in the caldera of Center City with everyone craning our skulls skyward past the stepped skyscrapers  beaming ear-to-ear welcoming acid sun rain melting maddeningly to reconstitute as concrete  rubber steel glass glowing nymphs,

in Philadelphia where every angle is accounted for and every megawatt careers into every throbbing wall where  Art is a mirror universe for every event ever volleyed through the neurons of History,

in Philadelphia of so many places to hide I am altogether as a funnel cloud frenetic roiling imbuing every corner sanctum sanctorum with jackhammer electromagnetism quivering current realizing stupefied I have failed so utterly wonderful human for in seeking to hide I have found

in Philadelphia

Sometimes I write nights, in the séance of the city

to the thrum of the sidewalk, the fume of the smokestack;

I scribble the madcap of it all, I furrow my nails in vinyl and dance

            in memoriam,

            my face blackened by storms in the crematorium;

      there are those that watch the world through a window,

      and those that are watched;

and if they have no voice in their manic stumblings; and if instead they

                  mutter

to the shadows for traction, to the swirl in the gutter, the outer rim of

                  silence

they will find a friction

to descend upon cement with an electric lunacy;

      and though they will be outliers, they put out the candles

      and write nights too;

within the funneled starlight, and the wheel of the sky,

we string our bodies astral,

in procession and out, similar in divergence, until similarity diverges

      into steam and carbon

and time surges backwards to rejuvenate nights

and our visions are left clotted in their seams by

                  the dark.

I have come to conclusion
over sunpierced crust
brittle as tobacco leaf
astride mottled nag
scraggling on loose gravel
sandsoaked
saltsteeped
leadheavy in lid
past dactyled tracks
parallel cobbled macadam
wavering shale
lockjawed lava rock
fractured cobalt
lone juniper
forgotten scrub
open boil of tar and pitch
halfburied bones of leviathan
still shifting in the clouded boom
of stone
through grapeshot hail
adobed pueblos
thatchskinned women
and straw men
all witches
flaying the gila
pestling scale with cornmeal
and fermented mescal
desert sangria
hallucinating sideways in the murk
where coyotes yip
and each star a conflagration
mirrored in the captive eyes
of floundered meteorites
at the terminus
where sun and moon merge
I know the question
and response
from where do you come
to where do you go

This pumice really rubs me the wrong way.
Matadors moisturize with oil of ole.  
Heidegger has moves like Jagger.
Any critic - Jaeger; Typhoid Mary - plaguer.

Who's the top chef that goes derpa derp derp?
Wyatt Earp.
I'll drain the swamp like Dagobah's.
A Clovis Person.  Legolas.

The ******'s best on chicken breast.
Pin that on your Pinterest.  To show all the dispossesed.
Witness Godwin's Law at work:
******, you're a ****.

Pick up the phone and call Cthulu.
Get hung up on by Shaka Zulu.
Chalupa mis huevos, says the chihuahua.
Hey Tarzan. Ungawa.

Jesus walked across Titicaca.
Crane thinks the Bridge is over.
Biddy bah bah.

There is a cat at my window
I am still
ragdoll in its flooded mouth
arsonist in one sulfur eye
night in a silhouette
shadow without philosophy
syllable of jungle chill
be it alms seeker
spy
or courier
or smoke as a pirouette
all icicle and satin
black iris I see
blood beating its binary
pulsating lodestone
hanging from its ley line
like the lamp of an angler
when the sun is furthermost
and all gods are unbeknown
I am still
still
the cat sits at my window sill

In the end it was obvious
that you had lost control
of your powers,

that a reversal
of polarity had taken
place, that your soul

was no longer
able to keep
its compass aligned.

Master of magnetism,
manipulator of metal, seething
dynamo pendent

from an electrified
web of your own
spinning.  You could attract

or repulse at will,
forge steel with a thought
or turn stone to ****,

and on some nights, you would lift
your hands and orchestrate
the hiss of the northern lights.

But even a superconductor
requires stability, down
in its inner coils

so when your stomach
began to brim
with starfire and steam

and you waved your hands,
your blood bubbled
into hot little ***** of iron

filings, and ricocheted under
your skin like the remanent shreds
of lost continents.

