Oh, I guess I don't really know.
The music. Texas amber.
The voice of the moon. The barred door.
The death of the dog. Ampersands.
Woman underground.

The silk woods.
Women in purple houses.
The underside of the whale, the sun.
Have I got my shoes?
Words with even emphasis.
Speech impediments; the pen.
Too many rooms.
Any kind of jam, jelly.
Vertex in space.
Mint-flavoured Scientology advertisements:
Early Easter Sunday.
Strips of Velcro, ****** hair.
Original manuscripts and forks.
Tea-leaf autumns.

Footfalls.
Summon the poets.
Start the El Camino.
Strike my face with a match.
Eat Wonderland.

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.

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.]

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.

There is a pleasant silence in my head
And dreary pressure joins my dreary thoughts.
The color from my waking dreams turns grey
Likewise my cloudy vision fills with spots.
You cannot know how much relief I feel
For you, alas, have skipped and are not here.
You left my home and my bronze heart
And everything through illness came quite clear.
The tree outside my window stands the snow
To carry straggling dabs of wintry life.
I see more birds in frost than I had before
When summer, summer smothered us with strife.
     You've left: my mouth is cracked a thousand miles.
     The earth around, I've wrapped with my queer smiles.

They wear white shirts that lope into the village square
And hate the dust that settles there.

Their children leave the schoolhouse with schoolmaster's nod
To see the traveling works of odd.

With cries and drums and fire held in open hands,
Four insects bless the godless lands.

Yes, every song on every face is writ on steel,
Cemented by the thunder's peal.

Toward the night the fires burned away the spell,
Yet still the truth did four men tell.

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.

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.

I stood in the water
which rose to my ankles
and I asked it to lower an inch.

But water is set from
the sea to the stagnant
and it paid no attention to me.

I stood to the chillness
which swallowed my stomach
and I begged it to give me some room.

Still the puddle was deaf
from loud years in the sky
and it reached its blue arms around me.

I stood in the last lights
with a collar of ice
and I prayed all might cover my head.

Then the water did drop
as a freak act of chance,
but my feet are still stuck in the earth.

You are the hidden quantity,
The man on the other side of the canvas,
The word written behind the sky.

You are the breath
that transfers oxygen to the lungs of an awful house cat.

You are the reason
that anybody bothers to finish the book

You are the second wasted retrieving coffee
that allows the stars to escape me.

You are the trauma in my childhood
that will haunt my genetic code.

You are the x
for which I am solving.

You are the hook in a song
that makes all the fans remember it.

You are the ingredient
that is toxic on its own.

You are the remembered name
in a world of forgotten faces.

You are the accidental word
that destroys the context of the sentence.

You are the electric innovation
of which I would never have thought.

You are the designation of a fiasco,
The shadow we recognize,
The boy or the girl. It doesn't matter which.

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.

Over the city while we sleep,
Outlined birds under the snow
Dream about us.

There used to be an old woman
with an apple tree, and she'd
let me shoot at her.

The blackened foam beneath the
cliff aspired higher than they
ever could.

Who is that lying in the ash?
Without food and without heat
and without blinking?

The ******* the right finally
said something to us that was
not that funny.

To the sand, to the boulevard
with a bang in the heart, and
with plenty to spare.

But don't listen to me,
I'm just the last six words
of a story you've all heard before.
Everybody knows what happens next,
we just like to doubt.

You cold?

I am.

My jacket.

Thanks.

Yepp.

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.

Oh see the thing! Glass mesosphere and ink:
The soil contumely in the field of green
From times when man among the sand could think
A second longer, in the stone tureen.
His hand to wrist to arm is a bone at a blink.
Though pink birds innocent, they hope to glean
With blinding Wednesday eyes, they love to drink.
He, Woden-******, gathers what they've seen.
We gray collected in a city's link
Descend and nest on pavements, there to preen,
And watch enchanted victims gaily sink
By the cardboard box, attracted to the sheen.
     A street magician can the world reverse
     With subtlety and somewhere to rehearse.

He falls like a velvet bird
And lands scarlet loudly
In the hole we dug for him.
The four of us struggle earth
Back to its sweet home
At dusk. No eulogy or parting word
But I would lay my envious form
Down to die in the damp, the musk.

