we escaped
the ravenous crowds of the beach
the secrets seagulls screech
that discussed the implausibility
of you leaving with me
you walked
with the sound of the coast
the deep ancient sea
clearing its throat
to call you home
furthering the distance
from me
to you.

The darkest humorist:
makes light my fears,
so that this floating ship
will not sink
some 20,000 leagues
under it's panicked weight,
pointing to six exits,
laughing, she straps me to a chair
and tells me,
"The place we are all going--
soon, we'll be there."

A poem
is like my breath
on a windowpane,
a condensation of my soul,
developing only to dissipate,
leaving dusty ancient clues.
Fingerprints of my true name
point back at me.

the page shivers under my pen
like soil when the dam breaks
it knows it must change
like tinder to my flame

inhaling, i consume it
and make it a starry night
but keeping my ears, to hear the light
swell and ebb out

beside all hope and along all doubt
my brush paints the darkness, colourful
and knows it is not ugly, knows it is not cruel
but oriented

towards the last ocean
where the world
is but a molecule among it's
infinite
directions.

the maryland girls
sit with half eaten smiles
speak sideways
half truths
casting lines out into the Chesapeake
where men jump
at shiny elusive things
hook in lip
blood in mouth
worms writhing on their tongues
pulled to shore
uncomfortable
choking on oxygen
pretty eyes eclipsing sun
measuring by skeptical scales
a good heart for loving
strong lungs for screaming her name
soft hands to chase her hair from her face
hook from mouth
worm swimming down throat
pulled to feet
she kissed me
[swallowed it]
pressed for just a few seconds
[but shes still kissing me to this very day]
she whispers to go
but i so desperately want to stay
fish out of sea
she'll agree that i taste nice
but through seemingly faked sorrow
she'll admit she has lost her appetite
knife in chest
gutted head to toe
tossed back into
the frozen mouth of the Chesepeake
and i will be swallowed
we'll all be
and when i come floating down to Baltimore
They wont find much of me
like the Tomb i will be found empty
but since there are no places in heaven for fish
i simply will cease to exist

maryland girls
sit with half eaten smiles
waiting to devour
dreaming to digest
stupid
floundering
gullible
fish.

you are here
with me
in theaters,
watching old films,
looking past
the close ups
of pretty actresses,
searching for
cigarette burns.

some sort of warning,
to see the story
is close to ending,
or the reels are
just changing.

pictures wont stop flickering
and i wonder who you're
pretending to be
now.

but i'm afraid,
alone, in the dark
i don't have
the patience, to wait
for the curtains or the credits
so i'll clammer my way
down to the exits
and continue
to pester the quiet projectionist.

i want to stand like a boy on a rock,
in the middle of rushing water;
unafraid of snakes;
and holes and the unexpected whale.
shouting, "Here, look at me now."

diving down
into brackish transparencies;
chasing bubbles
and rippled light,
and all the while wading out
to a smooth dead tree,
that stood long before you,
or me,
or this hushed river,

d
  r
    i
     p
       p
         i
          n
            g

                 off
                        
                        of this lonely
                                                   sphere.

i would like to play the trumpet for you
i feel i could breathe
the wailing of my soul into it.

i could play myself through this instrument
into consciousness
from this sleeping dream
into smoke from this flame

i could wisp and dissipate
like clouds in your eyes
can you see the clouds in mine?
or the dew, in the morning left?
i cant remember the rain
though i am drenched, i am dripping
every bit falling, drop by drop,
into a lake never quenched

before words, before television
you have always preceded
the breath standing at the crest of my lips
but turned, scared, naked
retreating, from the beach
back to the sea

where you close curtains
to my whale song
pounding at the door
unintelligible frequencies
on top of waves and across the sandy floor

i sink so low, shaking
chains shackled to the earth
i'd barter for the key
but the guards
they ask the trumpet from me
summoning vultures to my stomach
my burning coal punishment

for swimming so reckless
for weeping on the shoreline
because you and the rainwater receded
back into the depth of chambered winds
slipping like the valves from my fingertips
before the hushed tones of my non harmonics
my soul blossoming out of it
my song on every radio, every wax and needle
in the air wisping out

when you are not the sun
and not listening.

clouds in the back of eyes,
and sleepless nights.

I imagine myself
anxious and digested
in the belly of a 747,
constantly falling.

But outside this hollow cabin,
in the clouds, hidden:
i see the love of a great child
whose hand holds me up
as he runs the course of his backyard.

