I am the trusted family spatula,
the curve in a Slinky,
the light refracted from antique shoppe crystal,
the distrust that sits at the back of the mind while reading a movie review,
the subtle humidity of the end of spring that goes without remark.

Also, I'm a flamingo.
Never forget that.

In the span of an hour

I fall asleep.
I have a dream about Barbara Stanwyck.
I wake up.
I look at my phone with blank eyes.

I am hot
I am bold.
I am not
I am cold.

I can compose but cannot think.
I must never.
I shake out my crick and wince in a panic.
I persevere.

I am hot
I am bold.
I am not
I am cold,

In the space of a minute or two.

He closes his eyes as usual. That starts it.
Gallon blackness against thin skin but split,

Suffused with a million rushed and serene
Shades of purple and sickly, retinal green.

Squares and curves, utterly vertical rounds
Imprinted obsidian spheres, half-sounds.

A vague intimation of abyssal, milk white:
Horizontal paradigms on the coast of sight.

Yes, indeed the whiteness on the horizon
Flutters scop-musical like a lark’s blazon.

How it snatches up the blackness, losing
Clarity of its edge like madmen’s choosing.

It ceases growing yet consumes all within
The poor man’s eyes, traversing the din.

A pure, blank line that is born in the mind
Fills the soul nacreous, leaves him behind.

Goes it beyond him and stretches open.
Straight wide. Too wide. Much too wide!

The teeth he hadn’t noticed crush him dog-brightly

And pull him fast inside.

He opens his eyes as usual. That ends it.

If I had a dime

For every time

That question was asked of me,

I would spend all those cents

On the Chippendale's gents,

And Oh! how happy I'd be.

Up from the deep
Water breaks in diagonal sheets.

The skies careen off and away
Red arrays.

Universe of musculature
A foot in a sandy detour.

Indirect to purpose
Skin and flow.

Dries on the gilded bank
Wild hair set flat.

A thousand atmospheres taken
Into a single ozone breath.

After a time, stoops
By the multiform to look.

Stones heavy-
Light enough to carry.

To the mouth wide
And bitten dry.

The water wears everything
So the teeth can split.

A fortnight of spite
And the treacherous bite.
He returns to the sea
With a headful of light.

Those kids flash around me like mad planets;
days scream into vapor like a universe of mercury.

Nigh deep in the Woods near the Waterfall Tree
Sleeps a House that was built from the Fruit of the Sea,
And the Man and the Woman that lived in it once
Ate the Forest and Sky indiscriminately.

Through the Winter and Rain they would **** at the Sun,
Drank the Land, chew the Oceans and spared not a One.
‘Till the Day when their Neighbors the Stars saw their Work:
So they speared the Pair wholly and called their Job done.

I sat on the square of carpet and screamed
very quietly to myself.

I, the boy who
cried
melancholy.

I, the man who
watches his life
through his eyes.

I, the cruel ship that
glazes the waters of
a harsh music.

I, the silly hair that
obscures the face of
a murderess.

I, fit only for sleep
in the white palm
of an arthritic hand.

I, the child counting
backward on an abandoned
island.

I, glass-colored
and triangular like
the start of space.

I, the single ******
that begs for
a just spark.

I, the skin of glue
in a sweating
photograph.

I, the man selling
VHS players for
mega-discounts.

I, who clasped your
hand when you were
so very small.

I, an errant breath
in the postbox before
the empty Jones house.

I, keen on eating the
brick and mortar
beneath me.

I, who shall never
touch his face,
not even the one time.

I, in the midst of heat
and silence without
a single syllable of wet.

I, with a hatred for
your searching fingers
sticky-sweet.

I, sitting behind
long after the film
dies of exhaustion.

I, crayon and
8.5 by 11 inch paper
Valentines for violent boys.

I, second man,
forgotten man,
to my own movie.

I, grinning through
the lame as the
stitching wears.

I, strategic misery
on a tempest moon:
contemplating contemplating.

I, the laughing door
with a struggling ****,
and no keyhole.

I, who commits
suicide every Tuesday,
Thursday, and Sunday.

I, with cigar boxes
filled with all the tiny,
grandmotherish pieces of ****.

I, the knot that slips
off the head of a lonely
purpled finger.

I, and my
cloverfields,
and my rust.

I, with my dreams
about Japanese furniture
and magic, geometric roads.

I, dancing to a song
I cannot hear that issues
from a nonexistent room.

I stood and walked outside.

It's spring, I think.
There's a girl.
Blue dress and eyes.
Gold hair and a toy
Soldier that smiles
From her golden fist.

She is playing by
A wide lake. The
Wind through her
Metal braid is the
Soft mother's hand that
Dances flowers smooth.

See the grass sway.
See the wooden man
Blow elegantly away.
See her leap after him.
Hear her splash
Through the water’s skin.

Above the air
In the corse of a spectator-ship,
A wooden man is upside-down
To watch her drown.
He hums with the thrum
Of the blood in his ears,

"Blue over blue over blue."

I

Tiny, they dance through me on the green wind;
They breathe me in: flame-inflammable and time
Out of memories. Damsels in foreign stories long eaten.
Yet I feel so drowsy. Martyr-like they whisper trails
Of their sugar dust onto my face and make me
Itch. I scratch with citronella nails and burst
Forward into the night. One imagines they’ll follow,
Seeing as how they think I’m their sun.