They would as well. This much anyone
Could surmise. Their teeth are set
At edge, are bare and they can
Ring the salty scanning soil in wait.
All thought and breath lies underground.
Word has it four men turned to stone at dawn.

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

I've noticed that I've stopped noticing;
The way I look at the forbidden face
And the way it looks at me
No longer stirs the heavens.
No sailboat turns on its heaving sea
When our corneas connect in a brazen
Fire, nor do any fidgeting mourners
Swallow graves over our crashing pink hands.
The tin-suited band piece has long ago
Replaced any emotion that could inflame
My cheek with a khaki cigarette smoke
And spun out days like empty bags.
     Still for the rainwater of his laugh alone
     Might I swim the Earth's crooked orbit.

Where is the cake? You
totally promised me there would be
cake. Words fail me. That simpering
gleam in your eyes is well-deserved,
you swine.

Yes, I'm still ****** about it.
You said I could have some. All
I wanted was a bite because I don't even
particularly like cake, but I guess
all those sweet words of yours were
just artifice.

No, that's okay. I understand, you
just did what you had to. If that entails
giving away my cake, I don't care.
I'm not going to hold a grudge or anything
over something stupid like cake. Ha!
Don't be ridiculous, it's not like the cake was good, right?
Carrot cake, you say?

Someday there will be time to reminisce,
But now my current plan is one of dread:
To yank your hair and whisper "**** on this,"
And pull your eyes out of your ******* head.

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.

a circle of squares
and a circle inside
hands rest on shoulders
for a moment
beneath a paltry smile
that smells of burning plastic.
acrid strength hides in
corners of years
under second skins of dust.
harsh lines emulsed
in black and white
etched in perpetuity
by the blaze heat
of cool baths,
drowned to life
in an inch of chemical.
Its womb is the darkroom.
Its crypt is a scrapbook.
Its lovers countless looking eyes.

vegetation bleeds upward
toward heat-crying mothers
nascent textures that unfold.

underneath waterspout
sighing deathmasks contort
hoarse features pass to praise.

vast cradle inters wee motes
fleck of much that floats
stretches brazen in dawns full of dust.

all passes in my lack of sight
heat kills clarity at first
by swallowing air and greens and giving birth.

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.

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.

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.

Down in the cellar.
By the river, by the candlelight.
She sits with her pale grey

Eye that points and beckons,
Beckons to the gibbering
Of incessant trees.

She calls out to the Man she
Is destined to meet
Like everyone else.

Like the curdling of what
Is there, faceless, at birth.
A Figure proceeds out.

From his coat He pulls a
Golden pin that is as long as
A day or longer. He smiles,

He takes her hand and stabs.
Her wrist beads with the
Dawn. It runs down her arm.

She smiles, she takes her candle
By the wick and feeds
A Man

Her flame.
Under the speculative moon.
Under the sleeping house.

Finally, a sigh from the Man.
He has no mouth to speak of.
To the river He leads her.

The water accepts her. A hand
on her neck, He the biting aid.
Not light.

Not of need, but to feed-
To cede an ember.
To burn her up in the night.

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.

Little girls in ****-bright paint
and their brothers with button-ups,
colorful shoes. I'll never be that fast.
"He" is having a party and his parents
will be gone. I could bring the
***** and be well-liked; lying
on the carpet in the sticky ***-smoke.
Summer spins as the ceiling fan
lies still. Still, I'll never be that fast.

My neighbors all burst into flame
But they're cool enough to dowse themselves.

Every day.
The everyday.
You see it every day.
The twitch and reel and marble movement
As turgid blood surfaces to face,
Flows to operate stiff shoulders.
Backs hunch as soon as they're alone.
And they are alone.
Surrounded by lovers that
Love in word only.
They chew their nails and cross their ankles.
Uncross.
And look around.

Spring. Could you imagine?
Gear, wire. Did he say?
Bolt, frame. Isn't he?
Ratchet. And then what did he say?
Screws.
Rotor.
A bunch of ****.
Oil.
Oil.
Oil. Oil. Oil.
Plug in.
Silence.
It moves.

We move a head in times of
Strain. To signify
Exact measures.
Twist on axis
With perfect posture.
Unnoticed frameworks bar our days.
We are brass.
The more crass are silver, gold.
And the days are polish. Or maybe sand.
Soon there are no mistakes.
The veneer cakes without flaw.
We do not acknowledge.
We are not caught.

