Formalist conceit: striving mad
'Til driven mute, the pattern
wraps you up in a
blanket made of shackles.

See the poet Pagliaccio
Suffer muses' scorning laughter,
Bound and stricken witless, dullard.

Sheathe that poison knife you call a tongue,
Leave the pen your gun in its holster.
Cast your bullet words into the gutter.

The formless form: scatter words and
Enjamb your wits against null space.
The water is the container, no buckets,
No brackets. From disorder, order.

In the end, all is made right.
The page, so pristine, so vulnerable,
Awaiting my every error?
It's all set right, wiped away, and nothing.
Nothing remains of what I've wrought.

Perfection comes at the tip of the scalpel,
Carving away and down into jumbled
Words, each its own perilous
Non sequitur. They fall away in tatters.

The only peace is in purging them
From the mind to the page,
Then from being to unbeing.

This is no way to get published.
There's no fulfillment in the empty book,
And even less in an empty hand.

Orlando furioso, in your name
I dare not raise a violent hand in jest;
I’ve learned too well that pain is not a game.
If I’ll be guided by a candle’s flame,
Its light compassion, you’re a shroud, darkness.
Orlando furioso, in your name
And mine, on your behalf, I’ll carry shame;
I’ll chant a eulogy some might attest
I’ve learned too well. That pain is not a game
For two, for any number. What's to blame?
What burned away your wits? What was your test,
Orlando furioso? In your name
I can’t duck out, no hiding where I came
From, where I’ll die before I go. I’m blessed
I’ve learned too well that pain is not a game,
Far more a lineage I’d hate to claim,
A leaving I’ll revile within my breast,
Orlando furioso! In your name
I’ve learned too well that pain is not a game.

Silence wraps us up,
shoves us into the corners.
Winter's not this cold.
There might as well be a wall
for all the miles between us.

I'll while away the summer breeze with you,
Content to watch your smile outshine the sun
Our fingers twined while watching skies of blue,
Our laughter rising as we see clouds run.
I'll stroll with you through autumn as it flies,
Its reds no equal to your blush, its golds
******* by your irises, your sun-ringed eyes
A touch of warmth before the coming cold.
We both know winter must descend in time,
Despite the sun and smiles, the golds and reds;
I cannot fear its gray and chill. A rhyme
From me to you will ward those from our heads.
In passing that with you, I welcome spring;
with you, I've faced much worse than growing things.

How could I spend myself, seed, root, and gardener,
To someday look up and see the tree grown from me?
This is a vital self-deception, a delusion of choice,
Less a plea and more a deliverance.
Who should carry me forward through history?
What shoulders ought to bear the weight of
This ponderous name, this mouthful of dirt?
What could ever have grown in this garden
But weeds and thorns and bitter poison?
In this fulgurite waste, stricken by some God,
There's no hope but the barrel of His gun.
What monster could feed this to a child?
Better an ever-fallow field than a compost grave.

Pour it out like water from an empty sky
Before you turn and see the clouds,
Like salt sloughs off the shovel's edge
Once ice creeps in to choke the streets.
Pour it out like the fire searing your veins
Where passion became love became fury,
Like ink left to seep into pristine paper
From another careless stroke of the pen.
Let it out, like the words tied into a knot
Resting heavy between tongue and throat,
Like spit and bitter bile left to sit, clotted.
Let it out, like breaking whatever breaks
When those shackles slip from your wrists,
Like stepping away from the cage to fly.

Tranquility
     Coalesced together
          From the morning:
The gulls sang -
     Screamed out, really -
          Seeking out fish
Where the vultures
     Poached roadkill
          Before autumn faded,
Where the sun's rising
     Sets the lake alight
          With a smoldering glow.
With each step taken
     Away from the threshold
          Of our little hearth,
The aura of your heat -
     Clinging as best it can -
            Fades and admits the chill
Of a winter morning,
     All its bright potential
          Wreathed in spent breath.
I wonder at each of them
     Spent stepping on, away
          From warmth waiting behind.

The instruments, we carefully arrange
Atop the creaking dinner-table oak -
Remember, if you get to feeling strange,
You'd better just forget it. Go for broke.
The ritual's a silly little trip,
But easy to forget. You take a seat,
You angle all the papers, get a grip,
And...
          And then...
You grip the pen and try to - hey, shut up.
I don't know. You can't force it, right?
You just have to let it... let it...
It's supposed to work, but
It's all just falling apart and there's no,
there's no rhyme, nothing, it's a mess
and, I don't know, just let it... ugh.