Mostly i hate to shiver, but
as of late
my mind floats
like a glacier

on a tundra. it’s almost as if
i long to be frozen, of finally

crystallizing.

spread thinly across a moment. For

what is winter but
a season of correction and
what else does snow
hide, but warm seeds
not yet equipped or

ready:

to make an assault;
to reach for the;
unfolding firmament.
and how else:

will white blankets behave?
then to collect and save
every prism of light”
crawling toward it,
like the pilgrimage of a wave~
no longer discriminating].

against boundaries:
past, present, and future
and (all at once).

&latel;;, i cannot
quench my thirst
for the ice 0f eternity
to melt f1rst


our corporeal frigid for/\ /\s


into puddles of everlasting
currents.|||\/\/\/^\/\/^\\||||\/\/\/^\/\/^

In monasteries,
clay men seek the potters hands,
slight imperfections,
were their claim to injustice--
the worst kind of puzzle players.

sandra, darling.
you're a vacant house
you're a purring creaky floor, quivering
under my searching foot
this flimsy flashlight leading me
as i charge further into
the lowly lit caverns
and further down
to the shivering warmth
in the back of these
smoke filled
hotel rooms

sandra, darling.
you're a midnight meadow
you're a great escaping sound, flickering
under the persuasion of the wind
sinking silver shears
cut gleams into eyes
but this has never been explained.
why are we holding hands
if just to keep me grounded?

i was just visiting
you and this town
sandra, darling.
its morning
and i am leaving now.

sandra, darling.
you're a unique and special snowflake
but i dont fear these
southern blizzards
or the flurry of rhetorical sound
enough to stay for breakfast
enough to stick around.

why yes
i am

the one; of many.
the prince; of pennies.

counting copper pillars
that cage tiny
dead symbols

of Lincoln
of freedom

i invade quarters
and pillage coffers
hidden in dry wall
and buried in floorboards

those secret panels
where you also hoard
i am also moored to

and if someday
Charon, extends his hand
and gravely states the price
i just may finally be able
to afford an eternity:
of laughing at this carnival;
of screaming on this ride.

My fears
are a flock of blackbirds,
that swarm
the extremities of tree limbs,
but by your grace they dissolve into the sky,
their low caws dispersed by the brushing of the wind.

and there,
in a house finally my own,
no longer supporting there taloned feet:
i am thankful.

you always come home with this armor
like your hiding this great big jug of happiness in there.
is this image of her a one sided mirror?
or her bed time clothings reflection?
cutting out the curves, leaving only the armor

and these shaking words
'explain yourself! your eyes
are dull they must
glimmer for someone else!'

you are a shell within a shell
a self-sufficient snail
judging by the oxygen packs
strapped on your back
you're too good for this pollution
turning her lungs a midnight black

and you wear it well
a chest with no heartbeats
only clicks and beeps
absent minded
messages home
to the mothership

but she can see through you,
'just be gone like a demon
back to Nibiru.
circle the sun. your path
now altered in degrees.
but from your caustic debris,
your persisting memory,
still orbits me as a moon,
making me drunk and dizzy.
so still i must insist you leave me.'

and so you do
with your jug of happiness
successfully guarded
still intact
you are a fortress
a dam holding back
the ravenous waters
you cant share
with the indigenous people
here
your head floating
up in the
atmosphere
an unfamilar creature
safe inside the walls
of your space suit armor.

im confused

when i think
of the flicker
of my existence

when i think
about how i've
treated it like a joke
like something that comes around
revolving in the ends of bicycle spokes

when i think
good things come
to those who wait
and not those who take

when i think
all is fair in love
despite the fact
that every dosage quickly dissolves
and divorces
it's original qualities

when i think
nothing is quite as it seems
when every surface
conceals denser meanings

when i think
smoke is a sign
that homes are burning
places that i once loved
are changing.

Daily,
Anna Tole
rides by me.

sitting up straight;
pedaling awkwardly.

she looks down:
maybe at the dirt
or a stone,

but it’s most probably
something i cant see
with glass eyes
alone.

she sees things…

like a seed taking root
or a nest where foxes
chew rocks
in constant costly pursuit
of that elusive sharper tooth

clouded. constant. clarity.

she looks closer
to see grains of sand
much darker
than her pre-disposed
pre-dawn
darkness

the kind
that attaches itself
tangled up behind her

she might as well be
tying soda cans
to tap out a
telegraph message

s.o.s…s.o.s…s.o.s…

Beware concrete deers
for they are not as fearful
as their wild cousins,
unmoving to your high beams,
unforgiving to dads new car.