For little hours though, there are kinks.
Pauses.
Errors.
Open the clockwork face.
What is stuck?
A look around.
The gears that grind us to cognition
Are jammed by a fly-body
Of soul.
Soon, soon, sooner than ever
It will be crushed.
So gears might continue,
Might make room for the everyday.

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.

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

It must be nearly four on this side of the road.
With a great touch of import,
Trundling through the semi-wet
And gazing at the flints refracted in sod.
A few meters across and there is succor,
There is warmth, where the earth is
Turned fresh. Very little keeps me thus
From that solid solid open door.

Still, I should be a fool to with a one
Hand cast resolve into the nighted water
Of the soul and with the other
Craft the very means for its
Exhumation. As I turn around I close
The door and shamble into dawn.

softly
through the hair
step
upon the stair
song
beneath the ceiling and
the story
isnt there

hes
out there
drinking his something
or other
god i need water
because its *******
hot in the desert

when
the cold is too much for me
i sleep on my side
and wish it was
yours

he wasnt mine but i heard him sing the words

softly
through the hair
step
upon the stair
song
beneath the ceiling and
the stories
out of air.

Lizards sun, drag hours for themselves
On the baked rock face,
With tense hands prepared always
To run, even in the face of bliss.

Hands curve prematurely,
Turn rock face into a more appealing
Rock bodice, and the
Lizards are cast away
By the sudden **** of millennia.
Do not litter the bettered stone
With a dainty snowflake likeness
Sought in the bedragglings of
Their skeletons.
What little ancestry to look back upon.
It's probably better...

No, absolutely it is.
That is the cry of the valley:
Massed voices weighted with spring
And enunciated by winters.

The sunrock bathes for
Whoever knows how long,
In drys
And in humids.
And then one day is crushed
Underfoot by the hulking form,
By the tense little claw of a
Reckoning nomad.
The surroundings look
Sharp at the smart little giant
And pull themselves neatly away from the dust.

Days extrapolating feeling
Rise before beloved nightfall;
Fill my wisdom teeth with malice
And my writing hand with red sound.

Could it be that such a nightfriend
Wishing me his presence bear be
Such a creature of convulsion to
The color-coded fireworld?

Yet again, it could be thus:
A figment of the waterthought
Defending self-same affluence
In verdant speech clouds’ spheres.

Here simplicity should be foregone
Whilst incorporating to my ken
The worthiest of childhood urge
And true descriptions seen therein.

"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.

The Sun is dire and bites His sandy teeth
Into the burnt and the discourteous.
If you forget to tell us that you've sneezed
The devil will devour you in hell.
The sky is but a face that hides His shame,
In burqas made of promises and cloud.
If you or I were one day to awake
Our blood might chill at all the mocking air.
The desert kindly tucks its child to bed
And never mind the fact of naked bones.
If mystery's the reason for my life,
The One who writes it gives some dreadful clues.
     See, any spectral hand who wants for care
     Is something for which something must be done.

There's little more to do for
that solitary image.
A brown house on an off-brown
background. The door stopped
closing right nearly ten
years ago.

She sits at the single table
eating the brown dust like
a baby's song, cooing to
herself. Cooing to the walls.
And stopping to stretch her
muted fingers.

He sleeps. A deserved sleep.
Better than propped dry against
the outside wall, marshaled
hands still en deshabille. All
that stuff was his wife's or
his father's.

It fetched a nice enough price
all the same, and where
antiquity fails the wise man
speeds off with a whistle. Funny
tune, but it's better than what the
wife murmurs.

Oh my, one almost forgets.
There was a boy as well, but
he left long ago, must have
been nearly twelve or so
years ago, when the sun was high
as now.

Though truth be told, he was
one of those poor ******* that
exercised theory and let practice
starve; let action gather dirt
and whipped the thoughts to breathe in
still more dust.

One would say they raised him
right enough and still be wrong.
The day he closed that door
on them, they just stood still
kinda watching as the wind blew
them along.

