possibility
inside a conjurer's box
infinitely felt

hush from outside it
carefully like broken arms
so carefully now

she, an audience
callous, loving, drinking gal
gasps at every cue

the night's coup d'etat
what they all (that one) pay for
the lid is seized free

it's empty: applause.
but only because they don't
know where she has gone.

A thousand god-eating plates in a summer wind
Listen, china-white, to the audible inaudible that flanks
The paint-chip, earth-red bridges. Susurrations weave
Through grass with spider fingers; following curves in seashells
As a voluble electric screen who Speaks as dew and taste.
Water is depth beyond what can be acquainted with memory
Or fancy. Watches turn delicate, May-lace and wedding night
Music: Vertical, Veiled, Very. Dust in the stream lisps
Headily to shore, rests by a forgotten child’s shoe,
Bronzes it like mother’s finger and burns like daybreak.

There sits a woman who
cannot feel the rain.
Trapped in thoughts
that cross her to the neck
and stifled tongue.

A bench beneath holds
up her sodden world,
to push back hands on
a crystal face and nail
her to her seat.
She cannot feel a single
lachrymal word nor
hear a vertical eye as
they, by the familied thousands,
rip her ripe in two.

Perhaps it is for her ultimate
benefit that these thorough
roving mouths are but
the muted daggers of her mind,
else she might stand
from the bench
fall into her lap and feel.
Oh, unthinkable as it may seem, to feel
those manual nails in her feet
and free the fingertips on hands that
tear out fenestrated faces
firmly held a pace away by freakish
phrases.

There sits a woman in the rain:
all dressed in red and white and slain.

There is a false face behind a false breast
That beats out a tune that was never its own
And the thrum of the notes in the din of the night
Is a scourge to the dreams it is shown.

Wherefore sits he so melancholy? By
baked glass lines of chairs, all written up for
the task which he cannot but perform. Waits
with a cruel mouth; a crueler waist that
hoists him from the waste with watermarked wells
beneath his eyes, his staring eyes. Up there,
how many faces press against him? In
the well of his neck, the silver skin holds
back the mouth for all it might be worth,
to be seen by His appreciative teeth.

There is a false stage where stands a false man
That speaks with a passion that never was known
And the beck and the cry that is elsewhere not heard
Is a tear for the man that has flown.

now i lay me
down to sleep
it wasn't real
enough to keep
if i should die
before i wake
then not an echo
would i make

now i lay me
down to sleep
and ***** my sides
to break my keep
if i should die
before i wake
i've filled my mouth
to drain a lake

now i lay me
down to sleep
i hope to god
not six feet deep
if i should die
before i wake
i hope i got
all i could take

This man has a gun pointed at me,
that extends from thumb to index in an L,
at me from his hip.
I can't see much through
my hand. Reflexive, if dampened
by a gristle of curiosity.
Weight shifts from foot
to toe to ball to other
foot. He doesn't speak
to me; to the floor,
but his gesture comes at me
through the atmosphere or
whatever analogous high ground he possesses.

The tip of the pink barrel
menaces like a treble scream
or a broken blackboard.

Shift. Shift and a look around.
It must be done quickly, he
looks at her to ask permission.
I imagine her too cold
for response: atoms
held in hexagons to keep
that inevitable crack from
toppling the salty gravity.
However they must speak
through the superaudible
for her stolid fluidity
resolves his change
(changes his resolve)
and his eyes stop dead on
me.

The laughter of that trigger
rustles through skin
and plays with bone.

A second with the fire in my hand.

Can I honestly walk away without an
Ocean in tow?
I see. It's “no.”

Belt out arms to whip the ******* sky.
Ever impartial.
Ever my surrogate for its emptiness
My scream tucked neatly inside.
What kind of god would curse me
With knees? Damnation is a collapse--
Fling my neck without breath to
The sea of the earth and pant
Out sacrificial smoke.
I see it snow.

The earth prays for me.
Delicate soil casts up vigilantly the
Orisons I will not. I've murdered them
On the doors of my mouth. The key,
Keys are maledictions;
Are devilish devotions to destroy
With wine-soaked fruit.
Cast it away after the first sin.
O, felix culpa, I walk to the
Dawn to meet you
Tasting it ever on my lip.