Do you remember that summer we spent with the
Dead? Maybe it was too long ago for you, but you
Always woke me for the sunsets. I remember.
And there was some song or other that kept break-
Ing through the radio… with the raindrops and some
Stately clock that I always associated with you.

II

You were always underneath me
Writing those idiotic sonnets.

When you broke water-heavy from
Me, of course I tried to follow.

The song to which you referred
Was “Night and Day”, but you know
I can always remember the words
To you better than any foolish
Song. There’s a torch within me
Keeps repeating “You. You. You.”

Not the romantic.
The control.
A single white digit,
the sprawl of cool
smiles extend to
taste and see.

Their lives like
hyacinths that drink
the air in books,
plastic lips.
Slime from the marble.
A widow-dream.

Metal midair that
speaks a rat's tongue
with the deftness of
a seasoned lover.
His eyes can see your circuitry.
Her mouth the tree of night.

She breathes in my ear
with the yellow of the star
that greets the dusk.

He whispers to my palm
in the nature-sweet wax hum
that misses dawn.

But only by an inch.

The best thing about
Haiku is that if you run
Out of room you can…

Polar bears rarely
According to my knowledge
Play Marco Polo.

Sing with your eyes closed
And your audience can be
A thousand panthers.

The television
In the front room bites me when
I pet it too hard.

Is it still a haiku if all seventeen syllables are in one

No one can deny
My right to dream. Ah, someday
An all-moose hockey league.

Too late at night, I
Wonder if Shakespeare wrote D’s
The way I write mine.

I rearrange my
Furniture to make room for
More hopeful years.

James Dean. Rock Hudson.
Montgomery Clift. Cary Grant.
I’d hit it, girlfriend.

A girl of the streets
Offers him the right price for
One more game of checkers.

My bed does not face
The window. When it rains,
I always sleep through it.

I have not seen a
Sunrise in years; I don’t
Use public bathrooms.

…always continue
In another. [Something neat
About a panda.]

Interminably, he stands at the road side
Whether the weather is kindly or not
(Somehow it's never either one). Stands there
And makes an ingratiating little nod
To the clouds. The sky bears down with its slipped
Edges— Singular walls of the unspoken
Truth: The world ends at the last of vision.

Those cars that pass us reach the brink of this small
Hemisphere, quiver on the edge of
The black and turn sharply. The bell of the sky
Doesn’t ring like it used to anymore—
It’s just too **** big. And we are much too small.
In our opinion: all those hitchers wear
Their hearts on their sleeves
If they think they can get anywhere.

In a different town.

The baked streets have thinner air.
The fata seem to belong less to Morgana than to the mountains.
The tall mountains that freeze
The water of the eyes to
The water of the roads a mile away.
The terrific air.

I can now only barely recall.
No sound, the film skipped,
Slightly off the projector track.

The dark insides of a native heritage.
The store with an open door.
The stern woman behind the white smoke counter.
Turquoise is expensive,
But no one buys enough for it to be in vogue.
A vogue might swallow all the sulfur
Sand.

The sharp nose,
Cheekbones that squint the little black eyes deeper inside.
I can see why they must have been afraid,
Though I’m not quite sure what I mean by “they.”
This town is different from any other one.

And you can feel it when the mountains
Pin their tongue into the sun.

I’m taller than her now.
I joke and say I’m growing
Up and away from her but
She doesn’t laugh. Because
I am: horizontally.
Plants grow toward the
Light and my movement
Is matricidal as the womb,
The matrix. That’s what really
Makes me sick.

I’m taller than her now.
And smarter, and stronger.
And saner, if that, colder.
But still I’m smaller, or
When I say good night
And watch her
Watch me shut the door.
I feel my angles, rounded
Corners. But I really don’t
Know who I am.

I’m not a boy and yet I
Must be. Not a man though
I should be. What she sees,
Or what I think she sees,
Might take my breath away.
That’s why I thank god for
Making humans irreflective.
If I could see (She sees herself
In me, her father too.) I’d
Oedipus my eyes out.

This not quite the underground, but still a strange corridor-
Scurrying in skirts and argyle and
Two-piece research paper suits.
They get together in the new Underground, they
Smoke old memories and sit in a stoner semicircle
To listen to old attendance records.

Humming the anecdotal lark, a man with a  prim tie
Rises and steps into the middle to slam. Over the deafening
Hookah comes David Copperfield.
Hello Voltaire, have you brought your
Reading glasses? The secret anatomies
Held in the inked atomies

Are all we come for. Let us in on this electric
Canvas. Let us paint out plots of plots that
All of us have known,
Around and underneath, and speak out our
Crayon set opinions, to tell the dim-eyed boys and girls
About in detail later. Ooh, say eight o’clock?

You cold?

I am.

My jacket.

Thanks.

Yepp.

Mother Edge
You walk with me
To Petri dishes
And light my silver lungs
With a screaming match
Drink the earth with
Me until dawn.

Father Red
I’ve run to your thunderous
Carpet in these shoes that
Can’t breathe through
The narcissi on which
You asked me to balance:
The electric taste.

Sister Shard
Sit like we did on the
Ship’s stomach
Memory has a hole in his lip
And my key broke
Smoke accidental
While you were gone.