I feel pretty sick knowing
you’ll be a part of my
art.
My poems have you in
them like a metallic aftertaste.
A hint of nuts.
Did you put vermin in
this fricassee?
Some people put God in
their poems but with me
it’s always you.
You’re the inky air in
the corner that congeals like
bad music.
No, I don’t want to
listen to that song.
Just put it on “shuffle”
for Chrissakes.
You sit there in the
crack on the wall and
scrunch your body at me.
You’ll ruin your posture but
you’re not really there.
It’s a metaphor.
It’s what poets do when
they hate you as much
as I do:
You blast my taste buds
away from the ordinary and
force me to talk about
you in euphemisms.
Or dysphemisms in this case.
God, I don’t freaking know.
You just make me angry!
“I’ll treat you to dinner.”
*******, go treat yourself to the bottom of a lake.

I told you you were
black space in the walls,
but I’ve opened a window.
Weren’t expecting that, were you?
Still, perhaps you’re too utterly
utter to suffer the flutter
of the breeze.
I’m going out.
And believe you me pal, you’d better be gone by the time I get back.

Even though I know you’re not really there.
It’s the principle of the thing.

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.

Yes, I think it would be fine to say we are the
Sun and the Moon, respectively.
The world and sky of our disparate souls
nicely encapsulated.
To simple metaphor.

Yes. But it is incomplete, you know.
For sun may never touch moon,
and Day has no place in
the dominion of the nocturnal.
And the moon can have no adequate
view (but a sidelong glance) at
man and Earth in the sun's hand.

No,
I can touch you and you me.
Still more, I can see you and grow familiar
with what you beam upon;
Lie with the subtlety of a new night's
descent with my eyes twinkling
nonplussed to the crux of neck and shoulder.

Yes. We are, you and I, the Sun and the Moon,
if you say we are.
For you cast back the dark and shun the
dark places.
And the thin veil and living line that keeps
days apart, the Night, is the one corner
upon which I fear you shall never
Intrude.

I feel like I am A New Orlean doll
With my burlap and my threaded seams
To view the world.
My fingers are stitched
And immobile.

I feel like I should scream—
Scream to wake
Scream to crack the atmosphere
Or scream to come alive.
My mouth, however, is dumb.

I feel like I am in someone else's shape
Someone who has wronged
And will be wronged alike
With needles I ***** myself.
My embroidery comes apart near my chest.

Blind woman's stitch binds me to his hair.
He turns and drops when I am rendered air.

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

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.

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.

Sepia wind runs through forgotten hands
Around a fitted frame, beneath a door;
Too like a battlement of local lore,
Too like an estuary of white sands.
And wind continues on and eastward past
A café built by Orpheus to house
The hungry lovers that would look, would louse
Eurydices by looking on at last.

And all to meet a rail upon a coast
Where sits a flower and a god of earth
Exchanging looks that burn the stars' bright feet.
She drinks the inks of valorous repeat,
Where fails the poet's hopeful hand at birth:
Exchanging all the words that leave us most.

Stop. Become fluid.
Flow from your body to elicit a secret congress.
Drip away from your eyes
and fill the outline of my vacancy.
Meet me as I was and sleep
that peace in the warmth I
bore but no longer occupy.

And I will stop. Become gas
and seep unnoticed from too, too
solid wakefulness.
To the darkest corner of the
night sky and the brightest
glint of heat between particles.
So that you can touch naught
but my outline.
And feel but the passing breadth
of my hot breath.

The heart that ticks
Inside her chest
Will talk to someone else.

I should have lived to thank you more,
where the blue dots and the green dots
met on a stormy porch-front streaming
crack-paint, blank and dirt from years
of games on the blurry tabletops.

Years of games.

We should have walked in the fields,
you the tide swelling and falling and
ultimately disgorging universes of all
you used to know: the good and the small
and the stern and the silly and the cruel.

The good and the small.

He will take your place in the shows,
in all the nightlies and the dailies,
grey hat and black sash. He is taller
by far, and you can't look up to someone
that unabashedly taller than you.

Grey hat and black sash.

You would have made time for me between
strides on the honest diamond of the sky,
and I? I might not listen at all, but
the pearl in the glasses, those awful
brown glasses would stay with me.

I might not listen at all.

She sat with us many evenings as the
winds raked the small lights of our speech.
What has become of her, I wonder more
frequently, but sleep with my head
on my hands all the same.

Sleep with my head on my hands.

They call me under the door, they call.
They fill me with themselves until I'm out.
Just what they want from me and less. Still,
they can't tell me the good and the small,
The fact that deep down I am nothing at all.

The fact that deep down I am nothing at all.

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.