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.

a dupe wasp
settles on an orchid,
singing sweet somethings,
melodies that shiver the stem--
tremor, knees.

i'm sure she feels the samethings.
curling toes, and antennae
afterwards, the plumes of her pollen smoke
and a giggle,
beat faster wings!

it is good to find pleasure in the little things.

i wanted to show you the
swamp lights

because i am not quite sure
but i think they came here for you

like me
every speck of moss, every scale, every
quivered breath in this bog
has been impatient

and finally
you are here
with peace like snow
and hardly weighing a thing

you
were like a feather over the shore
carried like a torch
hands reaching out
to pull down the shades of night

you
who i've been waiting for
for who the swamp lights sway

you
who turn men into monsters
and monsters into men
solutions rest on your lips
and i am waiting
for your
exalting press
again

making me
no longer a beast
but something civilized, something renowned
not quite a prince, not quite the lead
but your giving me shivers, these sensations
of flights and crowns, these fevered dreams
of stepping onto dry land
and not looking down.

Fires burn pink gray sky.
Dusk pulls night's blanket out west.
Her death is Golden.

If I asked you
would you let me
affix you to chains?

And if I pleaded
would you take my heaviness
overboard with you?

Would you be the anchor
that ties the vessel
to the ocean bed?

The voice that
quietly lays down the word:
"sleep,"
to my ears?

When the gray sea of life
lurches to and fro
with its infinite unrest

with every droplet quivering here,
and despite my years abroad
I still cant decipher
all of its erratic movements

Oh, Al-Mateen,
Will you hold me still?
Because I think I like it motionless

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.

previously
i would of said
love was the purpose
there was a heart to this universe
and it circulated
meaning
to every extremity

but now i wake
to toil
silver and gold pockets
finally a son to profit

my father was right
we're all just a number
and we cant add up to
lofty goals
or life plans
you're not a doctor.
i'm not a police man.

dream
no more my sweet
those are shores
we'll never meet

ithaca
is no more
and never was
and i'm not the kind of king to be waiting on
a prince, a pauper, a peon
i'm only a man in an argument with God
but its a problem
that is often
never solved

life is getting
what you dont want
and making the best of disappointment

oh penelope
it may be 10 years
or twenty
but i'll make it back!
i swear i'm coming back!

with money in bags
and cloudy eyes

'how're you?'

'oh, you know me
i'm making
it by
and by'

'but you're not you
you're not you anymore'

and we'll both get by
not really happy
but, hey, thats life

maybe one day
i'll wreck upon your shore
and your suitors will meet me
and my sword

i can string a bow
and keep my word

all at once

oh penelope
wont you wait for me?

wont you unweave
this burial shroud?

because
i am not
no no no
i am not
dead
yet.

i've sung to you at traffic lights,
accompanied by a fanfare of car horns.

all our lives:
intersected and interwoven.

longing the measurements
to cross over,

as our impatience
collides with travelers,

also lost
without an atlas,

all so concerned
with where they are going

and not where
they are.

inspecting fashion and make up
in rear view mirrors,

intoxicated;
by how they appear,

and not by who
they are.

so it is there,
in our most rushed hour,

i ask that you
hold us still,

in suspense
of your orchestration.

it was on all the news channels,
your shipwreck.

for miles,
and from distant lands,

whose soil
you never even met,
they traveled for you.

all around us
the promised ringing—

circle of:
banshee sharks,
phantom whales,
and reaching shadow tentacles.

glimmer—
you are sunken treasure.

but either from
the weight of your necklace,

or the summoning,
voodoo grasps of
gravity,

we were:
entranced in depth
and the fleeing
whiteness of your dress,

both them,

and me,

floating…

knowing full well,
where you go,

and that we could not venture there,


as our body-suits
could only take so much
pressure.

this, my dear, is madness:
the scent of your blood
drifting

in open water.

no rest
for the wicked
or for
me,
no my
dreams keep me
tired,
no fire
has burnt my
bed yet,
no i’m
watching
laundry line
silhouettes
from:
the shadow box
of my head,
no this
isn’t pain
as much
as its
disorienting,
no i
need medicine
something to
keep me
awake
because
i forgot
to blink,
no it
makes no difference
whether my eyes
are closed or
open,
no dust
left
suspended in light
over the ocean
trenched
darkness.

for some reason,
i’m infatuated with libraries.
so many thoughts, so many voices, so many dreams.
all collecting dust

in one
quiet
place.