Brother Trail
I grew in your shadow
Simple sentence cell
And dreamed, oh, dreamed
Of my black fingers green fingers
Sharpening
Coins for your eyes.

A million years ago, there was a man
Who maunched an English breakfast while his wife
Was sitting simply, contemplating life.
With spider-sitting ease, with pad and pen.
“I think” thought he, “that I would be quite dim
If I should not your beauty recognize
And in a sonnet seek immortalize.”
His wife, just then, a note displayed to him.

What Elizabeth for Robert did
I lack the expertise to do for thee
But for the simple sonnet that was slid,
I know I match her hot sincerity.
My fast from human touch has made its bid:
Though I have words, my thought will ne'er be free.

The suit in question
Is grey. Pin-striped white.
Double-breasted. Three piece.
Blue tie, grey hatching.
An absolute nightmare to change into.

I drop my jeans
In the monastery stall,
Shed my shoes.
Old friends.
The trousers, slacks,
Rise morning fog
And sleep in the stratus
Of my waist.

I really wonder how
The men of the then
Could have worn them.
So much taller.
So much grander.
So much straighter.

White shirt with
The butterfly tracks,
Make-up stains
From a billion ancestors.
Dead relatives that don’t
Respond to the call.
I take their places
Without a single
Crumb of guilt,
O feel the guilt.
The vest. Easy enough.
Yeast but grey and it
Rises horizontally.
I’ve just noticed pockets
Sewn into maddening teases.
The barest suggestion
Of an opening.
It holds like the bowl of the moon.

The coat. The great monarch.
Organizer with a clipboard
Ensuring the quality
Of a burlesque of silk.
So strange.
So other.
So queer.

In a minute or two, the
Hyperhydrosis.
It really is my only hope
Of describing my true temperature.
I will ignite in a biological
Soliloquy that can
Pronounce all those tricky
Thoughts I’ve given up
For the stage.
Gentle gravity,
Cruel crushing backhand.
Burst my complexion,
Steal my aqueous words.

Again, this suit.
How many Lomans,
Bankers, adjudicators,
Businessmen and Babbits
Have lived out their deaths
In you?
Brave rain cloud,
Where is your lining?
I feel the quip swelling
And project it to the back wall:

Only the costume knows true reincarnation.

Sing to me, O dark vault of night.

The divine muse is upon me;
Up on my shoulders.
She doesn’t appear to have
anything instructive to say
apart from “And how the ruddy,
blasted, Viking-snogging,
******, ******, mother-defecating
hell did I get up here!?”

Inspiring words indeed.

Skeletons of shadow teach me anatomy from inside the ark.
Quiet. Old women at the double doors. So dark, the sanctum.
Heaven is stained glass. Fold your paper hands, your husband
Mumbles under the preacher's emphysema. On the mic,
Occasional screams of raspy black-and-white noise. Screams.
How He screams. Red-faced Church-parent. Little Easter bows,
The snarling bouquets who sting and follow the grass-green Moon.
Of the ten mounted fans, only one stays awake enough to listen,
Awake enough to hope to catch every particle of sleeping dust.
We were made from dust. The mountains too. I can't see.
The concrete days. Cinders and spiders and cracking tile.
Roaring, wailing, proliferating my thick umbra in the mesmer flask.

When the door opens, how will I feel? Glass and sandstone.
Will I have my face or someone else's? Eight faces by four.
How will I taste? Cinnamon and lapis.
Will I have angles or planes? Metric and function.

Little, silver words trail fingers through me, trace me, and cement me.
I glisten once and then am spent.

"And Abraham drew near, and said,
Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?"
- Genesis 18:23

I

There are about four thousand people
Here.
They throng in blasted heat like
Little arid wasps.
Gasping summer rain,
Like the opposite of fish.
Of their individual character
I can give no generality.

They are men and women,
They stand on roofs and
Sleep on their words.
They are hot and cold
And they hate and scold.
They are devils and stars
And ***** and priests
And children of priests.
Orators, they are also:
The speakers of the state (which
Is hotter than they could
Ever know); they steal
And reel and impose their
Splitting fingernails deep into
The varnish of the
Wishing well.

They are men and women,
They stand on roofs and
Smother dreams by spitting on the sky.

II

Fox. Come and light my little room
With your brilliant breath. Have you
Come very far? From the eye of the trees?

I should leave this little town if I were you.
It has its ways and leeches from our
Dangling hands. A tongue named Lethe.

Wake early and flee back to your dark,
Summon that green corpus shell that
You came from and follow its outlying root.

You should know the power of the vine.
It crawls in the blinding night and
Strangles what it cannot feed upon.

Oh my little fox, I beg you turn back,
For in familiarity lies strength and nothing
In this wilderness will give you nourishment.

III

He walks in waterways and crunches bone.
He watches moonlight play on open wounds.
He wishes dearly for the ends of weeks.
I heard him live his life without a sound.

The high school band with a treble clef. The year
Of empty penmanship in which he wrote
A thousand notes and mailed them underground
About which neither parent knew a thing.

Encounters best discovered some years later
Work to redden ears in coffee shops,
Or rather as I’m talking to him now,
With darting speech and halting eyes and all.

Perhaps the atmosphere could lend itself to blame,
The hormones and the collusive ennui.
But little charms the tear ducts quite like saying,
“Why am I this way, do you suppose?”

