The animals
have always been
mischievous—
the eagle and his prey.

Showers of
orgiastic rain
through cracked soil—
the eagle is no better
than his brother.

The umbrella daughters
don’t feel the rain
but hunt all the same—
the eagle’s offspring
are destined to try for—

Hans was outside himself. Perched on the edge of a daydream, he looked below, distantly aware of his bustling dinner table. How casually they live, Hans thought; with what feigned clarity they can connect and understand. There were his brothers and sisters; his aunts, uncles, cousins and ah—there was his father. Look at him personifying repugnance, locks of hair falling clumsily on his tattered shirt. Look at him! (Hans could yell only in silence.) Look there and see him cloyingly preparing his knife to hunt, to tear, to slice yet another hunk of meat for his own gluttony. With what excitement—what vivid, forbidden ecstasy Hans would take his father’s knife and turn the hunter into the hunted.

Somewhere in the cluttered abyss there was a sound followed by a warming light. Hans was entranced. And again, a gentle thunder followed by a thread of heat connecting for a moment earth and sky, father, family, and son.

It was goodness and caring, it was a mother’s voice. It was this graceful fluttering in the medium of time that awoke a primitive yearning in Hans, grabbed his throat and stared him lustily in the eyes. What could it be? Hans wondered aloud, what could it be that she desires, for he already knew that he had to be the one to deliver any object she longed for, to slay any beast that tormented her—it had to be him, to be Hans, to be her son.

Please, she said; can someone please pour me a glass of water. Oh how Hans was enraged to find that this whim had not been made solely of a son. It was his right to quench his mother’s thirst; it was his place within the natural order to satisfy her needs. What cruelty and ice! Hans said, but also felt; and in an instant returned to himself below, tumbling violently from the high canopy of his trance to the sight of his father’s filthy hand reaching for the water jug.

In base impulse, Hans jabbed at the jug, forcibly pushing aside the carnal hand. Upon contact, Hans felt an overwhelming calm, an absolute peace. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the handle, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply. At once he was joyous, he was spent; he was adrenalized and gloriously dominant. He would be the one to tend to the maternal flower, supplying water for a thirst that he prayed would always be there.

Let yourself stare and wonder
Move my hand to shame
Open both eyes wide to blunder
Rain and ice to smoke my flame
And when I try to slip away
Don’t leave me in my youth
Just try to trust the strong don’t stray
So freeze me in the truth
But somehow you’ll find me sated
Sheepish itches all been scratched
You’ll wonder how I fed a fire
When forbidden from a match
Before you brand all my fingers with a ****
Check your palms, they’re black with ash

How infuriating, knowing
of the infinite supply of “hope”
and how it is and will continue
to be so—defying the abyss of
our debt.

Smug! That’s the word, not
what Emily Dickenson wrote
in sympathy: hope
is a thing with feathers,
is a bird’s song, Extremity.
Somehow made heroic
by abstinence from reward.

“Hope” does not hold it’s hat
out to us for crumbs and drinks;
we have already buried hope in
bread and drowned it in wine—
for with each hope that hoists us from
the depths, another lets our grip slip
off its palm greased with
false promises.

Ten years from now I’ll answer all my own questions
I’ll take care with the brighter lights and sadder days
Even when there’s nothing but the abyss of empty rooms
Of fleeing demons on the swoop and prowl for what’s left
Even when there’s everything under the rug and more
And more reasons to keep the turns and sidetracks buried
Even if I can’t begin to know or try or see or do all the oaths
Of foolish guardians on my shoulder that are fed up

Somewhere there will be a flash or a bump or a splash
Of the best kind of amnesia to remind me to let myself
Forget the silly toobabs and bills and errors of a decade
Spent on the worst kind of expectations and fights
And frights and sights and blighted odysseys of my times
As a hero—Theseus and Perseus know how hard it is

How can all the boxes underneath the bed ever be cleared
Of the things they hold so boldly in the face of the moving
Planets and lonely Pluto waiting not so patiently for a surrender
From the waxing waning pulling straining lifting tugging
Falling and falling that keeps me awake and puts me to sleep
And asks and asks and asks and asks and asks

And so it was done,
the smoke had blinded everyone;
the fire was long gone.