My hands have always lingered close to tools,
Each yet another means to cheat an end,
To ward away a break, to build, to mend.
Discarded carelessly, absent all rules
Or sympathy, their care makes me seem cruel.
But as I reach my desk, again to bend,
Again to pour what thoughts may condescend
To slip from mind to pen, my hand their mule...
I wonder in the silence as my thoughts
Go still and stiff without your drifting gaze,
The blooms of inspiration withered down
To bristling hedges in a maze I've wrought.
To know abuse, know Muses: when they frown,
Their tools quickly become their castaways.

A family comes together all hoping and smiling
over the cheap thanksgiving turkey trying not to
stare toward the empty seat at the table
until the phone rings. Then all bets are off.

Two Thanksgiving miracles this year:
a liver for a grandfather, a plane ticket for a mother.
Thank God we'll still make rent! We'll still make rent.
An idiot child says "I'll talk to you soon. I'll see you soon"
like he doesn't understand the gravity of the old man's hollow wheezing.
Everything falls inwards in time.
But one ticket means the four kids will have to wait,
hold down the fort, have faith. So they wait with their faith.

The sun rises. An idiot child, an aspiring poet,
almost thinks it glints off a surgeon's blade.
He mistakes the glare, here. Scythe. Not scalpel.

So when the phone's ringing wakes the whole house,
he rushes to pick up, to hear the good news:
a wife sobbing
and crying
and "he's gone"

And an idiot child, an aspiring teacher, cannot hide this.
Three faces look up to him as he pulls them close
And teaches them a bit of wisdom he wanted to hide forever.
Here, he watches over them like an owl, scared to blink
while elsewhere, God, like a vulture, does as He pleases
and elsewhere, a mother holds back enough tears to drive home.

Years pass. I wonder. My mind wanders.
I remember my lips and the scythe and
cutting out a piece of hope that should've bloomed.
I know this: maybe it was mercy. The hope went necrotic.
It had to be rejected. It was not sustainable.
It could not be.

the trouble with trouble is
waiting for the next big hit
sipping on a bracing shot

the jitters could be the espresso
or everyone biting their tongues
choking on the unspoken name
of fear or dread or the grinning grave

but the medicine does work
bitter coming down to sit and clot
where the stomach meets the heart,

so your eyes can open up to a world
which wasn't yours, but the dream tells you
it could be there waiting in your hands

so trouble can wait another sip,
another slip, another dream
where time and space and all between
come still

By the time this reaches your ears, if
Someone chooses to spend life speaking death,
Know that I left you nothing but dust.

I won't offer you a pretty corpse to stare at,
A bower to water with tears I didn't beg you,
And my cold hands won't rest under yours.

They won't stitch me up or mute me any more
Than I mute myself, leaving these words
On the lips of someone who cares enough
About you to share them.

I have left you dust and ash. If you must,
Go ahead. Take a vial, a fistful. Scatter them, or
Keep them, or whatever feels right to you.
I'm not much for demands anymore.

Know that you hold in your hands nothing.
My transfiguration is complete - even that
Gray waste between your fingers isn't me,
Not anymore. I've moved on. You should, too.

to ache for death
like a hole drilled in a tooth
like the rot set in, waiting for truth
to scrub out the gangrene and rot

like remains from an empty shell, like the fouling after the primer's strike,
like the war cry after the speaker's voice
finds a live mike

and everything falls short.
The finish line runs away.
How sweet it is
To be left behind.

the moon despite
its bulk
seems small from here

the fury of the stars
signifies nothing
but a cute twinkle
in a smiling eye

funny how injustice
withers to nothing
at a distance too

Sunset's horizon
Clots together green-glow haze
To coat the night sky:
As the city denies sleep,
It gifts us a strange blanket.

Come, nihilistic compulsion,
Come, bitter bottom of the glass,
Come, looking like a bitter ***,
Come, solipsistic mirror!

I have seen you rise a thousand times
And seen you, wise, with wiser rhymes
Arise with wild eyes frightened, high,
Suspended on a riser over night.

Full-faced, without the spatter
Mattering, disgraced distasteful
Patter, battered, left to fry
Inside a lake of fire.

Stained. Unchanged. I've faced you.
Cast your gaze upon unblessed night,
Your desecration burning bright,
Reflected rays directed -

But I chase you. I'll outpace you,
Race you down to where the emptiness
Can scrape the chalk dust off the slate.

I scrape and scratch and can't erase you.

I can't write without you and I don't know
Why I doubt you and I can't say much
About the way your touch, so sweet and mean,
Coats me with gasoline. I can't ignite

Without you and I
Lose my light without
You, empty night so bright
With rays I recognize
Comprise you.

the firmament of heaven
will vouchsafe each celestial light
save one

when dusk steals it all again
leaving those forlorn stars so far away
and us down here in the dark

i will turn my weary eyes to you
the blessed candle-flame of you
and know your light despite the night