I haven’t got the heart to make reply
And often pose myself the same question
Before the mirror thinking of my whims,
The muddied roads that led me where they did.

My time has run itself to pieces in
The hope of spreading my horizons, but
Some sand runs faster in the way, some gains
More ground. And mine? This distance is unknown.

I licked the shelves of Hardy, Plath, and Keats.
I lorded over idiots with glee.
I lured the fathoms of my mind to float.
And oh, the things that he must think of me.

IV

The doors know I am coming,
They dart out of my way.
My telekinesis stops there
But I troll forward
And brandish my little iron steed.

****. Adjust my strap
And push the cart onward.
My purse like a little leather
Bundle of swaddling.
I nuzzle it close to my breast.

Frozen foods. Diet says
No carbohydrates, so I adjust
My tastes. In a little town
Like this, they’ll notice if
I don’t.

Magazine aisle. Nothing
But ***-endorsing rags
And godless photo sessions fit
For lining shelves and
little else.

Lord, this vast store!
Give me strength to bet back
To my car. God, look at
That **** at the pharmacy
Asking for birth control.

And I can’t help but
Cluck my tongue at her:
I just tell Ray I have a headache
And turn on my back.
Ha, as if she’s married.

No decency any more.
Men getting married, women too!
God supposedly “Banging” us out of
Star dust. Who are those atheists
To judge my truth?

Checkout. No, self-checkout.
I don’t like that clerk
Staring at me. Receipt.
Probably a ******* anyway.
And for a moment my mind controls the doors and all things.

V

She’s gone a bit insane.
Yesterday in class, she asked
To go to the lavatory
And just went straight home.
(Poor thing, I can’t blame
Her after all that has happened.)

She’s told me about her
Father before. Whether she’ll
End up as warped remains
To be seen. She’s got my sympathy.
(Mother dead at four, brother at
Seven and something else at twelve.)

Senior year is more than
Freedom from Dad, she says.
It’s freedom from myself,
Whatever that means.
(It is her father’s profound wish
That she memorize all of Revelations.)

From the grass, she tells me
That her father explained to her
That non-dairy creamer kills
Ants. She does it with a smile.
(We don’t have to say much more,
Suffice it to say he’s a very loud man.)

She still has an averse reaction
To stories about car crashes.
And I never read her her
Early July horoscope.
(Nightmares are too kind.
Panic sifts through windowpanes.)

Her uncle doesn’t call from
The old hometown, he was
Grabbed from her life and her
Father never says why they moved here.
(Two years her junior, she jokingly
Calls me Grandma because)

She hates her real one. Prom
And graduation. A candle
Ceremony and she’s gone.
Her father left before it was over.
(I’ll miss her, but I made
Her promise not to visit.)

VI

Hot like a miracle breath.
The two seasons: Summer
And February.
We taste the heat
And drive away for the weekend.
Of course the world ends
And the “Welcome to” sign.

Unsurprisingly,
The radio dies as we
Head back to town.
Why should the death of
An intangible surprise me?
Everything else
Dies here.

Pessimism like a mockingbird.
The smoking trees
Ripple like an Ella
Fitzgerald vowel.
Hold your
Miraculous breath
And it still won’t rain.

Our abortion
Welcomes the needle heat
with a  horrifying
Little finger.
That smile,
That smile.
Jesus.

How can it stay so
Hot? No reply,
But I forgot who
Was asking.
The irony of this ****
Town sparks my
Smile.

VII

So where are you from?

        I lived up north
Before I moved down here.
They needed teachers and
I thought “Why not?” Turns
Out this place is a lot
Slower than up where I
Came from. No offense.

(Laughs) None taken.
So what are you teaching?

Senior English. Pretty cool
Subject but I was shocked
How little the kids had been
Exposed to. I hope to remedy
That soon. (Mumbles something)
Any more problems, you know?

The parents have complained?

Oh, just the usual nitpicky
Silliness: “I don’t want my
Christa or Johnny reading
Such-and-such a book.”
After a few years, I’m
Sure the parents will lighten up.
Or, (Laughs) at least I hope.

How are the kids?

Can I actually answer that one?
One or two brights but most
Just seem ready to get out.
They’d better be willing to put
In some actual thought if
They really hope to. (Pause)
It’s not all about sports.

(Laughs) I hope you’re not too
******* the athletes. They do their best.

Well, I certainly hope
They do. I won’t play
Favorites or anything like
That. Hardly fair to the
Others, right? (Laughs,
A pause, tape ends.)

VIII

He can’t breathe.

He’s been running for
Hours.
The trees. The brush.

Wonderful veins blast
Away at their work
To preserve him;
Great fibrous tendons
Work to carry him
Away from the noise.

The murderous streets with
Scoured buildings
And trees inviting the
Convening crowds to lay
Out their burdens, to
String them up and
Ease their hard frustrations.

They have not seen him as yet.
He follows Polaris,
god of the irreverent,
Meager candle for a
Drowning man.

Exposed road; he flags
A car like a madman.
Well, we shan’t go
So far as to call him that.
And has he any bags?
No.
And which way is he going?
North.

Procession. Silence.