Days, weeks, months went by.
Dodging watchful eyes
made him want to run.

So he looked down,
along with everyone—
Everyone is looking down.

Of course it was bad timing,
contracts full of signing,
and you.

It all looks the same
until it fades; so he looks
down, with everyone.

morning said cold sunday
and all her hopeless smiles
breathing in the quiet of
dissipated yesterdays left
to hush them both beneath
shuddering blankets
bliss gone with dark
undulations vibrant kisses
long overdue and another
reason for neither
to forget again that
brown eyes
should be the
only measure
and finally noon
wraps callused fingers
around the windowsill
anywhere but inside
but also nowhere else
and somewhere else
they huddle to weather
the stormy day waging
war on ephemerized
memories but only
for so long only
for an hour here
or there will they chance to
remember the opportunity
not wasted
loving and hating that
like stories they begin and end
apart

I

Fanciful and then the first notice of
suspended mouth corners,
fleeing gravity with invisible strings,
sloppily synchronize in giggles.

II

A glance at the shore horizon,
widening into chasm,
Erebus leaking
ominously—
oh but the raft
is far too small!
oh and flimsy!
surely the shadows
will ravage
the branches
and pull this
neurotically
euphoric contraption
below.

III

glazed malfunction
blurred and hazed
for lack of clarity
billowing surges
mold as magnets inandout
and in andoutandinandout again

fades in before
melting again to
disjointed gestures
in a multicolored backdrop

IV

Skeletal architectures
return from a hysterical
awareness of ****** intricacy—
And discussion is,
of course,
forever precluded
for fear of relapse
and embarrassment.

There is always a song
that fits—a blanket,
it hands us—
to disappear beneath.

But also, a
a warm breath, rising up
into a cloud—For us.
We make time to stare.

Sometimes melting,
burning, freezing—opening
honeycomb pores until
storybooks fall in and we’re
so full of everything that we stiffen
and burst with it all.

Often though, glassy goosebumps,
they raise—the ridges pull away,
stretching, until we peel and shed
crinkly skins and shells—

More naked than before,
and scared—enticed to
the flowers left by
coal horses.

Bustling:
The morph of bodies
of viscous crowds,
of pulsing sounds,
indulging mouths
in conversation and conversation
and the traction of
sheets of breath
on teeth;
everywhere, the room
breathes in unison.

And as buoyed stones
the water schisms and unfolds
around and leaves me
to face new currents,
unsure how to gauge
my own tenor against
the choral undertow.

Ah, the sobering cold—
The ice breath of passers by:
a smoke, a calm.

Welcome back! I hear it,
calling and ringing
as if it’s from another;
But I know I greet
my return to self.

How it stings to be digested
by a creature of many needs,
to be a cell, once again:
bustling, scurrying.

What a plunge to relinquish
to the organism.

Suddenly, tonight,
I detached;
limb by limb.

Suddenly, the constant
(misguided) revelation
was louder—the loudest.

Suddenly, the argument
for release was
so pungently imperfect
and so dejected
and dire that I understood.

And suddenly, it was
all over, and I did not
understand a thing, again,
how could anything be wrong.

Tonight—
I think we should talk
in Black and White.

How else could we?
Stay in color for all I care;
You won’t catch my
scars and rumpled hair.

And we’re being so good
like I thought we would.

Oh, so you’re joining me
in talking shades of gray
and blinking ashes free

like teary embers
from eyelashes.

And we’re being so good
like I thought we would.

Who knew I could be
looking in again on
black and white—
In and in until
that’s all there is
just like I want—

Who knew I could be
missing reddish
blemishes and all
seeing colors.

And we’re being so good
like I thought we would.

More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star

               Let me be no nearer*



After The Hours
let’s find our way—
From the greens
to the walks
and up the long streets,
like giddy children;
naïve and visceral.
               Let’s find a way to
               be in, in it,
               Starry and distant
so we can pretend
we’re not noticing her foaming at the
edge of the sand.

               The glacial street faces and glassy traces
      all amok—

All struck by our buzz;
open wide the rotted door
fuzzed with molds and
peeling lesions—
               And the incision
               leaks the glow-ing
               of inner-workings,
pulsing with all the light
of an oasis, of an asylum.