Upon the dry afternoons,
the heavens tremble violently,
thick with a fathers fear,
that condenses into anger.
The sky must some day fall,
and i think it knows that.
The sun blisters its back,
and the mountains splinter its side,
but still it lurches forth,
the chained gardner to earth,
content to look down and see,
his lover still shares his suffering.

Among the muddied morn'
Gaia quivers indefinitely,
full with a mothers worry,
that solidifies into pain.
The ground must someday slip,
and i think it knows that.
Time has curved her posture,
and weather shows her age,
but still creaking forth,
the spinning ballerina's curse,
and the infidelity of the truth.

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.

posed on the rocks
my madonna

twists her ankles
and knees in

the whitewashed
masterpiece

unpainted
and uncertain

the waves
lay siege

they only want
to lay under your feet

a thousand voices
assail from the sea

they too, like me
only want to be slain

by unending beauty
still unconscious

to me
and a clothed manufactured happiness

the wind
only wants you to undress it

and bare all its love
in nakedness

and just as the forest
dances

to be a gleam in you eye,
jamilah, so do i.

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?

is it really necessary? to come and go as you please? to share the fickleness of these autumn leaves? to bat your eyes and drain the blood from me? to wrap that filthy crook around my neck? are you prepared for that? to walk in front of me out of reach like every october breath? wont you reconsider? for all the possibilities and peril? for fear of what could quite possibly, probably, and preferably be the end?

yet you continue? and interrupt this perfect re-clusion? and break apart every sentence like a rotten soaked november twig? is this all truly necessary? to please yourself and go and come into days like a drunk naked december wind? to howl down my street like some great holy christmas beast come to correct me? to show me all the preferable, probable, possible, and parallel worlds? to burn all the red where the Tennessee hills once slept under blankets of green? to hold a conversation with this snow as you please to come and go like the first tiny snowflake that will begin to bury me? as you insist? as you pay me no rent, tax, or mind? dont you know? that you should take apart those frigid winter layers? that you should disregard that preoccupied, parallel, preferable, possible, and most probable gaze? why, oh my god, why must you play shy? myrma darby, wont you look here? wont you look me in the eye?

I sit beside you,
and your beauty is terrorful;
like frost on a window pane,
it keeps me still,
like the bouncing of the plane
that reminds me i'm falling
through a cloudy world
that hides flying dangers like you,
and though without the brave voice of the captain,
silently, i say to you,
"You are beautiful."

tiny. little. indivisible.
                                      —moments.
frame real. for the first time.
                                      —suspended.

I fed. five thousand.
                                      —of them.

somewhere, in the gold echoing fields
the wind turns through wheat, removes its hat and bows
the barking, howling speech
dares the moon to lower its neck
'hum a tune, then lose your head'
oh the peaceful inches of the evening
where the sun and moon meet
like gentlemen dueling on Swiss Street
who will not return, cracked like autumn leafs
and twigs you walked over
in the middle, where its still
your eyes open while mine spill
you gulp, choke, but swallow
this is my sadness
brushed on me, i am bruised like a canvas
a child in a suit posing as Miklós
but not as handsome, and still not as verbose
and when my vessel shipwrecks on the shallows of the eastern coast
will you pick me out like a chrysanthemum among the dead?
will your lungs burst in silence when you check my pulse,
then my pocket?

you do not know art, like i know Art.
though you paraded your passings in public
it was i who, Art, trusted with his secrets
it was my window, that Art, tapped when the arguing began
yes, you may have enjoyed a dinner or engaged in conversation with him
but he never trusted you with paintings of the english language
or pictures worth a thousand songs
you didnt get 6 stitches, with Art, when you tried to climb the tallest tree
to reach out and touch heaven but still fear the fall
you didnt find Art trembling in a bathroom from what he saw
that day. You didnt find Art in broad daylight dancing
to some invisible meter, some transparent beat
you didnt see the patterns left in the steps of his feet
and while you may have gone to the cinema with Art
it was i he forwarded the scripts
to reenact a lifetime of moments
because we, Art and i, wanted a silver lining
something vague, something inspiring
to keep this momentum going
and while you claim to know this being, Art
you have not participated in a drunken brawl
with Art, involving a few rotten Connecticut men
and things not in our control
you haven't discussed eternity and death
with Art, or any of his close friends
and though, i'm sure you may have wish you did
you do not know art, like i do.