The coolish progress
Of a blackish
Summerish
Night.
How many minutes
out of town? and how
many moments in the
rounding cruelty of acting?
The driver smiles in his driver’s
Seat, eyes lit by the green
Display, ears filled suddenly with
Static.

The bruised night
Raises its single, white eye
Like the ponderous pitch
Of a bird.

I suppose he knew from
The second he saw the car:
There was never any sanctuary
In this little cloister.

The towns spreads like
Botulism over both windows.
He stops before the courthouse.
Stops before his jury,
Hanging judges.
And you needn‘t ask yourself
“Who are they?”

I’ll tell you.

They are men and women,
They stand on roofs.

They are boys from California
Who ran like foxes but refused
To run away.

They are musicians who lived
Their lives without a sound.

They are hopeless hags who
Speak in blinding grocery stores
And **** the gossip air.

They are girls with opportunities
Burst like an innocent cell
And violated by the heavy hand
That tucks them deep to sleep.

They are cruel little ******* who
Only wanted something to listen to
While the seasons spun around them.

They are teachers who never learned.
They are hearts that never burned.
They are heads that never cooled.
Not when it’s so hot outside.

They grew uneven like a story
Written in celebration of a meaningless title.
They have every right to be angry,
And yet they level their stones
At one another instead of the
Hell a glass house can become.

They walk so slow the sun
Can stoop and eat them up
Without the briefest guilt.

Apparently, it is my societal rol
e to once a month (or once a wee
k, or how may you) succumb to
all the indignity, to the crushin
g blue of broken hands, and allo
w the swell of eternity its coarse
st way with me. And swallow lik
e a sieve the strands of all the flu
id universe.

Gorgeous fruit,
You are the mercury and
I the *****, slanted surface;

Faults in the flesh cry
“Scarlet ants
To fill my dreadful purpose!”

My little voice that steals from the page
Can fill the singing water.
But I wonder often

If all my breath
Is in accordance with
That great tome

At the end of all our days
Which instructs us
In the proper use of semicolons.

Until we know, I bar my
Wanton lips.
Get up and bar my wantonness

That I should
Live in the sands I am
Allotted.

O despairing syllabus!
Can you- will you care to number
On the murmuring calendar all

The days you must
Wait for me to clasp
The iron bar?

Ay, with my teeth set as far
Apart as my shoulders
And my very animus

Sewn into the college ruled
Notebooks, records, loose-leafs
With looser thoughts.

What I would do without
The seventy
Anticipatory footsteps in the snow

Might stop the very
Pull
Of land and ship

And pull out every
Stop
From under our deck.

Gorgeous fruit, I ask
You to pull the pencil
From my desk and entice
Me once more from my bed.

I reserved a table for the two of us
at the only restaurant in the world
that not only offers atmosphere and setting
but tone and syntax as well.

First some articles for appetizers. They're
easiest on my pocket you know.

An an, a the, and an a.
Let's not even start on the punctuation,
I'm treating you to a rather large meal.
As large as the entire English language,
now back to the articles.
Sure these taste like lint but they still
taste. Petit fours but there you are.
Try to be disinterested or you'll
put me off my food.

Nouns now. My, what a variety.
Bit meaty, eh? These have staying power.
They taste like a bit of everywhere,
and everyone, and everything.
What's that? Surely they're not that bland.
Maybe you need some seasoning.

"Adjective" comes from the
French for "to the word."
So exotic aren't they? These
really are fantastic.
Exquisite, unique, zesty to say the least.
You must admit, they
make the meal worth it.
I hope you're not allergic,
I could have sworn I just
had something "nutty."
Oh, it had nuts "in it"?
There must be some prepositions
mixed in here.

(I'm glad we're getting through
these now, I've never been a big fan of them.
When I was a kid, I would always push my prepositions to the end
of my sentences. You just can't do
that in a joint like this, it seems.)

Ah finally. The verbs are served.
Well-prepared it would seem.
Yes, anything you can do to a verb
they've done to these.
Infinitives (too good to realistically be believed!),
gerunds, and participles (No, not particles. But we
did have some of those at the Japanese restaurant.)
Fairly lean too, as I can't see
any auxiliary fat.

For some reason
those adverbs (just to your left, under that
thesaurus) really go well with this.
Plus those adjectives from earlier, rather pleasantly.

Now a brief selection
of conjunctions, but don't ruin
yourself. They're not a meal of themselves,
just a link to...

Oh! Look at those interjections.
So delicate, so (Wow!) incisive.
I told you to keep your appetite.
Well, just try a little of this. Goodness, me!

And then everyone proceeds to
die  
from a split infinitive.

If you care:
My
life is a little
box
and I dreamt of a
little box. The more I watched the less it
was. In
a solid white something. Lamps. A
table. Clothes. Proper punctuation and
capitalization. Unthinkable hopes
and blasphemous suppositions. Some force
that I can’t call God, just my sick
dream-logic, blew it to ashes. My world-cube. My mirrors.
My books. My awards and certificates and
All my precious stanzas. Cinders and pronunciation alone remained.
At this, I
smiled and
shook my soul
with the Prophet. My own music burst out
before me like mathematics
(My very breath guided by an
infinitely ascetic
sweep) and like oil paint (in
a world that glows
like neon and
breathes out empty
space) and I awoke from whiteness. I fold
myself into four
like the
secret of flight. But you don’t care.