      Besides, there are faces
on the television and singing
from the radio telling us that our
               lives are here
and staying—our headaches
should go away—but they ache with
      so much wonderful pressure, like a
               clenched cradle
in a smiling and contracting halo.

Let us find a way to sleep,
a way to scale the dawn so steep.

And when morning scrapes away
night’s handsome features,
so we awake to fear of losing something
we were quite sure we had—
Or at least alarm at failing
to recognize its face.
               And to know it’ is real;
               animate,
               is to be assured
of who to write for,
who to tell
         all the things we now know to say;
  we really need it for the dark.

      So in the hours between Hours
the cunning man will warn against
putting the minutes in order.
He says:
               “this,
                your consolation
                is one burst
                afraid of the next
                momentment.”
Let us find our way from dreaming
to the other kingdom,

hoping I
can face faces with
eye to eye.

It may have started with
bouncing ***** and funny old men,
this stretching of time. But
it’s not that anymore.
Now it’s being awake, too, too long
at night and having all this to think about and
Feeling jittery from a coffee I had at 8 p.m.
so I could feel precise and dry with engorged veins
rolling over the bones in my hands
while I typed and typing
to sound smarter than I am (we both know)
in poems like this one; barren so I could
rush things.

I’m tired of thought experiments
and nervousness; I get sad when I think about
what I’m doing with numbers because
all I’m really doing is subtracting
and sneaking a few minutes with a piano
to feel like I can finally close my eyes.

I started thinking:
What would I say to myself (if it wasn’t too late)?
You know, to the fragile pieces
that I’d like very much to
point fingers at with a crowd, impress them!
I could show them—
show how much I’m not like that.

In so many mirages I can still
go and sit and blow smoke
in the cold with myself, feeling
so many things unraveling in chapter 6
(when I have to choose whether
to fight or stay with Andromache)
flustered and failing to find a friend in my own words.

Maybe I could pick up the shards,
or say something pretentious?
“They’re better left untouched”
But it’s wrong to leave everything
so I’ll pretend an oracle told me to
pester pleasantries and good, and
pretty, pettifogging alliterations.

It’s nearly quiet now.

I should get up to

close the curtains—

they’re not all the way shut.

A strip of glowing glass

burns between the curtains

Maybe open eyes will

let me rest for a while

before waking to noisy dreams again tomorrow

In the bed next to mine

my brother is asleep; content.

I think I’ll stay awake a little longer.

My mouth cracked
and bent emptied;
Pulled taut, my dam
against the light.

I still don’t know why,
but down the stairs
I went, with thirst
as my excuse
(although, I suppose
I was thirsty)

I left almost everything
upstairs in bed:
My arms and legs
wrapped warm under
misty sheets,
my teeth and torso
unclenching in sleep.

All I needed to see
was an eye and shivers—

An eye to see
Grandma sleep,

An eye to see
her husband’s paintings guard the room;

Shivers at those paintings
and knowing her from then on.

What is it that impels us to know
in so many words,
that we are no different.
Not conspiracy theories,
and certainly scared of the
pulsing and inevitable
common experience.

It awaits us, I suppose,
in every crevice and
all but anything we shirk
in disgust and anguish—
Because it is only struggle
braved alone that brings
a new day of knowing
that everything is part of
something solitary and stoic.

Fortunately, our giggles
never fail to fill the gaps,
pulling each other closer and
closer and there are no more reflections,
only impossibly identical blurs.

Sometimes it’s best to disagree and rue the poison
that’s so divine; not all vanity is vanity. Otherwise,
the poet and poem and words and feelings are all
so vain in being figurative; they cannot help in any
of the ways we hope to heal the flesh.

Great vanity of arrogance, perhaps, but not vanity
in a sense of completeness—the sculptors of
epitaphs and romance are words. All words are
words and all poems are ego but not all writing
feeds rage, only art touches us.