We begged you
stop, but your hands moved
again, slow and heavy

along the curves
of your throat
and so the fields went feral

until your fingernails spewed
a red fog  
and the metal ripped

from your dry flesh
trailing flame like a meteor.
Still your hands

stirred, tendons snapping
as your salt formed
at the joints, snarling

into tiny effigies
of the dead that came
before you.  The same

as you.  And you were left
a shrunken husk,
as paper drifting

on the thermals, gaping
dripping and brittled, scalded
bone, swollen void.

You were still there
but your eyes flashed pyrite,
and there was dust

on your breath.  We spoke
of iron calcium potassium
your depleted core

sagging into itself
like an ancient mine
stripped of ore.  

Then there was nothing
to talk about, save
the inexorable call.

And when it came, I hurled
the comics away and thought
perhaps mutants are real after all.

I’ll scale these branches over time
in rain or shine I’ll never stop
but
it don’t matter how high I climb
I know I’ll never reach the top

Residents of New
Orleans gathered to wage
war on the world’s
butterfly population.

You will be argonaut
one more of the supernumerary
trodding upon the cindered ones
come before you
limbs wooden and somite
encircling a moon
tumescent and blue
in permafrost garrote
on constellations edge
tottering over synapse
mocking
like a mime on highwire
your guilt
lupine in its longing
sawtooth timberline in vivisect night
down promontory
to frozen wave
the broken spoke of your step
on sleetslick carapace
past the preterit
embalmed hide of the world
into the silent millstone
berserk
to return emptyhanded
and changed

Tel Aviv

He swears he saw the shadow of a dolphin below a wave here.  
In 1993
When they first came, he knows she saw it too. Her eyes
Widened, and they shared a glance and a giggle,
Like a wreath of bubbles, like a secret vault of blue.
A feeling, a vibration, the last echo in a chain of echoes below.

After that, Tel Aviv was of the dolphins. He came back
In 2001, and in the rubble of the Dolphinarium, he waited.
But there was nothing. When she visited
She did not even ask,
As though she sensed the void. It was unspoken. Then
He ran away from her in 2007. Seeking what?  
Solitude
Or dolphins,
But still the sea was silent. Even when she died.

That night, in the sand, holding his legs to his chest,
The words of his friends lost in the surf, and the buzz
Of the world, bounding from wave to wave. Still nothing.
I want to be cremated ,
She always said. I want my ashes to be poured
Into the sea.  
But they bury their own, so their mother, she printed
Pictures for him to take back and burn.
I will do this he said.  

He did not unpack for two months. Then it was winter. Then
New Year’s Eve. And there had been rain, and there was wind,
And it was cold, and he said **** it.  
The kiosk outside
Was empty, airless, damp. He palmed a cheap lighter,
Dropped a coin, left.  
And he walked down to the sea,
Into the wind, the wet, the cold. The pictures in his pocket.

There is a jetty made of rubble, next to the Dolphinarium,
Where he returns to year after year. If he stands there
And listens he can hear the edge of the world, the sinking
Of bones. Behind him the city, before him the sea.  
And when he takes both in for long enough
He forgets which is which.

He went there and looked
At the foam forever, blinking away spindrift, the lighter
Turning in his fingers.
And when he pulled out the pictures
And held the lighter up to them it was a new year.

His thumbs are scarred now. The pictures would not burn.
He railed against the rocks. His throat fought the wind.
With every flick the flame was choked. And the lighter broke but
He would not stop but for a moment to wipe his face.  
He roared
Her name and spoke to her.  
But there was no ash.  
Just the city,
the sea, the wind.  
And in the calm before dawn he slumped
Home, the pictures, blackened, reddened, back in
His pocket.
To be shoved away in some old drawer.  

He saw his mother
Later that year and she did not ask because she did not remember.
  
In the summer, he watched the jetty each day, but from a distance,
And noted how the silhouettes of fishermen reached
Out to the city in the morning then back to the sea by evening, distorted
With each swell.  
But he could not bring himself to stand
There. Two years in Tel Aviv and he could be no longer.