Bird against the night,
White fingertip against
A negative held up to light.

Whisper, soft by definition,
Work your maledictions
So I have something to react to.
The way you talk it would seem
Those words have been
Asleep for years. I’d
Hardly want you to
Strain- sprain anything.
Spring it on me,
Show the Bruce Lee
Of your larynx. Strike
Me or smite me, bury
Your fist and pronounce
That solar syllable before-
Before the storm cedes.

We’ve all been waiting for
The blue flick, the
Clear blur, the handle
Toward your hand. Spit
It into the light. I don’t
Really care, I just need it out.
Cut around it anymore
And you might inadvertently
Break the clouds. It’s a cheap
Trick but it’s all I ever had
Over you.

Night bloodies the beach.
A moral goes unheard  like
An ignored spectator.

I walked over a hill
at seventy miles an hour.
Through the early dew I
experienced geography like an audio
sample. I tasted the black
road. I was suspended in
the air. I heard my
edges falling into the grass,
carried by an unkind wind.

For a brief moment, I
understood the earth and
sought to shirk its pull.
I am a fruit from
a tree, a moist bead
that sings to its matriarch
root, but of the tree
of knowledge. I will fall
from my branch so as
not to bend in the
wind.

Breathless little pod, enclose me with your
Wooden floors. Let the rain outside play as
Pianoforte as it can. Enough
Thought to sink a ship and all I can say
Is “The horses. Oh my God, the horses.”
What about the horses? In a tasteless,
Odorless, frictionless universe sleeps
The hammer of the clouds who eats our hours
And flips to more interesting channels.

Take a minute for yourself, this is just
An experiment, and run up those stairs.
Be sure to stop when you hear the lightning
Then nip back down like thunder so you can
Tell me the result. Breathe in, count to ten.
Breathe out, breathe in and try to remember
The middle of “Rondo Alla Turca.”
Take your time, it won’t be nice outside for
A while. Enjoy the breathless little room.

A blue cave sits patiently in
His eye, sits welcoming
Herbal songs and idly
Exhaling a rasp or two on
The willow, reeds that stretch
For miles. Nightingales
Sip at their little, pink drinks
And summon their obscure
Relatives who are themselves
Entirely unaware of
What the hell is going on.

The silver general admires
His golden chess strategies,
Neatly printed out on tacky
Paper. Tomorrow the invasion.
Tomorrow those
Friends of his will stare
Like a murdered upcard.

She receives the afternoon
With a  pocket thesaurus embrace,
Whispers an indigo X
Into his reddened ears.
Intelligence penetrates uncertainty
Uncertainty staggers back home.

Tastes iron.
Smells iron.
Feels iron.
Feels it deep.
Feels it deeper,
As it eats him inside out.

I’ve heard there used to be
A blue cave in those eyes.
But they must have
Burned out the sky
With all those fires,
Let alone a little iris.
Discards piled up over the
Half-remembered and half-hated
Songs. Not to mention all
The birds that used to sing them.
We never have birds anymore.

There may only be fifteen
Minutes before the fires catch
Up, but all his words
Would still burn through.
Who can say what lies beyond
The close of eyes save a
Broken string and a splintered
Reed? Rules that defy ink,
Defy Hoyle and his ilk.
Line up the minutes,
The fewer minutes yet,
With a slide rule.

We only feel how sharp it really is
When we meet ours, as he’s met his.

Standing rigid underneath a frozen
Light, I write down my wish for
Quiet. I whisper Tennessee
Williams to my naked feet.

Tomorrow ought to be much better.

In the next room sits my brother
Who is warm to his ears. He shoots at men
And is shot down and
Swears himself to sleep.

I fold the advertisement into a breathing crane.

Letter opener:
He fills his lungs and his arms
With the universe.

A-1 specimen,
He won't put his hand on his heart,
Not after all this.

Two men embrace in
A darkened room. Turns out
It's only his skull.

The intimate mountain--
Weekends in a mercury supermarket--
And the nearly vindictive lilt in
Your voice when you drop the
Last 'T' in restaurant!

Perhaps for just a few months
We might dispense with the honorifics,
Because we each know perfectly
Well your finger-ring has a smile
For no one but me.

The first autumn was always impossible for me
(or at least it will be).
Winds winding like a clarinet--
A boulangerie cover of
Dies Irae.

Now where have I misplaced my
Sensory glands? Charles
Walks an intricately awkward emphasis
In ungodly,
Strangely comfortable stilettos.

The emcee has no frigging
Idea what the people want to hear anymore.
His serape and his wine--
Not to mention his women,
Although I have just now.

Poor little frog.
It looses owners off its skin
Like tadpole-seeds, over
A game of backgammon
That never really cheats anybody.

The abandoned LiveJournal account.
The forgotten Myspace passwords.
The iPod that hasn't been updated in years.
The body slumped on a threadbare sofa.
The broken earbuds and busted eardrums.

Start spreading the news:
I've already left.
Go and empty the pews;
My mother bereft.
And the Chamber of Commerce wants to blame the ****** on me.

Look.

He was just very enthusiastic about
being a fireman. He was always on
time and he never stole anything.

That's all I wanna say about it.

He never touched nobody or nothing.

That's all.
Really.
And stop calling.

