No destinations—
Weird sycophant's pantheon,
Gertrude Stein's Oakland.

Today, a poem should be palatable, cute
As a Kiwi fruit,

Dumb
As a horse battalion's scudding run,

Strident as out of tune horns
Of basement bands where the gloss has grown—

A poem should be bloodless
As the slight of words.

A poem should be film of ocean brine
As the reel unwinds,

Cleaving as the gear greases
Spoke by spoke the light smearing breeze,

Blowing, to the temple outhouse
Exalting all the ****** functions—

A poem should be not true:
Equal too.

For all the history of vanity
An empty room and a bass relief

For lust
The keening masses and no light above the stream

A poem should not be
But mean.

In the temple of the mind— flash,
Mortal pegs are but fingers shape,
The light of dreariest day, told lash,
All for the rush, conspiring too late.

Without ever hands  .  .  .
She knew deep power of touch,
  .  .  .  Still heart broke on hold.

Time is teasing along with lush earth so pleasing,
The minutes of our youth are spent in toiled days
And sands are blowing the weld of our sold means,
Foundations of dust, the cries unheard, of the aged.

And then, as dream, you came from the starry skies
Blue and small as the ocean dot, forever fixed—
Reigning over the frozen, revolving moon that lies,
Dimly wakes in your fabled orbit, my fated ellipse.

Now, time tables and splits, renders me to eaves
Undone, my squandered youth was but a sad play
And I am clocked with wind, the geld of my dreams,
Had shiftless hands been more solid than my days.

The sea gulls— who fly in wanton
To the horizon, are a spirits
calling, are sea songs falling
To my mind they falter— as I
Have known such cozen to the sun
That falls each day nor do I see
It rising.  My world is weighted,
Under, pass the lining of the quick,
By the mounted cloud which hangs silver
Over the plated night. The owl,
Whose eyes of Janus tails, when wanes
The lids, tied to crescent holey
Whelm of malevolent moon,

Praise over me, with wooly wings,
Is silent as shadow.  I may strut or run
But they do come as the shadows will
With cahooting sun, and the blotting
Bald faced moon, chiaroscuro—
The days feign and heaven pales under
The wake of the luna sea.

       In darkest daylight
I shamble toward the flat horizon
Where the seabirds fly, till their ends,
I take two-faced my faulty comfort
As I see them, falter, falling, yet never
Do they touch the gloaming ground.

Abjure the bones broken in,
The first lift frissoned by
The moving trees slain on the shift,
Rivers and risen flowers cut,

My statuary lurches betide
The nap of bent wing saluting.

My aviary is a fluttering bed,
The scattered head REMs my flight,
My feet in cloud extend for landings
Tings the belled bound legging.

My falconer bows with pride
In the stall bent wings stooping.

My clawed creature glides for only
The pitching sun or shining moon
And my flights execution, the hooded
Head, end trails my falconer.

My days, fowl to the lunar kite,
Assail the winds open wound.

Is all concrete below ephemeral skies,
To think what is now as already made,
Riding lone, the plateaus of a minds eye,
Or is whole of nature purest esplanade?

Greatest eagle, black and white,
Tell me how to reach the skies—
Wander with wind into the night,
Are you lost like me when you fly?
I see you marking the flaming sun
And want to follow your windy path,
Rising after moon, majestic one—
What trials of life in your aftermath?

I have lost my sun,
Though I still orbit in a strange attraction.

I have lost my music,
Though I know my heart sings sound.

I have lost my vision,
Though I see in dreams an impossible beauty.

I have lost my sense,
Though this world has never tasted as sour.

I have lost my purpose,
Though aimlessly, I write in the pale drear of twilight.

I have lost my reason,
Though I chart dangerous courses without a crew.

I am the last falls of the loveliest red proscenium
curtain.

I am over, undone, a foundling, lost,
Without you.

Sometimes the sun is not heard,
The world is silent yet, is living
Cold, the moon stirs not even
As it is rising, the birds are mute
The trees and oceans are still
All things are pointed and dull.
I hear a lonesome hound baying
At the empty skies when clouds
Are covering with a smear of smoke.
Where are the words that are never
Said?  What light burns my eyes,
Darkening most at the days zenith?
What is the language for sanity?
Why is there no math, no translation
For the heart?

Sometimes the sun is missing
Or lost by a sea of tears raining
In collusion with the shifty earth,
Sometimes the numbering stars
Are merely zeros, the die casting
On the green and desperate table
Of the turning world.  Sometimes
The sun sinks early to the west
And the moon is trailing not far
Behind.

Wings beat to overtake.
Now, above you like a fire shot
In a silent film the rush begins.
Wings fold inward, the air turrents,
Streams, as a ball swirling in a tube,
Grey bullet in the barrel,
The slide to the **** and the talons,
Make their mark before the hitch.
Soft plosives bearly sounding,
Crake, blood cupped in the claws,
From the breast and the rose  
Heart, now in a tail spin,  

Nostrils whine in the fall.  
No jury just but a sup of the faded  
Heart by one raging one.  
The wilted wings are stirring  
To the last as the pointed  
Wingman ferries, the wholly bred,
Quarry of perfection, jolts  
And jilts, and His scythe of feathers
Holds sway in the whirl.
As the God-made creature
From high heaven flies
The mourning dove must die.

My story ends of sparkle,
Hands, winding me in fable
The dark lines of her lashing eyes
Are burning rings, shear ice,
Covering the lost ponds of spring,
To see her in the ripening fields
Is to know the myriad colours
Of flowers, wild with loneliness,
She is always numbering the days,
Always on parade, hair, with out end,
Tresses trailing the wind.