When I was a kid
My old friend, Hashem
Broke an egg.

He watched
the yoke
madly spread out
and stain the white
like starving dogs
would chase
stuffed prey.

I often wonder if
He wonders

What could have been
If He had left that Chicken

Alone.

If stars
with all their
burning vanities
and distant individuality
can gravitate
to form galaxies,

I think maybe,
just maybe,
we can
make it
through
one *******
wedding.

we are dinosaurs.

me and my friends:
are chalky ***** figures.

spine-braced--
in a claymation display.

you will never truly
know us.

we are:
not
living.

we are:
the insides
of buildings.

we are:
a main exhibit

watch:
the stutter
of movements.

cold,
lucid,
lizards.

every shroud
thrown on

only invokes
the wrath
of the architecht

after all
what is a body
but a bag of bones
wagered to
break
or tossed on turtle shells
to predict
great things.

did you come to be alone?
when you first came to my room? i no longer see you
as something relative in
space, but more the opposite.

time snakes your trailing coordinates and occupied
places. you are fleeting.

you are
gone. all i see are
the empty spaces,

eyes in love with the wall who
wove wounds
into
itself: to silhouette you.

but you go on, peggy, you insist much like the rest
of them
to make me wish
with a most wishful
wit we have
all had the good fortune to witness.

but how can i shoo you away?

your beauty perches and whines into the night
beating my window
as she stalks the walls beside my bed,
perching, but also,
purring.

&above; all things, peggy
learn to live,
patiently.

because you cant

leave,
i have not washed that sheet;

⁢ still holds you
i know you wrap it around
you like you
wish it were a
woeful
and warm
me.

these are things i know.
but did you come here to be alone?

its cold out here
and me on the other side of space
opposite of a *******
exploding star
what was i to do?
but not say a thing
and take in all the bitter temperatures.

peggy shannon,
wont you share the covers?

you were always there
sitting in the study
rainy window pane eye sockets
persistently looking past me

like i was just someone who died
a year ago and came back to visit you
from the grave
a spirit you could save

or shove in the right direction

you were always there
presenting the necklace
like it were strung with pearls of air

like someone didnt pay
6 weeks of pay checks on it
just so some men half a world away could
walk on ocean beds
and crack the skulls
of those chattering heads
of the sea.

for each and
every bead

wrapped around your neck
ms. fleming,
you'd do well
to-

...forget that
and all other things
if i could just
have an inch of your time and gaze
i may not be this wicked
astral projection
your aversions
have yielded to my name

no i might be something else

like a guardian angel
who picks up rusty tacks
and puts out your cigarettes
who pulls up your covers
and presses lips to your cheeks
oh i could be this all
if you would for once look when i called

'susan fleming
if you can be a
pleasant host
i can be
a friendly ghost.'

i would like to stand beside kathryn burke.
well
only if You
can promise
it wouldn't hurt.

a promise: is a
promise: and You
promised: You would.

i would just be happy
if she would sit beside me
on a park bench
under a sky
as absent, as dark
as the black lace that chased
her skin

and even if You were
really dead and gone,
(or so says Nietzsche,
a fact i still find hard to believe)
even then,
i wouldn't mind.
as long as that rib
was returned to my side.

then i wouldnt be so half-
empty.
so inside:
out.

then maybe the mirror
would bare an image to me.

boy, i'd finally be living!

who would of thought
a sorry lot
like me
would be
a **** worth giving?

surely
none of the Lords
that are still
living?

but a promise: is a
promise:
and she always

promises.

like those pretty eyes of hers
i couldn't keep

in pockets full of posies

kathryn burke?

does it hurt?

to stand, to sit, to lay
beside me?

Every night you can paint me the fool:
with wide white smiles,
under a punctuated brow.

I can feign happiness,
without expression.

My face burning red
like this ball nose still.

What would be said of an actor
and his stage,
without a performance?

The show persists itself,
and thusly must keep going on.

Line, after practiced line.
Tangled in a web.
With spiders closing in.

And their laughter approaches as a storm:
teaching me humility, in all of its forms.

Flushed egg white dripping down my face,
as the ink, shameful, sinks into permanence.

The spot light flickers,
as the dust, suspended, sinks like a swift snow.

I should of known, fame

like love

doesn’t last forever.