Like water—
assuming windy shapes
and earthy sways

So too, we accept;
so easily, could
we plunge hands
beneath the surface and
so in vain, could
we tide a new direction

There is a morning with an icy note
That frowns until all hands efface
Again it’s hard to stay afloat
Not sad? But still a somber place

And sun—conceived; born for us again
to dissolve the binds that hold and plague and
rip and lust away the frost of The Frustrated
Generation; too much! too much of the expectation
and shaming, unwavering against the wavelike blossom

But still a letter at the door
That knocks to bore its way inside
For what? For why a chance at more
Than ways to sit and wait and hide

For that cringing question;
melting and clawing through
a queasy stomach to the throat—
to the forefront and visions—or just the chance to ask:
the ***** and sting that steers
to and from sense.

My friend said
I talk like another language;
like I’m transposing
all my sentences.

I told him he was right.

But also,
my computer friend said
the sense I make isn’t enough;
like I’m switching instruments mid-song.

I told him he was right, too.

And so dance around the fire
mouthing the words off-tempo,
knowing the set may collapse.

Or instead,
All the ordinary windows
can drop watery curtains
while we sit in the rain.

Feeling the pitter patter
drops percussive
and wanting the next
refrain.

Oh I’m so bad at rhyming!
With such horrible comedic
timing.

And it’s so hard
to know what to say
to different types.

Dante warned against
not taking sides,
but I’m held ajar.

Oh didn’t I cover it all already?
(Burial, Chess, Fire Sermon, Death by Water, Thunder, and the Notes.)
I want to feel
sure that I’ve said too much
so everyone
has a little bit of something.

I think yesterday is years away;
Between one and the other,
Between fathers and brothers.

So sisters and mothers
Blink feathery at their watches.
Hums like a hummingbird
Flails to a shrillness,
And a polyphonic fearing panic
Pulls us all back by chance
To the chancery.

Somewhere after grandfathers
Before grandsons,
Like Robert Frost being a modern
Not modernist—
There’s the last of the conceivable eros—

Conceived by sleeping
Resource and resourceful
Poverty with all the impressionism
of the gardens and allegories
at a dinner party.

Sir Michael sat on the riverbank, quietly,
sure beyond question that he wasn’t there.
Feverishly he searched the running water;
There it was, his jumbled reflection, blurred,
he couldn’t trust his eyes anyway.

Michael perfumed his hands with the soft wet mud,
deeply inhaling the earth’s pungency, and there were his fingers, his palms—
faintly, unconvincingly, incarnate.

The odor pulsed with Michael’s breathing,
hands fading with each expulsion of air,
reappearing with the intensity of their scent.
Sound.

Pursing his mouth, Michael whistled loudly, and
basked in the physicality of his atonal cry.
Ah, he inhaled again, there were his hands;
exhaled through tightly sealed lips, there were his ears,
outlines in a coloring book, filled lightly for a moment with
a vibrancy, a shrill whistle.

Sliding closer to the edge now, peering into the quivering
canvas of hazy mirrors—this was not enough;
he held his breath, and let go.
Touch.

The icy water ravaged every crevice of skin,
each pore suddenly illuminated, existing.
Air! But there was none; Michael’s lungs
filled with his own reflection.
Air! But there was nowhere for it to go, Michael’s body
began in the water, and would end if he surfaced.

Sir Michael fell to the bottom of the riverbank, quiet as death,
sure beyond question that he was there.
Here I am, he thought.

These are worries:
bad realizations and
unfocussed eyes.
These too:
Feeling something raw,
and also vague panics—
when everything beneath
drops far below and leaves
no breath at all.

When the breathing
returns heavy in your ear
and five nails in a circle
on your back
remind you just how real
you could be,
it’s easy to fret
(unwaveringly)
someone is walking
through something
beautiful; nature maybe,
complaining about bad directions.

When conversations lull,
or I’m left alone with myself,
(or unexplained shivers
puppet my shoulders)
I think of writing the perfect poem.

I have so many wonderful ideas
that have all been thought
but were too messy—
and they would all be rethought
until they were polished;
until they were spotless;
until they were blacksmithed
and welded and tallied and measured and remeasured and immaculate.
Then I would have written
a flawless poem.

But then again,
if someone (even me) wrote
the perfect poem,
it would be written.
And that would be that.