Then it is winter again, and a month before he is to leave,
And a week before New Year’s Eve.  
He remembers the pictures.
He meets a woman at a party and they make love.
He sees her every night and when New Year’s Eve comes, they plan to meet.  

Allenby is quiet as he steps outside, and the kiosk
Is empty.  
He drifts down to the sea without thought, carried
By the current of the city.  
Phone shaking in his pocket but he feels
Nothing. Then he is there, again.
His back to the city, crouched.  
On the jetty, alone, the pictures in one hand, lighter in the other.  
And the fire lasts for but a moment, and the sparks recede into the sea. And he brushes the remains into the dark, and turns back to the city.

Later, he will greet the woman with a rose between his teeth and Spring
In his step, and he will walk into the night with her hand
In his, and the call of the sea sounding inside.

His partner would ask:
Gee Brain...What do you wanna do tonight?
the Dreamer
would turn, slow
and with raised hands
utter his daily bread:
The same thing we do every night Pinky.
Try to take over the world.

See the Rabbi.  See him tormented by choice.  See his people.  See them wracked by hate.  See the others.  See their anger radiate outward in glowing spokes, exploding firebrand in a tinder city.

On a night like any other, the moon at sixth house, fulcrum of pinwheel zodiac, the Rabbi, awash in lidless starlight, rises somber and makes his choice.  And when the sun is furthermost, he and three of his others gather at the murmuring riverbank where the brown clay is most pliable and begin to dig, sifting rock and root from trundled earth.  Hours spent exhuming the clay, molding it, kneading its muscles, tracing its veins, baking its skin in the starlight.  More hours spent in whispering prayer, the words bent and somersaulting over themselves like tumbling books.

See Truth drawn on its forehead, life etched from clay and word.  As the sun rises, so it does, wavering at first, but steadier, lapping at the river, and their faces move slowly across the water.  See the Rabbi speak to it, his words winding its mechanism.  See it stride past the ghetto, wade through the market, and into the borough, siege unto its own.

See the others scream for mercy from the kiln of its stare, from their flaming tenements, their crumpling rooftops.

See it wade back through the market, past the ghetto, back to the riverbank to kneel in the underbrush.  See it tilt its head to the lilt of a stranded daisy caught in a vagrant gust.   See it caught, too, and see it see.  It sees the colors of Eden in the ferns.  It hears the river churning sediment, fossils, gravel, whirling over driftwood.  It touches moss on a rock; gently rotates its hand to let a grub complete an oblivious circumference.  See it sit in silence.

See the Rabbi meet with the others, then his others.  And on a day like any other, when the sun is at its apogee, they slip down the riverbank where it still sits, still.  It ignores their autonomous logic, their homunculus rationale.  They are perversions of variety cloaked in righteous intention.  So it remains.

See the Rabbi and his others gather at the murmuring riverbank, shadow conclave in shifting sunlight, then rise somber and decided.  They pin it to the earth as the Rabbi chants, invoking the void in which forbidden knowledge spirals.  It squirms under the power of the Word, mind-forged manacle as incantation.  See the Rabbi draw to a close.  His hand is arbiter, swooping down to smudge Truth from its forehead.  What is left but Death.

See its hand crumble in its passage as it reaches for the stranded daisy.  See the colors of Eden darken in its eyes, its own body the dust that denies it light.  See it collapse into itself, the clay that was once animate spilling onto the riverbank.  See the Rabbi and his others shimmer then fade into city grey.

The daisy stands still.

One sunny aftr’noon I chose
To stroll upon the sound
When suddenly I glimpsed ahead
And saw, me, on the ground

This vaguest doppelganger mimick’d
Ev’ry move I made
It spun upon the sand and whirl’d
As I turn’d away

Than standing still, I crook’d my head
And look’d behind in shock
I saw my mimic laying there
As wrought and real as rock

But as the sun began to sink
And moon commenc’d to rise
My companion stretch’d as on
A rack, before my very eyes

I slep’t upon the beach that night
Awaiting its return
And awoke to feel the sand against
My face begin to burn

Still half asleep, I stumbled to
The bay to wash my eyes
And while splashing water on my head
I view’d to my surprise

My shadow spread across the sand
And glinting smoothen’d stone
Now in days of solitude
I know I’m not alone

“….I couldn’t find a food that tasted good to me.”