There is a beetle on the high street,
pushing the sun along at a fraction-
0f-a-mile-per-hour. He is pondering
his plans for the summer.
Perhaps different venues?
Perhaps different dung?
But he knows it's all foolishness.
He never goes anywhere.

Then a god falls out of the sky.
Not a particularly large one,
a medium-sized god as far as
they go. Roughly human-
shaped. Not counting those
streaming banners of fire
that pour from his eyes.
Few humans have burning eyes.

A dagger drips from an open
wound and he clenches his
blood (it is his own blood) in his hand.
More are coming he realizes.
All of them. And he's quite
correct. Without trumpets or
lights or choruses or bowls or
scrolls, it starts to rain.

The beetle pauses in his
pilgrimage to survey the
man underneath the god's feet.
A hand in a crater of asphalt
with a keen, nigh-inaudible
wheeze of breath. A cough
and a choke.
And the beetle scuttles on.

They fall from clouds that aren't,
I mean, actually in the sky. They crush
buildings and businessmen, They
eat fountains. They descend into an
unthinkable and unthinking
age like a dizzied chorus that cannot
pick up on the beat. Purple sash
and green helm, They build mountains.

Teeth chip around the clay- the men
and women- like fireworks.
The gods' great works resolve
like a finished slider puzzle, like the
back of the sun. Mannequins watch
the moving marble for a moment.
But the Mutes eventually find a voice,
they shout, they run into the fray.

Tantalus' mouth fills with
wine. The beetle walks around his
head. Sisyphus' back was broken
by a boulder. The poor little fellow
descends into an inferno and
climbs the devil's back like a
Purgative mountaineer. Such struggle,
thinks he, to have to take a detour.

Sky sets fire to the shell pink
sun at night.

The liquid spheres engulf ideas
on a dry stretch of ocean.

Clouds splinter in a victor's hands,
are frozen shut.

and everything sinks back home
in the middle of a wor

Oh madam!,
Red of face and quick of word.
I must admit the father
sees no one today.
He has taken (white of face
and singly staring) ill and
thus has closed the box.
There must be no confession
while he lingers so
within.

Who knows what he might say!
Who knows what sins he might forgive!

"Let the ants toil freely," I heard
him declare, "while the birds
mend their fractured flight."

Now, until Our Father deems
it fit our father ours
should heal the sick, I most repentant
ask you hold it in.

Texan-Georgian-Jews
Dance around a Christmas tree.
Forty minutes gone.

The lady in violet waits
by Arab candle light for the sounding
of twenty-one silver bells.

Seven white divisions led
by four black stars.

Her stories feed the drowsy
like a stoppered angel
in the axe-man's hands.

"This s.o.b. has got Tourette's.
Who knows what he might say? We'd better
Get him under before he rises.
Sterilize something fast!"

I'm awake for the time being. When sleep comes
I shall play the perfect display of my bacillus. Reposing
On the white table like a necrotic pieta. Off to my
Left I can hear those touchstones spinning in fine sockets,
Sterilizing my hands by binding my feet. Soon I will be
A paragon of grunting celluloid, clutched at by
Heated hearts to wrinkle and shear.
I can already taste the cleanser.

Rubber foam, steel clamp and tongue depressor.
Excise the black portions with a serrated life,
You might as well. Because it doesn't matter
How much morphine sits in the delirium drip.
I'm still alive: the crush and blink in Boris Karloff eyes.

When I gather up my self in the morning.
I will be instructed to take all Ten a day
And check in regularly. Despite the cold,
Despite the heat, the embryo has quite failed.

It was a fortunate evening
I chose to stroll out. Somewhat cold
and cloying soft for recent rain.

The grass arched speculative at me
the better to see Godot on his way to an appointment.
Just so, the stage light
mixed its ponderous firmaments
to a more even pigment.

I gazed upward at the longing, doleful
eye and felt the monochrome sigh of
that girl who sits upon the air.
She directs her lambent limelight
half-heartedly for she only reads the script by candlelight.

You can see her strolling over gondoliers
or pausing on the running man  in a
nineteen-forties travel film with all
the ubiquitous pains of
a villain in a childhood mystery.
A bleating bulb that never burns the eye.

Jack jumped last night.
We might have expected it
had we not been so unsuspecting.

Those blue periods of his,
I'm sure you've witnessed one,
were walled in somewhat by the
swelling tides of years
and years
and years.
When they came, they were
quelled by the very occasional red mark.
These punctuations
when they mercifully visited
would open doors for him, in
which our brother, neighbor,
father discovered strange liquid
tendencies to ailing strength.
Too many blank-out nights
could find him and his new
battery bickering the old childhood
verses. Too many four-of-the-clocks
would cue the choragos his
specter-critic's eye to deign a
Plan on our friend's blue
stationary.

A smile might have
mailed it straight ahead.

Perhaps it was last week when the
boat met the shore, some heinous
delivery of packaged, patent-business
sealed reformation, salvation.
In the midst of his violet smile
the cogent steam engine had a chute
into which it might heartily crash.
However it came remains to be seen.
What we have all seen this morning
remains our family's chief export.

Jack jumped last night.
He ascended the hill with his red hands
full of ****** punctuation marks, and
he spouted full-rehearsed
all those lines he'd learned in
grade school. Like a prolix
Gertrude complaining of her thirst.
And with the singularity of purpose
that haunts even the sharpest eyes,
he completes the trek to his three-foot tall Kusinagara
with his asthma wrapped around his neck.

