Our encounter begins, O glass of amber,
With your trembling surface inviting my lips,
your glass's simple flare; I may be no gambler,
But I see you quake as glass meets fingertips,
And you're not all sweetness - you'll change my timbre
Certainly enough - my gentle grip you nearly slip
As I survey your amber surface, raising you
Just high enough to sample from your bitter dew.

I cannot begin to wonder just how long
We've spent embracing each other, all wrapped up
And tangled together - I see I belong
To you as much as you to me - in my cups,
That desperate, furtive hunger spins a song
From my whispers: the way you've bound me up,
The way you draw me down, your bite on my tongue:
Your every breath invades me, fills my lungs.

In our time, we'll grind each other down to dust
Dissolving in that weary, seething flavor
Shot through every lingering of lips; I trust
My temperance will tire you - still, let's savor
These summer days, their mists ensuring the rust
Which withers us to nothing - In all, I favor
You against my lips, your fire dispelling cool:
In reason, in temperance, I turn the fool.

If a picture buys
Something like a thousand words,
Which of us is robbed
If I should, as a kindness,
Paint with so few syllables?

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

So, this is godhood. This is how it works.
It's dreaming up a world and killing it,
Abandoning the foibles and the quirks
Of crushed-together crumblings and bits,
Then sweeping out the wreckage with a curse
And carving out another fever dream.
It's wandering a mindscape universe
And sifting through the crop to find the cream
So you can save it while you burn the rest,
Just for the room to have another try.
The lovelies you've been cradling close to chest?
In time you'll cast them off to wilt and die
But for a while they're almost what you need.
Go raze the field and plant another seed.

A constellation glimmers atop the pavement,
Shards scattered carelessly, violently,
eager to catch the headlight lamps.

A galaxy draws the eye as if to spare it
The twisted crush of steel and blood
Parked nose-first in the drainage ditch.

The gutter catches what remains,
Trenches carved through the lip
Where it chokes around the wreck.
It can't swallow fast enough to save
Some mystery, some dignified tragedy,
Leaving only something raw and lost.

Choose another bitter morning routine -
whether from cold, coffee, or compression,
As in "man, I really need to just relax and decompress"
But without the last bit happening.
Choose to let it sink in until you can bite it off,
Choose the pressure because it feels like home,
Choose to dally, choose self-sabotage,
Choose kicking at the gears of your routine until
Something warps under the strain until
It fits like you never believed it would.
Choose the long way into work, a million faces
Nodding off behind their steering wheels,
The city's symphony still trying to get in tune,
Still trying to harmonize with, with, with, with
Whatever gets them to their job still sane, all
Trying to dance to beats only they can hear,
Howling out careworn verses they scrawled
By trailing their lives along the road:
The rhythm of the city is discord and hell.

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 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

How to begin?
A prison made of rock and chains; carrion birds hunger on high.
Fear demands an uncertainty which cannot be, here.
Distant crashing salt-spray wears away weathered cliffs,
inch by inch,
and with them it wears away...
There is no fear, not here.
If I should be seen running, it is not running away;
it is the slipping roll of a Sisyphus's rock,
the rattling snap of a Prometheus's chains,
and the headlong flight from the summit.

I offer no defense of my hidden sin,
Not when it wastes a fragment of eternity
In frivolous expenditure, stretched so thin
Across another vast, sprawling century.
And if I would - if I were - where to begin
This tour of a macabre private gallery?
All things, even this one, have their beginnings:
Thus, my humble collection's underpinnings.

Called to this divine vocation, I set out
Each time I encountered one who, crafting art,
Demanded my attentions. Please: never doubt
The truth of my intentions; my swelling heart
Adores them, falls in love as they sing or spout
Their lifeblood inspiration. Stepping apart
From all of this, don't stare so miserably!
Can I be blamed for working literally?

I love them, one and all, and here I curate -
Safe from all the ravagings of time, if not
Precisely speaking safe from my own mandate -
The workings and workers who inspired such thought,
Such incisive action. I lay them in state
With tender care, never sold and never bought.
Perhaps a glance at my favorite pieces
Might reassure you? My latest releases?

Observe the cuts into copper, engraving
Her fury, her passion into the cold plates!
How torturous, yes? She recalled it, raving,
Having sought me out to deny the ingrates
Assailing her solitude, as a craving.
I preserved her passion. Here, her works’ mates:
The roses she treasured etched into the hard bone
Of her shoulder-blades and skull, instead of stone.

But so few beloveds grace my humble home
Despite my voracious eye surveying scores
Of likely lovers - artful, otherwise - some
Lacking, left uninvited. Those I adore,
I long to beckon close - close as you now come.
Join me? There's more to show you, so much more,
And I hope you'll linger tonight, to dine.
I've just the thing for an artist who loves wine…

All beauty must fade,
          wither, crack, split, die,
                    and so too the beauty
of sweet hospitality
          loses something magical
                    when put to a test.
Splintering down to
          strained smiles,
                    curt little whispers
behind a turned back
          summon up strangleweed
                    between the gaping cracks
of a path we walked
          for so long until "so long."
                    There's a blind desire
to douse what remains
          in that left-behind radiance
                    with a drowning of petrol,
a gasoline baptism,
          and send it out with a pyre:
                    something to remember.

Sometimes, the sight of your two-tone,
your brick, your stone - All hail! -
demands my glee. It rips it out of me.
It is sacrificed on the mountaintop
for a distant harvest, sometimes;
for surviving winter under your oaks,
your maples, your falling branches.

But I love your cold, your winter,
knowing winters make us strong.
All hail.

Here, where your searing body pressed close to mine
Puts Vulcan's furnaces' heat to frigid shame,
Where crashing sun-showers rinse away the brine
Of held hands, shared secrets and our glancing games,
Where fleeing through rainy May and summer wine
Brings together close encounters, whispered names;
Here, more as two than just ourselves, **** the cares
And **** remembering what awaits out there...

There, far away from home, hemorrhaging heat,
Left to my own hollowed-out devices
Where the concrete jungle strangles every street,
Leaving lives wilted and dry, no surprises
Where novelty passes for a catchy beat:
Here, alone, all identity is crisis.
The wasteland surrenders in time, have no fear;
With my eyes shut, I can see the path back here...

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.

Keep watch. Night saps you, catches you with a blackjack,
drains you like sand sifted through an hourglass
running low on patience, low on time, low on hope,
but it's 11:00 p.m. and you've been here three days
and so has everyone else so you keep quiet and

Keep watch. Under the fluorescent hospital lights,
your stage awaits so you put on a brave face,
paint that clown mask and start the production:
not tears, not fears, just enough to get them through
to the miracle waiting for them, but you've been around
and you know miracles ain't cheap, so keep the faith and

Keep watch. Through the racking coughs, through the
distant sobbing all receding into absence of thought
to match absence of action, as your turn comes up
to give this mockery of last rites, to sanctify the dead
and soon to be dead, to keep some kind of memory and

Keep watch.

All we want to hear about is love and
               Madness, wounds left in the mind
                              Where what's taken for granted
Was ripped out and scattered, just ash.
               Maybe just madness, then. Addicts
                              Left shaking their cupped hands
Trembling out aching, quaking desire
               Where stillness arrives with a kiss,
                              Where confession pours crimson,
A ****** of claret. Spilled into a glass,
               Sloshed across a tongue, breathing
                              Bitter, barren, dry - washed down
With another glass, until the flavor stains
               Teeth and tongue and lips. We are
                              What we drink: water and blood.
We are what we love: madness, confession.
               Does a ****** see in their subjects
                              The viscid revel of their own scars?

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.

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.