She found her calling early in life. About 11. Maybe 12.
She’d been a performer all her life, in plays. But never enough.

I don’t know how or where the idea slipped into her.
The Buddha. Jesus. Yom Kippur. The Media. Her friends.

I doubt it was Kafka but all possibilities.  
Hunger art is the purest form she said.  And she was good at it.

At first we would watch her with our mouths agape.
Sometimes we’d even sit for a meal. Right in front of her.
Pass the salad I’d say.  Dad would reach for the salt.
Her eyes ablaze like an ascetic’s. But not paying us much attention.

Only when we turned away would she turn her gaze on us.
In her prime she could go for days. Weeks even.  
And make it seem like nothing more than the gap between lunch and dinner.

It was transformation that she hungered for. A lessening.  A denial of self.
A thinning. Because the cleanest lines are none at all.

But we didn’t know that.  We thought it was just a phase.
And kept telling ourselves that even as she sank deeper.
Into her art.  Her unself.  Into ether.

There was a reckoning at some point, an event horizon of sorts.
In which the harder she pushed the less was achieved.

And so she died unsatisfied.

used to think that the older i’d get
the more i’d have to say
an idiom for every thing
a clever turn of phrase
a story for the travel-worn
a poem to stir the cynic
a song to sooth the furies
an oft-repeated lyric
a verse to bend the adamant
a piercing anecdotal
they’d say i was a character
as colorful as opal
they’d come from far away
to hear my pearls of wisdom
from tel aviv to mars
and outside the solar system
my native tongue irrelevant
i’d have the ears of elephants
octopi and flies alike
affected by my eloquence
antiquity’s great orators
would come to me as angels
present to me their inquiries
and wait for my appraisals
a hurricane would pause
its revolution for a while
if only for a chance to watch
me verbalize in style

but one day something in me
snapped and i understood
that all of what i thought would be
most likely never would

now I’m resigned to the alive
consigned to the dead
so most of the time i just
keep my thoughts inside my head

Tearing at hay
with a pitchfork.  She visits
every day.  To touch
the animals or play
cards under the awning.  Looking
at me.  Most days
I do more than needed.  And she goes
on looking.

When the floodwaters withdrew, he emerged naked
and raw.  He trod alone on sodden ground, *******
in air at the sight of a cloud.  
Yet he went nowhere.  There was no one.  
Finally, the Oracle took pity
and came to him.  While you walk, she said, throw
the bones of your mother behind you.  So he gouged
at the earth.  
With his hands.  With a *****.  With a plow.
But all he found was stone.

"Rag and bone shop."

I keep hearing that turn of phrase as I change
my daughter.  
She was born early and under
weight.
Her mother was worried.  

I was horrified.  My sister wasted
away for years.  Gradually.

I cannot unload the skeletons it seems.

Plant your voice on the anvil.  I write my name
in rust just as you in soot.  And you
in skin.  Riveted by flint.  Coated by grit.  
Send me on my way.

What I will find in the foundry
is ****.  The husk of some steam shovel
lurching over asphalt.  Rip my organs
from the mouth and bore into me.

Bellows amid sparks.  Flame in columns.    
There was a puddle I would stand
in to quicken the surge.  Groping
wholeness in each crescent flare.

My family alone far away.  Valley Forge
wet with orange.  Tossing crumbs to ducks
from the path.  I would join them.
My hands would split open crab.

We row to the dam’s lip and wait
for sturgeon, rocking.  Pumice and sand.
Beat and grind and reduce me bare.
Tongue fumbling for the tip.

I think she would be proud of me.

every night i’d wash my face
brush my teeth and urinate
say goodnight to mom and dad
before it got very late
go right by my sister’s room
without a hitch in my walk
close my door, turn off the light
and set the alarm on my clock
i’d climb into my bed and put
a pair of earplugs in my ears
and try to disregard the sounds
which i still hear throughout the years
the bathroom was next to my room
and every night she’d visit there
she’d drop down to her knees and tie
her hair from her face to prepare
then shove her fingers down her throat
until she felt her magma foam
the ejecta of a human heart
vesuvius at home

Yo.
This powder
Got mad kick.