Victory is a queer bird. Its song is never heard
the whole way through.

He breathes in weightlessness,
regains his bearing and waits for the
lines to quiet down. No one should leave
in the middle of a recitation, regardless
of the quality. At last, "Richard Cory"
reaches his terminal syllable and
our dearest man searches for his place in the music.
And it's just a minute,
just a minute,
just a minute,
jumps.

Jack jumped last night
Just as he said he would,
And had we heard him say it
We'd have thought "He could. He could."

The novelist shows people that do not exist
in situations that never happened.

The memoirist shows actual people
in situations that never happened.

The biographer shows people that do not exist
in actual situations.

The poet shows every person that has ever existed
in situations that should have happened.

The playwright shows people that should have existed
in every situation that has ever happened.

The journalist rather makes one prefer fiction.

My newest hobby is telling people
that I have a prom date, watching the drift of mouths
and listening to the refocusing
of eyes. I'm sure they don't mean
to be rude but they certainly make a good show
of their unkempt reactions.

"Really?" comes the pestilential chorus
as trains of thought rapidly switch tracks.

One stalwart, you may shudder
to hear this, expressed profound
disgust when I disclosed the girl's identity.
"I wasn't aware they let lesbians go to the dance.”
he says and I: "Well, you'll find
they cannot bar the doors to any
sort of trash. You're going right?"

Not a thing about this business seems (to my joying eyes)
quite belonging to its proper world. Yes, it's really me.

I, the wandering ******-shaman,
must look quite at odds in their view;
despoiling the *** ritual
by stepping out from behind
the moon's galling rind of half-light.
To beat at my own tides? Oh, god!
The quiddity of my queer mind
is sacred like a water-walking rumor.

I find myself betrothed behind my back,
my role is sealed ere tightness shows a crack.

The sky shoots its myriad blue eye
into a pavane of reds and silvers.
A farrago of ****** tastes signal second dawn at noon.
An indescribable sound pierces the eardrum
from the inside as it rushes ******,
humanly,
inhumanely outward.

Face all of crag
Lined out in youth
And smoothed where Time thinks best.
Parenthetical mouth.
Asterisk-ine blush spreads
Where Doubt lingers.
Question marks pronounced
Exquisitely through lips.
Like a tactile symphony,
No harsh chord exists.
Not in the lines of the face
Though it looks as if its
Planes were imported from disparate periods.
From a Baroque cheek
To a Tudor brow
And a smirk that even James would be
Hard-pressed to translate.

To my initial A. Long may he reign;
For I feel in truth whatever he may feign.

Some days there are no problems.
Others, becoming more the frequent,
I feel as safe as Anne Frank in
A china shop.

It's never good fun.
But it doesn't have to be this way.

Either the seekers' rubber boots
Squeak up on me
Or I fling myself against the
Floodlit brick wall.
I've dreamed it a thousand ways.
What new can they do?
Their gas and their bullets, and
Their tire irons across my cheek
Cannot hurt me, a fool
Who has no fear of death,
As every day Death walks beside
And casts a grey lens to filter
What I can see.

If I am caught
If I am found out
And if their hands, their hands, their hands
Pull at me until I am We,
I hope the rendered halves
Push forth that warm light we like to hear about
In place of a deluge.
A light
To burst forth doors
And save the ones who perch like finches
Daring never fly.

I might hope only to become a hand.
A hand in which to step
And to be clasped
And in that clasp be free.
For all the men and women and
For all the in-between as well.
I wish that I could give that to you.
To rip away from your grey rags,
Your stars and triangles,
And in the persiflage of silence
Break the gates and cells
With my limp wrists.

Throw stones until my blood be upon me.
Mother.
Father.
Sons and lovers.
Break my mouth and put my eyes away.
Let, though, my skin go last
As a radial, red calyx.
I. We. All.
I wish to be the last to see the sun.

To be at last
And to be me.

Rubber soles squeak without pretense on air
Fills the floor and the dwellers' ears
With the simple note,
Deafens them all with empty afterechoes.

Not a single meanderer would care if he
Pulled out a gun.
Instead he pulls out a knife
(a paring knife to be exact)

And selects a chair near the door.
Begins to shear the hour.
The knifeblade gleams behind his eyes,
Skewering seconds,

And he continues not to exist,
Murdering minutes.
Someone physically there remarks a draft
So he rises to shut the door,

But reconsiders and retreats
Back to his homestead seat.
Crossed arms and crossed legs.
However evilly uncomfortable,

The figure must be statuesque like the air must be.
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. And then sixty arrives
And he rises like a seagull in an operating room
In a grand gesture. He smiles to no one and

Retreats back to his burrow or wherever he lives.

But no one considers old, mad Mister Gray
Though he comes and sits queerly there day after day.

Electric river
stretch bluely
past events
and their horizons.
Fingers spider
by facespans
to ***** in
the semidark.
Cannot see
past "do not want"
but I could write
it in the sky
to last for
these blackened
hands.
Electric river:
it does not flow
out of any
incredulous
uncertainty.
It advances
azurine, ringing
past words, works
and their echoes,
past influences
and their ******
circles.
No web and no
fine web
can confine the
austerity in its
loose dimensions.