For a year now,
that cat balanced on the fence,

mewing the distance
of the alley ways.

Oh, how that animus
loved to complain.

his lonely cries
and the sound of clocks keeping time,

could keep me awake,
my sleep scattered for days.

Unprepared,
my eyes form rivers

spidered into tributaries,
that ***** out, in search of Your Seven Seas.

my hands treading the water,
attempting to pull out consistency.

i am amazed,
how at once You can both

stand me
and buckle my knees.

Quiet, now.
The Conductor speaks,

wet your mouths
and reeds,

for soon,
He'll point to you

and say,
"sing! small child, sing!"

you, my dear:
weighed heavily
on my heart today;
your sadness
blanketed me,
and encompassed
everything,
that had led us
astray:

the drunken
bath tub shipwreck,
and the cracking
of our compasses.

what maladies
only a year adrift could bring?

but you
having appeared before
like a bottle
that had washed ashore
sent by the sea
with a script
so often read,
that my eyes
would sore
over and over
once again,

with hopes
they were addressed,
just to me and my absence.
pulling apart every vowel
with deeper hopes
to pick apart
their meaning.

but between
your words,
and between
you and i,
and the half-filled emptiness
of our loose leaf lives,

i've heard
these tack-hung pictures tell:
of your voyages
and the other captains,
bound for hell.

and so
i sent this note
and map, in faith, afloat.
to help navigate
your journey back.

and though
today you did not ask
me for a raft
or for the truth:

yes,
even on dry land
i still hold my breath
for you.

i remember childhood
like i forget most moments,
something
is always missing

like every autumn
i'd go upstate
to pin ornaments onto trees
like they were war veterans who lost their feet

and rake
stockpiles of leaves

(i can hear their tiny spines breaking)

the ground crackled
because i walked on fire
it was easy
it smelt stale

i recall the fall
in mounds.

i never landed .

i remember floating.

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.

My skull cracks open at the eye lids,
as the light pools across the morning.

And Heaven is not peaceful, but spiraled, turbalent:
as ivory continents drift, aimlessly, about the hollow firmament.

They foam and twist, and I ask again,
for uneven patience.

My shoulder blades bend, I cannot pray, so I ask again:
for seven severed seraphs wings,

each outstretched against the dawns edges folding in.
My cracked hands hold equal parts water and oxygen,

though I'm still unsure which is the more transparent,
each is fleeting, and will not be cupped,

and will not be pressed, drawn into, dry desert lips.
I shall not pray, so I ask again:

for pale landscapes to be first outlined, then colored in.
The light and the distance,

the unaswered question,
the curious reply of morning,

as all the world bleeds out from my eye lids.

the world;
and my bed.

which
is the refuge?

and which
is the storm?

when
long time friends:

are inward
projections;

are simply further proof
of myself;

are shadowy
conjugal visits:

holding hands
with their phantom limbs.

every day,
dissolved and disillusioned,

nails rake
dirt

and it
doesnt feel real

i'm
poking holes.

into

shrouds! fogs!
lights! atoms!

Air moist with dry hopes,
boils under jealous Sol,
and softly rain falls.

There is dusk
twisted

and circling
through the air,

as western mountains
devoured a Sol,

boiling blood:
impure, but thick with hopes.

Singing dog songs upwards:
the unrequited lunatic.

Pulled to you
like a current,

coming close
but never touching;

(i ache like the sea.)
or heavy stones sinking-

Find me, i'm Septentrio
and you're Eurynome:

and what was waiting to hatch,
has already been born.

Carving up Chaos,
to make my home.

autumn has come again
so the leaves
are soaked now
with all the colors they have
kept  in.

and people frolick while nature
is dying

and under every mask
the eyes, still gleam like they belonged to children

every trick
deserves a tiny treat
greedy gloved fingers are scythes
they are hungry for the harvesting

of rotten teeth
of breathing ghosts
of temperatures dropping

the naked trees
start their shivering
and the cold
cant hold them

the kids carve their names
in vain attempts to console them
as if to say,
"we're all trapped
in between
the shadows
and the seasons
we're all frustrated
and on the cusp
of becoming
we're all waking
and forever waiting
to be born again
curious, brave babies
in the blooms of spring"